Visitors face delays as Alcatraz Island reopens after temporary closure

By CBS Bay Area

The lines were long at Pier 33 on Friday, as visitors had rescheduled their ferry boat trip to Alcatraz Island after tours shut down the day before.

Earlier this week, officials said Alcatraz would be closed on Wednesday due to a preplanned construction project. 

“This is our third and finally successful attempt to get to Alcatraz,” Nancy Bowden, who is visiting from Connecticut, told CBS News Bay Area. 

“We had a premonition there would be a problem, but we didn’t know until this morning, nor did the staff, really, that we wouldn’t be able to go at our scheduled 9:20 time,” she added.

A park ranger had confirmed with CBS News Bay Area that the first boat was delayed to 10:35 a.m. Friday. 

“We were here once before, trying to go to Alcatraz; there was another shutdown under President Obama,” Bowden said. 

Park rangers were standing by, greeting hundreds of visitors getting off the boat. 

While they could not comment on camera, they said they are not short of staffing on Friday and that business is operating as usual. 

But for some visitors, like Ingo Sibelts from Germany, it was a bit of a rollercoaster. 

“We were a little bit angry about that, because all the trip in San Francisco was arranged around the trip to Alcatraz,” Sibelts said. 

But he added that he was grateful that the plan was sorted out. 

“We are pleasant to come here, to finish our trip with the thing we planned a month before,” he said. 

Despite the government shutdown, it appears that Alcatraz will continue to keep its doors open for now. And for that, tourists like Bowden are thankful. 

“It’s the kind of thing that is a piece of history during my time that I did not know about. Like some of the things, I was born in ’54, so almost all of that timeline on that board over there was during my lifetime,” Bowden said, motioning to the “Welcome to Indian Land” exhibit.