Coming to a dock near you? A cruise ship in Tacoma

A small cruise ship is set to bring tourists to Tacoma starting next fall.

Passengers would disembark at the City of Destiny as the third stop — after Seattle and Olympia — as part of an 11-day sojourn offered by American Cruise Lines.

The company hosts travelers on tours of sheltered inland waterways.

American Cruise Lines is promoting its “Grand Puget Sound Cruise” on its website but just where passengers would disembark in Tacoma is up in the air.

They could disembark along the Thea Foss Waterway, said Wesley Wenhardt, executive director of the Foss Waterway Seaport, which manages moorage for the Foss Waterway Development Authority.

“I met a guy yesterday,” Wenhardt said Wednesday. “He said he was bringing a boat down here. There is no signed agreement. It’s all conjecture.”

Officials with the Guilford, Connecticut-based company could not be reached late Wednesday afternoon.

Cruises are scheduled to start in September 2018. In addition to coming to Tacoma, Olympia and Seattle, the cruise lists stops in Anacortes, Friday Harbor, Port Angels, Port Townsend, Poulsbo and Victoria, British Columbia.

“I think they’re looking at different routes,” Wenhardt said. “Boy, if we could make it happen together it would be neat.”

Prices for the 11-day tour start at $5,890 per person based on double occupancy for a small room, and climb to $10,305 for the “owner’s suite” with a private balcony.

For now, the 175-passenger American Constellation is carrying passengers on tours of New England, the Hudson River and Southeast United States, the company website says.

The ship includes a putting green, sun deck and several outdoor lounges.

The same group will be involved in shaping tour itineraries for each of the 24-to-36-hour visits.

American Cruise Lines would have been here sooner but needed to complete work on the ship to accommodate a longer cruise, Port of Olympia Executive Director Ed Galligan said Wednesday

The American Constellation was just launched, he said. It will serve the East Coast and then travel through the Panama Canal and make its way up the West Coast for the Puget Sound tours.

The ship is 175 feet but has a shallow draft, so Budd Inlet water depths will not be an issue, Galligan said.

“We are set,” Galligan said. “We could have them here tomorrow.”

Staff writers Debbie Cockrell and Rolf Boone contributed to this report.

This story was originally published May 24, 2017 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Coming to a dock near you? A cruise ship in Tacoma."