I think you prove the point of variability and I don't know if I got lucky(we did get close and saw alot of calving) or you got unlucky relative to Hubbard. Also since I have never been to Glacier I don't have any comparisons to know if you were lucky in your trips there.

It's a data sample size problem, I wonder if there has been research on how often and how close ships get in the Hubbard vs Glacier debate. The individual cruise lines will brag about where they go so marketing tends to cloud their discusion of it.

To give you an idea here is a view including the ship for scale as we turned away and left we were a little closer than this for the 360 turn the ship made. Back to the posters question about side of ship since they turned 360 at the glacier then the side of ship did not matter in this instance.


Hubbard from Radiance of the seas balcony.