I know what you mean! Last year I booked our 2012 Alaska cruise in January and spent the next few months researching, planning, and mildly freaking out!
After a lot of research, I ended up booking all of our excursions on my own and they were great! No problems at all and I saved a lot of money (over all) compared to the Disney sponsored excursions.
My husband's favorite excursion was in Skagway. I booked us a rental car and we drove from Skagway, into Canada--through a small part of British Columbia and into the Canadian Yukon. We utilized a guidebook I downloaded from the internet called Murray's Guide and it was *wonderful* and described every abandoned mine and hillside we passed. Just fabulous! We really got a great feel for the countryside by doing this drive.
We saw wildlife (I've never seen mountain goats hopping on rocks other than in a zoo...until this drive!), stopped to skip rocks in a lake, and grabbed lunch in a bakery in a town recommended in the guide. We turned around at Emerald Lake--the most gorgeous lake I've ever seen in my life! (And yes, the water was just as green as the name implies!)
On the way back, we stopped to take a sled dog ride in Carcross and my children just thought that was fabulous! It was so much fun for all of us, but my children really really loved it and asked our driver (a FEMALE Iditarod racer) so many questions.
We thought about stopping at the Yukon Suspension Bridge on our way back as well, but opted not to as the weather was a bit foggy and we had done a suspension bridge on a family trip to Vancouver earlier in the summer.
Even with our stops, we made it back to Skagway in time to wander through the town and take pictures and press pennies. It was a fabulous port stop and I thoroughly impressed my husband with my planning.