Maid of the Mist Goes Electric

I can only remember two things about my 1986 trip to Niagara Falls: Getting drenched on the famous Maid of the Mist boat and pondering the dubious claim that an ordinary-looking hairdryer in the Elvis Museum really belonged to the King. On a recent visit, I found that the Elvis Museum was long gone. The Maid of the Mist was still around and remains Niagara Falls’ most famous attraction, but it too had undergone a significant change: The two-boat fleet went electric during the pandemic.

“Ever since the Maid of the Mist started operations in 1846, over the decades it has been innovating along the way. Steam, diesel, and now electric,” said John Sicinski, the company’s executive vice president. The Maid of the Mist is part of the New York State Park system, which aims to be zero-emission systemwide by 2040.

Going electric wasn’t easy. The boats operate in the Maid of the Mist Pool, a section of the Niagara River between the massive falls and some non-navigable lower rapids, a difficult area to get any new vessel into. The area also lacked adequate roads for transporting the finished ships. Flatbed trucks delivered the vessels in prefabricated sections, and final assembly happened onsite. Cranes lowered the finished boats into the pool.

Now that the company has operated the new vessels for a few seasons, it has a good system for keeping them adequately charged. The boats each run 22 trips a day, leaving the dock at 80% charge. They drop down to about 65% on the 20-minute ride into the waterfalls, then charge back up to 80% while passengers load and unload. It’s a seamless operation, and one I didn’t even notice as I stood on the wet deck, struggling to yank my blue rain poncho over my backpack. 

“We tie up at the dock, we plug the boats in, and then we’re attaching the gangways for passengers disembarking,” said Sicinski, a marine engineer who spent many years on ships and in shipyards before moving into higher management. “The time at the dock is between 7 and 10 minutes … We can disembark 600 passengers. We can reload 600 new passengers and charge the boat.”

If you’ve never ridden on the Maid of the Mist, you might dismiss it as a tourist trap. But you can’t deny the immense power of these falls — and the ships take you right into a world of spray and mist. On my recent trip, passengers visiting from around the world leaned over the railings, marveling at the falls. A couple danced across the deck. It was joy and awe, a bucket-list place, free of diesel exhaust and rattling engines. 

Sicinski likes when passengers don’t even pay attention to the boats. “It’s just a silent platform,” he said. “Because their focus is going to see the waterfall, right? So for them to not even really notice that the boat is there in the background with operating machinery is the biggest compliment you could get.”