martincath

10 minutes ago, CynCyn said:

I have learned I can never go wrong with your recs! Any tips on transportation to Salmon’n’Bannock? Will be in YVR for a day after debarkation.  It will be a Sunday if that matters.

Really depends where you are in town - Taxi (or rideshares, we have Uber, Lyft, and local Kabu running these days) are the obvious 'point to point' options. Google Maps is hands-down the best option for figuring out transit from wherever you are sightseeing/your hotel, all of our transit routing is fully enabled in it (indeed, it even powers Translinks trip plans on the website now), but wherever you start you'll need to transfer onto the 9 if you don't want to walk (the 99 Express bus also runs along Broadway, but very limited stops). If you don't have free data from your phone provider, you can make use of realtime mapping on the city's free network - it broadcasts as #VanWiFi all over the place - with any WiFi capable device.

Slight annoyance - Broadway has a few really big holes right now (subway station construction - interesting to peer down them before they get covered!), with restricted lanes and even chunks of sidewalk missing for the work, so if you plan to walk from SkyTrain at Broadway-City Hall station or a bus stop on Cambie/Granville, you'll need to cross the street now and again (or just walk along the next parallel streets - 8th or 10th - until you reach the right block - between Spruce and Alder). Cabs and rideshares will probably have to drop around the corner on Spruce, there's a lot of No Stopping zones on Broadway and I think the block with S&B is still restricted.

Granville Island is only big tourist site nearby that you might be walking from - but be aware that the hills are pretty steep if you walk from GI to S&B. I would take Alder rather than Spruce as Choklit Park interrupts Spruce just north of 7th, and while you can walk up the stairs this view can be very confusing for visitors!

11 hours ago, teagues said:

For SkyTrain, does each person in a group need their own credit card with a unique card number? Or can a single card be use to tap in and tap out everyone in the group?

1 card per person. The system tracks the card from first tap to last (or just times out at 90mins if you are on a bus, which you only tap to enter not exit), compares which Zones those were in, bills accordingly.

I don't think retapping the same card from outside will even work to open the gate a second time - if it does, it may have actually just immediately tapped you out back out again (which is free within a few minutes, if done at the same station) but regardless, at least some of your party will be guilty of fare evasion (as an automated system, it's rare to get checked by Translink staff or Transit Police, but if you are the fine is almost a hundred times higher than a basic adult fare!)

23 hours ago, Cam14 said:

I would add that we are not very heavy eaters, and recommendations for a restaurant/bar for appetizers and drinks would be great.  Thanks again!

Then I'll keep it simple with mostly some bar/pub reccos - best patio for views of the North Shore mountains on a sunny day is at Tap & Barrel's convention centre branch; the whole T&B chain offers better-than-it-has-to-be-at-the-price pub grub, a wide range of local beers and wines (including several custom made for them, cannot get anywhere else).

Rogue (closest is inside Waterfront Station, really nice old space, many nooks and crannies) is the pub arm of Steamworks brewing - almost identical menus but I find that Rogue consistently does the same food slightly better than Steamworks (who are literally across the carpark - main difference is that Steamworks sells their own beers whereas Rogue sells a whole bunch of different PNW breweries' products, so depending whether you feel like trying several different beer styles made by the same brewer, or several different brewers takes on the same beer style, you have both options available just yards apart!)

Moose's Down Under is one of the best value boozers downtown - not at all fancy, but unless you are an Aussie or frequent their expat bars while at home it should be a different enough menu to be interesting, and it has a genuinely fun, friendly vibe. It's in a basement, with the street level sign only about waist height, easy to walk past if you're looking up, and just around the corner for you.

Broad menus in all of these, being Vancouver the average pub menu includes a few Asian dishes as well as burgers, fish & chips etc., and for everyone not your Sis at least a couple of different cooked fish dishes plus some sushi and something in the shrimp/mussel/crab area.

Lastly, a low key but long-lasting Vietnamese cafe is just up the street, Joyeaux - they're rarely bigged up by local foodie types these days, but they survived Covid and continue to just keep doing their thing (their website is almost hilariously old school, no social media budget for these guys!) which includes one of the best-value breakfasts in downtown in case your hotel rate doesn't supply brekkie.

A wee map with all of these and your hotel here - even if you walked around all five reccos you'd rack up barely more than a mile)

14 minutes ago, rrrrtt said:

Bit outdated.

 

Appreciate the corrections! @yolotraveler , sounds like this person's been on more WJ flights more recently than I have so I'd give their commentary more weight than mine!

My beef with Rouge wasn't pitch, but lack of cushioning - I've never had a sorer butt after a flight than my flight to Vegas on Rouge, which AC swapped on us from a regular service with no compensation. If WJ have just reduced pitch in the back rather than changing to thinner seats I'd still prefer their Economy product to Rouge...

Our only WJ flight since they started offering the PE cabin had exactly the situation you describe - swapped metal, no PE, no compensation 'because you still have a premium seat' - hence my comment about 'most' of their planes lacking such... to be fair, I could have checked the current fleet numbers to see if the Covid cull means that now most of the planes do actually have PE seating, but even if 'some' or 'a few' were more accurate descriptors, it's still craptacular to even pretend that the old style 'no middle' is as good as a wider seat - the battle for the armrest also simply shifts to 'who gets to leave their stuff on the unused middle seat' if you aren't traveling as a couple!

1 hour ago, CJMini said:

... husband wants to pay for everyone.  So, it seems the kiosk would be the better option and allow him to pay for several tickets at one time.

Yes, if it's all going on one card you'll have to use the kiosk! If you tap the same card over and over, it only bills it once so everyone else is fare-dodging 😉 It's been ages since I actually bought an individual ticket, thanks to the reloadable Compass card, but if memory serves during evenings/weekends if you try to buy a multi-zone fare the machine won't let you, so it's just how many tix are Concession (>65) or regular (13-64). Also, I think you can 'buy' a free child ticket just so they have something to tap and a wee souvenir - if not, make sure someone taps and lets the kid walk through right in front of them, as the faregates close pretty quick to minimise the chance of someone tailgating you through for free.

However, just so you have the comparison at hand, with 6 adults and a kid you might consider 2 cabs instead unless you were coming in early enough to be able to reuse a DayPass efficiently... with AddFares on top, SkyTrain does not save much cash (more on weekends with 1 zone pricing) as a cab is only CAD$37 to the EXchange. Four adults and baggage can be tricky in a Prius, but with 3 grownups per car and the kid taking the middle seat in one, they should be comfy enough even if no vans roll in.

Note that you'll need a car seat for DG on many AK excursions unless she is rather tall and heavy for her age (even schoolbuses up there, a fairly typical vehicle for tours, require boosters installed if there's a seatbelt to enable attaching them); technically 'professional drivers' like cabbies are exempt from requiring car seats here in Vancouver, but they're also not allowed to charge you for car seat install/removal time even on metered fares when you choose to use them.

Of course, if you've chosen excursions that don't need car seats to avoid bringing one, transit's the safest option even if it doesn't save much. Recco for travel with a little'un is to board the front of the train at YVR (the back if you see it roll in - it reverses a few minutes later) so GD can pretend to drive the train! Or in my case, justify pretending to drive the train myself by instead pretending I'm sitting here for the benefit of my nephew... 😉 

I'll goe ven further than Bruce - if you really want a wide sample of opinions on westjet, you're not going to get it anywhere on CC, 'flyer talk' forum (not sure about linking to a travel competitor, but a quick search should find it!) would deliver.

My two cents - most folks I know with a preference between WJ and Air Canada like WJ a little more. In theory all staff should be 'more invested' in success because they are all owners (of teeny tiny proportions, but still if the company does well, they win).

Planes run a bit older, their idea of 'first class' is basically 'do not sell a middle row' on most aircraft, but if you're buying economy tickets seat comfort is better than AC Rouge but a touch worse than regular AC, so it's overall about a wash.

Honestly I generally do find service aboard aircraft better on WJ, the general vibe reminds me of Alaska with just a little more happiness from the crew, but because they codeshare with Delta for US flights and we have never had anything but absolute crap treatment on Delta we no longer book them in case we end up on Delta metal!

If AC were the same price I'd prefer them to WJ regardless; but I'll take WJ over any AC Rouge plane.

46 minutes ago, Cam14 said:

...  Any restaurant recommendations? 

Any chance you narrow down (dis)liked foods/genres, budget, how far you're willing to walk, whether you care more about a view than the best food, and some idea of what sort of restos you can access easily at home? 'cos from that hotel there are literally hundreds of restos that I'd personally consider an easy walk away, running the gamut from swankadelic to cheap & cheerful and covering at least a dozen ethnic varieties.

Without anything else to narrow down the field, for a single dinner in Vancouver I'd be inclined to point you to somewhere that's almost impossible to find anywhere else, and while not cheap it's at a very good pricepoint for the quality (but it would involve a bus or a ~$15 cab ride): Salmon'n'Bannock, our only Indigenous resto. Even if you're a Steak'n'Taters kinda person, they can feed you (try the Bison pot roast!), but if you enjoy game meats and interesting (cooked) fish that's where they really shine.

8 hours ago, sharon_pei said:

I will give up # 3 on the list, but really want to bring fresh ginger to help with seasickness -- chewing on a piece of ginger really helps! is this not allowed?

If it's fresh, then it's against the law - you can plant a ginger root! This is 100% not going to be allowed in any border crossing, whether Canada to the US or vice versa.

Buy candied ginger in Canada and you're fine - you can't stick a sugary lump into the ground and get a plant to grow 😉 

1 hour ago, CJMini said:

Thank you for your response.  Hopefully the Skytrain kiosk at YVR will be accommodating with just our credit card and no Pin.

Just Tap the cards directly on the fare gates, don't bother with the ticket machine at all!

The only reason to not do this is if you are entitled to Concession fares and are willing to figure out your required Zones etc. by yourself to save a buck or so per person - tapping directly saves you time and costs exactly the same as a regular Adult fare, with all the math done by the system based on where you then tap back out.

Just be sure to tap out with the same card - if you have more than one chip card in your wallet take the one you want to use out, as multiple NFC capable cards in a wallet basically one of them will be billed but not necessarily the same one as last time so instead of one accurate transaction (Card X went from YVR to Downtown = 2 zone fare + AddFare) you will be hit with 2 maximum fares (Card X boarded at YVR and never left the system; Card Y boarded downtown, never left the system; both get billed 3 Zones with X also getting an AddFare!)

33 minutes ago, CJMini said:

Taking the Canada Line and would like to know the closest station to the Blue Horizon hotel? 

Yes, City Centre is closest - it's an almost perfectly flat 1km route to walk, you can use pretty much any street to cut over to Robson from W Georgia (although I would recommend walking at least a couple of blocks on Georgia, to avoid the pedestrianized block between Howe and Hornby behind the Art Gallery, as it is often chock full of temporary stalls making it a hassle to walk through - if you stick to Georgia until you hit the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, any left from there to Bute is fine, you'll walk the same distance... Jervis onward and you overshoot the hotel!)

Day Passes don't require a location - they operate across all three zones every day, so only have 2 prices these days (regular fare and Concession for kids & seniors). If you're only planning to head downtown to the hotel, or even take 1 or even 2 rides somewhere else, better to just pay for your fare separately each time... Day Passes start saving on the 4th trip around downtown, and that's only by a few cents -even if it's a weekday when the fare inbound from YVR is 2 zones, so a Day Pass wins by about a buck and a half on that 4th trip, or breaks even on the third trip if you take another 2 zone ride to e,g, North Van by Seabus.

Even regular tickets only break it down by zone, not by stop, so you cannot book any kind of ticket to <Insert Station> you can always travel freely within the zone(s) you paid for for 90 minutes between boardings and then as long as it takes to get to where you're going. So if, for example, you ride into town from YVR (<30mins), walk to hotel (~15min with bags), check-in and drop bags, you could jump on a bus outside, or even walk back toward the pier and hop on a Seabus (~25min walk from BH) as long as you tap the last entry gate before 90mins from when you first tapped your ticket to enter the system back at YVR. So that same 2 zone ticket could get you all the way over to North Van to enjoy Lonsdale Quay without buying a second one - and if you stayed until after 6:30pm everything becomes 1 zone regardless of day, so the fare coming back would be cheaper.

And all of this 'which zone(s) do I need to buy!?' stuff is irrelevant if you just tap a credit card or smartphone with a card in a virtual wallet on the gates - the system will do the math for you, so for folks who don't qualify for Concession rates it's the same price for less work and no time wasted... also note that if you buy a ticket of any type, even a Day Pass, at the YVR station (or tap to enter) you will be billed the $5pp AddFare for inbound travel - Day Passes only save you the AddFare if they are bought elsewhere.

If you want to avoid the AddFare you can buy an old-school Day Pass at the 7-11 inside the airport - this is still ~$2 more expensive than a 2 zone fare with AddFare though, so unless you plan at least one additional use of transit the day you arrive, don't waste your time!

15 hours ago, poffles said:

The issue seems to have extended past the fall, my renewal was submitted in Jan (2024) and almost 4 months later still 'Pending Approval' while the other person I submitted the same day (posted earlier) was approved and card received in two months. Good to hear of others with such varied experiences, almost seems like submissions hit different agent offices and luck of the draw what you get.

 

Oh well it's all good since the current one will not expire in the interim.  Meanwhile I am easily entertained by the process  😏

Even wider spread here - I applied last September, my wife didn't get around to hers until November, her card appeared in the mail this Jan without even getting an email that she'd been approved (same thing happened to me 5 years before), but my case hasn't progressed beyond Pending Review.

Technically my current card remains valid until this July so I'm not concerned yet, just growing more annoyed at the difference - especially given neither of us has traveled to the US or anywhere else without each other within the last 5 years; same age, same foreign country of birth, even identical Canadian citizenship date; aside from gender and appearance we're virtually identical in everything that we have to put on the renewal form!!!

Yes to the accessible cabs - legally every fleet has to provide ~17% of their vehicles as vans suitable for wheelchairs/scooters. Apps are a bit iffy - last time I checked with Yellowcab they would not guarantee vehicle type on the app, and there are zero accessible UberLyfts - so you may have to do the old-school phone the cab company thing to get to the pier, but post-cruise about 1 in 6 cabs rolling in will randomly be vans.

Given it's Bellingham I imagine you planned to come up same day; if you added on a night in the Accent Inn by the airport though you could get 2 weeks parking for $80 on top of room rate - not sure if extra individual days are a similar cost per day or a bit extra, but you'd probably be saving almost half the cost of parking even with two cab rides... they do have an airport shuttle, and SkyTrain is totally RORO, but no idea whether the shuttle vehicle could handle DHs chair...

I'm afraid that all local cab firms run randomly good to bad in quality of service, so I have no recommendation for who to call, but the hotel might. Alternatively, if you park in YVRs Value long-term lot you can access SkyTrain directly from the lot (daily rates here but no cab fare might still be a bit more than a night at Accent though...)

To avoid any Vancouver transpo needs, you could also book in the other half of the Convention Centre - it's literally just a few hundred yards along the sidewalk, and rates run approx. $26 a day which seems to be half what you've been quoted for the pier if you didn't mistype that $900!

It's been a while, but Rob Roy seems to have only improved since the pre-Covid days when I was last there (nominated for a Beard award last year for food) and is very convenient to walk to from Hotel Five. Very glad I tried them back in the day - I actually detest the eponymous cocktail so I nearly skipped them!

Aside from the lack of view I think it checks all your other boxes.

A 1:30pm flight is late enough that every cruiseline would sell you a flight at that time - and their shuttles are by far the slowest way to get to YVR!

I agree that a 6am arrival won't see you off the ship any quicker than a 7am one due to CBSA hours at the pier, and having to do US Preclearance as a Brit could make the process a bit longer - be sure to get your ESTA organized before you come over! - but 3 hours early is trivially easy to manage even on a really busy 3 ship day. In fact you might not even be allowed to drop your checked bags if you arrive too quickly and it's a busy day, as only so many bags can be held for screening by CBP so if you actually roll in before 10:30am you may have to wait until then!

Since you plan to self-disembark, you are definitely physically capable of getting your bags to SkyTrain so you absolutely should do that - with no traffic and automated trains, travel time almost never goes more than seconds beyond the scheduled 26min trip from Waterfront to YVR. Even if you just miss a train, the next one to YVR departs in <7mins midweek, <15mins weekends, and it's maybe a 10min walk from the pier. Tappable Visa/MC cards mean you can even skip the time to use a ticket machine - unless you're >65 or 13-18 and want a Concession fare the pricing is the same for a regular adult fare and tapping the gates directly.

Just walk out, turn left, ignore the first entrance on Howe (wrong platform!), hang a left onto Cordova, head inside the big and obvious station building a wee but down street, platform is right under the lobby you enter this way. Map.

7 hours ago, jrcooper said:

We will be arriving in Vancouver and staying at the Hyatt Regency one night before our Sept. 10, 2024, cruise and will be looking for a grocery store and wine store. I was wondering if anyone who is familiar with Vancouver would know if any of the wine stores or grocery stores happen to carry Stella Rosa semi-sweet Italian wines. I am looking for the Stella Rosa Original or Black. So far, I haven't been able to find it, but was hoping someone here might know. 

For wines, try the Alberni & Bute Signature BC Liquor Store  (government = cheapest prices, but sig stores have better-trained staff to advise on comparable wine to your preferred type, which I've never seen in BC myself and no searches of the bigger private liquor stores have proven fruitful either). If you like slightly-sweet red wines, and you can't get a better recco from someone in store, we really enjoy a dirt-cheap blend called Bodacious - their bourbon-barrel aged red is a 'semi dry' with just discernible residual sweetness that's super smooth and easy to drink, and for the the price is ludicrously good value. It's the 'quaffing plonk' we have in the house constantly for cooking with, or to open a second bottle after dinner, but we've fooled a few fancy friends about the pricepoint by decanting it too 😉 

For groceries your closest supermarket to the Hyatt would be Urban Fare, also on Alberni - map of both stores and your hotel here. But depending what you're after and where else you go in town, there are cheaper supermarkets (No Frills at Denman Place Mall probably the lowest-priced in downtown) and also large pharmacies (London Drugs, Rexall both have large branches downtown) which stock plenty of e.g. soda and snacks - check who's got what on sale if it's common stuff you're after!

10 hours ago, bingobunny14 said:

we are going to the Auberge in vancouver do we take the sky train to waterfront

 

Yes - but it's best to get off at the back of the train (the front if you see it pull into YVR as it goes backwards on the same track from there) and take the elevator/escalator up following signs to Granville St rather than entering the station proper. Saves most of the uphill walk!

The info above is... extensive, but out of date on pricing by between two and five years so I'm guessing this is ChatGPT produced as it has a dataset within the right timeframe. The lack of human knowledge would also explain why a pointless map to the pier was included, literally worse than useless for the walk from train to Auberge: try this map instead.

I'd check whether you can do everything except the 5 day cruise - so you know how much the 'as bad as the timing of an AK cruise gets' part of the package actually costs! As long as you have the right clothes to enjoy your port stops (and packing many layers will be crucial if you're doing Vegas afterward, much toastier down there in Oct than up here) then as long as the price for those days seems good I wouldn't hesitate.

Our honeymoon almost 30 years ago, when we were living in Edinburgh, was a three week land tour of western US, even later than your trip (early through end of Nov) and we had some ridiculously variable conditions - literally could not see the Grand Canyon due to a blizzard for example, it was 'barely see your hand in front of your face' stuff, got stuck in Reno an extra day also due to snow, but the coastal SoCal weather was seemed freakishly hot, I recall being in shorts in San Francisco of all places, constantly sweltering! But we packed appropriately for the theoretical mins and maxes across the multiple states and even managed a flyover from Vegas of the Canyon a couple of days later - if pasty Scots could handle that, I'm sure that Yorkshire folk won't have too much trouble (but do bring your own teabags; you can actually find Gold for sale in the US & Canada, but it's ferociously pricier!)

11 hours ago, kayehall said:

SkyTrain sounds interesting.  What is the closest skytrain station to the Westin Bayshore please?

If you can walk a mile with luggage, then get off at City Centre and pootle along W Georgia St to Cardero St - hang a right and it's a block down, on your left. Waterfront is only about a hundred yards further, so if the train is busy just wait the extra 2 minutes and get off there (the train waits at least 2-3mins before leaving again, so you get more time to pull bags out from under seats).

If you can't walk that far, just take a cab - by the time you add a few bucks for cabfare and a random wait time to flag a cab, on top of SkyTrain fare plus $5pp AddFare inbound, the savings really don't add up to a great deal even for a couple.

If you can though, great news - you can walk to the pier with your bags to embark! It's the same as walking to Waterfront (basically bang on a mile) if you take the scenic wander along the Seawall, and a couple hundred yards less if you take the Cordova St shortcut.

3 minutes ago, clo said:

Thank you immensely. We live in Seattle.

You're welcome, although I think it was entirely coincidental that my post in any way helped someone from your neck of the woods!

For Seattlites, I'd recommend driving your own car across on the Black Ball for several days on the Island (transit around Vic, and to and from ferry/airport, is decent but everywhere else especially going town to town varies from god awful to "What is this transit you speak of? I do not know this word!" levels) and getting to the bits that cruisers and daytrippers never see. Compare and contrast Cathedral Grove with your own woods out on the peninsula, which I understand now have both Quiet Park and Dark Sky Preserve status in parts of Olympic NP, stormwatch or surf in Tofino (watch out for the beach wolves though - do not take that delicious-looking dog in your pic!), check out the roofgoats of Coombes, etc. etc.

Or for a quicky Just Vic weekend, the Clipper from downtown to downtown has a stellar convenience factor!

^Yup, while the wedding photo lineup has dropped quite a bit at QEP thanks to the waterfall being turned off (we're trying to get it compliant with new rules about water re-use, so hopefully it returns soon - back in the day every summer visit I'd see a queue of wedding parties waitingf for their turn at the 'bride and groom in front of the waterfall' shot!) the resto, Seasons in the Park, is undoubtedly the most scenic resto patio view within the city being right up at the highest point of Vancouver.

I always tell folks who ask this question the same thing - if you can fly in to YYJ instead of YVR (or out, post-cruise) then only having one full day in Vic might be worthwhile. If you're locked into your Vancouver flight/hotel/both, then the only way to actually get plenty of time at Butchart is an independent visit rather than a coach tour. Throw money at the problem for flights both ways and you can easily get a decent visit to the gardens, enough time downtown to do the museum, a gallery or shopping or whatnot, even a whalewatch within the same length of day as the day trips by bus/ferry which only give you 2 hours tops at Butchart. It's a helluva long day though, exhaustingly so - we did this on our first visit as tourists, enjoyed it at the time but it really wiped us out so we ended up having to cut back on planned Vancouver activities the next day so in hindsight, it was a bad move. Flight prices now are almost four times what we paid back then as Harbour Air have bought up all their competition and jacked up prices to match HeliJet, and flying offpeak times cripples a trip like this - you really need to be on the first and last flights, and that first one is often packed with business travelers heading to Vic for morning meetings as that's where oh so many of our provincial government departments, big unions, etc. have their HQs.

If all you want to do is Butchart, taking public transit to and from the ferry makes for a cheap day, and you can stay much longer at Butchart than the day trip coach tours - $5pp for a day trip bus ticket on the Island, about $20 each way on the ferry as walk-ons (senior rates differ), transit costs on the mainland depend on day, time, age of traveler but worst case an Adult day pass is less than CAD$12. Still a 12 hour day, but you can have 4+ hours at Butchart.

But personally I'd stay in Vancouver - while Butchart packages several excellent gardens on one site, they do charge a hefty fee for entry on top of the required travel time and expense. Unless you literally have Butchart on your bucket list and will never return to these parts (many RT Seattle cruises allow an easy Butchart visit for example), it's a waste of both your time and money. You can spend a fraction of the money visiting all of the great gardens in Vancouver, even if you take cabs between all of them, and fill every daylight hour with pretty plants right here.

Free Rose Gardens at both UBC and Stanley (which also offers the Shakespeare and Rhododendron gardens among the more tree-filled parts of the park), VanDusen Botanic is even better than UBCs from a garden perspective (traditional English Hedge Maze, but UBC does have a better Arboretum with the Treewalk), you can save a buck or two with a combo ticket for VD and Bloedel (the rest of QEP is all free). Nitobe is an even better Japanese garden than the one at Butchart (which is the middle one of three designed by the same man, so it's not even the best one in Greater Victoria!) and you can take in a traditional tea ceremony at Nitobe if you time your visit right.

Sun Yat-Sen is literally the best Chinese Scholar's garden anywhere outside Suzhou - it was completely constructed of traditional materials by Chinese master artisans using entirely traditional methods for Expo 86 and fully renovated just before Covid (still costs less than $20 with free docent tours to explain the ludicrous complexities of its construction!) Even the freebie park next door, which shares the Koi pond, is pretty damn nice despite being built inauthentically on the cheap.

Anoither way to think about this - if you were visiting London, England would you even think for a second about visiting a site in France, Belgium, or the Netherlands for the day? If not, abandon Butchart plans, because whether flying or taking Eurostar you're looking at a similar logistical effort to do that as to get to Butchart for the day from Vancouver!

This question, like what to pack, always comes down to only one sensible response - always assume and pack for the worst, whether that means your preferred seasickness meds or ample layers of clothing. The odds are more in your favour of smooth waters going Inside, but there's no guarantees.

On 4/24/2024 at 12:55 PM, vadersprincess12 said:

Hello ~ we have a stop at Prince Rupert, BC on the way back from our Alaska cruise.  Any recommendations for what to do?  TIA.

Try perusing the local tourism site. In terms of things to do here you can't easily do other places, visiting Khutzeymateen grizzly sanctuary ranks right up there - depending when/where you went in Alaska, you might already have seen plenty bears though!

20 hours ago, mhsqb11butterflya320 said:

And what does that person do?  Are they able to get off the cruise ship and if not, what happens?

This is for someone who has a DUI from 13 years ago.

 

Well, the rules on the DUI thing changed considerably for the worse between this thread's first go-around and your resurrection of it - in 2018 the DUI 'standard tariff' bumped up to include up to 10 years in prison making it now a Serious Crime by Canadian legal standards. While theoretically the date of your offence is taken into account - so at 13 years ago, you should be treated as if the rules in place back then were still in place, i.e. you can still benefit from being 'Deemed Rehabilitated' and all the discussion above applies including most relevantly 'will my DUI even show up during my immigration check?'

Not a lawyer, don't even play one on TV, but the obvious new wrinkle from DUIs becoming Serious Crimes for a first-time visitor is that CBSA people are not perfect and any given officer might not know they should check the dates carefully if they see you 'ping' as having a DUI. Even if they do realise your case should be 'grandfathered in' as an older offences, being Deemed Rehabilitated is still entirely at their discretion! When the change first happened, I saw quite a few reports of folks who had been coming and going for years being turned away - and every one of them who tried to fight the system claiming 'you let me in before, you should have applied the old rules this time again!' got nowhere because Deemed is always a 'this time' discretionary entry...

However, from the rare, anecdotal reports I've heard since the change nothing has changed in terms of 'common sense' being applied - if you have a flight booked back to the US that day, it's less paperwork and expense to the Canadian taxpayer if you are allowed to simply get yourself to that flight under your own recognizance,and since we share all of our border-crossing info with the US, verifying that you got on a plane that day is a simple matter.

But if you are literally denied entry, sending you right back onto the ship would be the cheapest thing for us even if becomes very expensive for you. I think the exact same 'carrier' rules apply as with planes, so by bringing you here they have to take you away again if you're rejected but they can charge you through the nose for doing so!

I see you're in Wisconsin, so if you're asking for yourself or someone else local, you could try taking a day trip to the Soo and asking to be assessed at the border - if you successfully get one 'Deemed Rehabilitated' note on your file there's a better chance future CBSA officers will say 'Good enough for Doug, good enough for me, eh?' and continue to allow you entry. And if you get rejected, even if there's a cruise already booked this season you might have time to apply for a TRP (~US$170) - there may not be time to apply for full criminal rehabilitation (~US$840) even if your cruise is next year.

6 minutes ago, Desert Dawg14 said:

Thanks martincath! ... Is there a type of "day-pass" available for the Skytrain we can purchase that morning after getting off the ship which would allow us to go back to downtown, etc. and see the sights instead of having to keep buying tix or tapping our CCs??  It would be for Sunday but I don't quite get all the 'zone' issues for the tix.

You're welcome - and yes, you can buy a Day Pass at the ticket machines, and by doing so you also definitely avoid any chance of being hit with the $5 AddFare on the way back downtown... All travel is one Zone on Sundays, but a Day Pass costs the same regardless ($11.25, or $8.85 if you're over 65).

Suggestion - consider visiting Queen Elizabeth Park on the way back into town, or maybe having dinner at Seasons in the Park there before heading out to the hotel again at the end of the night. The highest point in Vancouver, lovely views across the city (especially nice for a late sunset dinner), free gardens that are the closest thing to Butchart you can do without leaving the city. Get off at King Edward (less uphill walking than from 41st/Oakridge), and if the hill still looks too steep hop on a passing bus up Cambie.

'Easiest' is one of those loosey-goosey, everyone has their own definition terms that is genuinely hard to say without being a mind-reader... best guess is that it's either going to be:

• a) pre-book a limo with a meet & greet fee so the driver will wait in case you're delayed by e.g. a chat with CBSA because you're bringing walrus tusk souvenirs across the border without a CITES importation form, as this will never involve a long wait like the cab queue often can; or
• b) if you're mobile enough and don't have too much luggage, self-disembark with your own bags and take SkyTrain.

The latter is reliably the fastest method (no traffic issues), requires no prebooking, and also has the lowest possiblity of anything going wrong - bags never leave your side, no chance they get put in the wrong place, no delays waiting in any queues at all, absolute worst case is that you just miss a departing train and have to wait for the next one... which might be 10-12 minutes on a weekend, but never worse than 7 on a weekday so is probably still faster than a car from the pier. It's definitely the cheapest, at no more than CAD$4.55pp, which makes it the very rare trifecta of fastest, cheapest, and best by most reasonable definitions.

The only downside is if 'easiest' to you requires someone else to schlep your bags for you as much as possible - you can't get a porter to help you on and off the train! That's where the limo service kicks in - and unless you are a solo traveler, a limo may actually still be cheaper than cruiseline transfers (with 3+ people, guaranteed a limo is cheaper as well as faster and almost certainly easier to find than "Which of these six buses is the one for Red Two Group going directly to YVR at 9am, not on a City or North Shore tour first?")