Vancouver precruise comments are welcome

[gerelmx]

We have booked a B2B on board the Eclipse Vancouver-Hawaii-Vancouver.

 

I have never been to Canada or Hawaii. We want to know the most important part of the city before getting on the boat.

 

How many previous cruise days would you recommend me? 1, 2, 3? and what places to visit. Any other comments are welcome.

 

Thank you in advance for your comments.

[Essiesmom]

You can get lots of information on the Ports of Call board for Canada (Pacific Coast) located here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39

 

You can also ask on the West Coast Departures board under North American Homeports, and I'm sure you could get good info on Vancouver from the Alaska board. EM

[gerelmx]

You can get lots of information on the Ports of Call board for Canada (Pacific Coast) located here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39

 

You can also ask on the West Coast Departures board under North American Homeports, and I'm sure you could get good info on Vancouver from the Alaska board. EM

 

Thank you, wow Vancouver info more than 150 pages to read, fortunately I have time to plan.

[luv2camp04]

Plan a day to go to Vancouver Island/Victoria. See Butchart Gardens for sure. And if you want to go into a sugar coma, be sure to do high tea at the Empress Hotel. Vancouver is a large city with lots to see. Very busy. Lots of great restaurants, etc...

[Keith1010]

I would allow three days.

 

Two days for Vancouver and you can take the ferry and go out to Victoria and spend a good part of the day there including a visit to Burchart Gardens.

 

In Vancouver you'll want to visit Stanley Park, the Aquarium, spend time walking the Gastown, district and time permitting get over to Granville Island. Of course there is more you can do.

 

We love Vancouver.

 

First time there was on a cruise of Alaska many years ago with Celebrity and enjoyed it so much we did another Alaska cruise the following year with Celebrity and began in Vancouver. Have visited there other times on a few other lines and that included last year.

 

Keith

[easyboy]

West Coast Departures

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?413

 

 

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[gerelmx]

West Coast Departures

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?413

 

 

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[gerelmx]

Plan a day to go to Vancouver Island/Victoria. See Butchart Gardens for sure. And if you want to go into a sugar coma, be sure to do high tea at the Empress Hotel. Vancouver is a large city with lots to see. Very busy. Lots of great restaurants, etc...

 

I would allow three days.

 

Two days for Vancouver and you can take the ferry and go out to Victoria and spend a good part of the day there including a visit to Burchart Gardens.

 

In Vancouver you'll want to visit Stanley Park, the Aquarium, spend time walking the Gastown, district and time permitting get over to Granville Island. Of course there is more you can do.

 

We love Vancouver.

 

First time there was on a cruise of Alaska many years ago with Celebrity and enjoyed it so much we did another Alaska cruise the following year with Celebrity and began in Vancouver. Have visited there other times on a few other lines and that included last year.

 

Keith

 

I will do your recommendations one day to Victoria Island and two days @ Vancouver

 

Thank you

[cruisincadian]

We just booked the return leg of your B2B...Honolulu to Vancouver. This will be our 2nd Hawaii cruise.

 

All good suggestions from previous posters. Depending on your interests, you may want to consider renting a car and drive the sea to sky highway up to Whistler. We did this a few years back upon debarkation from our Hawaii cruise. The rental agency is near the port.

 

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[Hydrokitty]

I will do your recommendations one day to Victoria Island and two days @ Vancouver

 

Thank you

 

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in North America! (IMHO of course) In your planning, keep in mind that the trip to Victoria and Butchart Gardens (totally worth the time and the $$) will take up one very long day. Stanley Park, the market at Granville and a stroll through the Gas Light district is also worth the time and will also take one very long day. While the aquarium is wonderful I would skip it unless you've never been to an aquarium with west coast marine life....In it's place I would spend a day at Capillano Park, which is beautiful and the rope bridge

is terrifying and wonderful at the same time. Vancouver also has some wonderful restaurants....our favorites are all in the area of the port. There's a very nice river walk between Coal Harbor and Canada Place and restaurants abound. We've stayed in both the Pan Pacific (Canada Place) and the Westin Bayshore (Coal Harbor) Both are excellent locations and wonderful hotels, but I would suggest the Westin because there's a free bus that will pick you up and take you to Capillano and back. Enjoy Vancouver....fabulous place.

[gerelmx]

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in North America! (IMHO of course) In your planning, keep in mind that the trip to Victoria and Butchart Gardens (totally worth the time and the $$) will take up one very long day. Stanley Park, the market at Granville and a stroll through the Gas Light district is also worth the time and will also take one very long day. While the aquarium is wonderful I would skip it unless you've never been to an aquarium with west coast marine life....In it's place I would spend a day at Capillano Park, which is beautiful and the rope bridge

is terrifying and wonderful at the same time. Vancouver also has some wonderful restaurants....our favorites are all in the area of the port. There's a very nice river walk between Coal Harbor and Canada Place and restaurants abound. We've stayed in both the Pan Pacific (Canada Place) and the Westin Bayshore (Coal Harbor) Both are excellent locations and wonderful hotels, but I would suggest the Westin because there's a free bus that will pick you up and take you to Capillano and back. Enjoy Vancouver....fabulous place.

 

Thank you Hydrokitty , a lot of time ahead.

 

After reading several post We like the Trolley city tour with several stops to choose, Capilano bridge with Grouse mountain and Victoria Island with Butchart Gardens.

 

Time to make extra savings. Also read good recommendations for the Westin.

[Kartgv]

Agree with the suggestions for Westin Bayshore Hotel (splurge on a tower room with harbor view for spectacular views) or the Pan Pacific, perfect for the night before boarding your cruise. Also second Stanley Park and Granville Island recommendations - you can easily do both from one of the Hop-On/Hop-Off buses. There's also a train trip from North Vancouver (a shuttle picked us up at the hotel) to Whistler that's spectacular; you can do the train both directions, or take a sea-plane back! As much as we love Victoria, I wouldn't try to squeeze in a day there on a 3 day stay, especially if it's your first visit. Check and see - many of the cruise itineraries include a day in Victoria.

[easyboy]

thank you, i got this following the link

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Sorry. Was using my mobile phone.

Try this: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=413

[Zoedokey]

Capilano was our favorite outing in Vancouver, just amazing. There is much more than just the bridge, the boardwalk, treetops and cliff walk.

We stayed at the Hyatt and it was wonderful, as well as the Marriott Delta Suites, also very nice.

 

 

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[DirtyDawg]

I will do your recommendations one day to Victoria Island and two days @ Vancouver

 

Thank you

 

You can fly via a Sea-plane from Vancouver harbour to Victoria harbour. Much quicker than the ferry.

[martincath]

Unless you plan to come for a week or more, I wouldn't recommend a Victoria trip either. Even with seaplane each way it's a long day, which means missing out on doing several things in Vancouver in exchange for just one or two in/near Victoria. We did spend a day in Victoria on our first trip to Vancouver years ago - and while we enjoyed almost all of what we did very much (Butchart, butterfly gardens, whale watch, city tour, and Craigdarroch - the only disappointing visit as it's poorly advertised and not remotely a castle, but a Scottish Baronial style country home) it was one day out of seven, and we still felt that we a) did not do the Island justice, as the most beautiful parts are far away from Victoria, and b) could have spent that day elsewhere and had as much or more of a good time. If you do the 'cheap' bus/ferry instead of flying you spend an extra 4-5 hours traveling which means you can forget squeezing a whale watch in to your day - and while it's a pretty ride in nice weather, doing it twice in the same day is massive overkill, at the very least you should budget to do one way by air!

 

Butchart is the most common reason given to visit Victoria - despite the fact it's not even close to being in the city! It's a very nice garden, and a good size, but unless you already had it as a specific thing you wanted to see you could invest less time and significantly less money and see more gardens of just as high or even higher quality individually than Butchart's various elements within Vancouver itself (Dr Sun Yat-Sen, Nitobe, and VanDusen spring immediately to mind, and many of our parks have awesome gardens within them especially Queen Elizabeth and Stanley Parks).

 

If you extend your trip enough to free up 2 or 3 days to spend on the Island, I'd be completely on board with a side-trip (consider flying in or out of YYJ - unless you have nonstop flights to YVR from your home airport it might be just as convenient to do this, or even to fly into SEA and take the Clipper ferry from there to Victoria). Tofino (one of the most popular storm-watching spots in the world) is frankly a much more spectacular part of the Island in terms of scenery, and Cathedral Grove is a remarkable destination for the huge expanse of rainforest you can walk around in only a few minutes off the road. Neither of these are remotely feasible to visit on cruise stops (well, you can get to Cathedral Grove by renting a car on one of the handful of Nanaimo port visits annually) - whereas virtually every Alaskan RT cruise from Seattle, SF, LA includes a stop in Victoria.

 

The already-mentioned day trip up the Sea to Sky highway (one of the world's best drives) can be quite efficiently combined with an Island visit if you take enough time to do it right - renting a car here in Vancouver to head over to Victoria, then up the Island, then come back from Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay which is on the Sea to Sky and cuts out the slowest parts through the urban areas of West and North Vancouver. If you've really expanded your time enough, you could even go all the way up to Whistler and overnight there too before returning - it's a four season destination these days, very focused on outdoorsy active stuff, but if your cruise is the one I think (April 2019?) you might actually still be able to ski up there (and even if you can't, there's a good chance you could much closer to Vancouver on Grouse Mountain which has been open for skiing until the end of May frequently in the past).

 

If you stay for a fortnight here, then spending 4 days away (3 on the Island, 1 in Whistler) with a rental car would be a good spend of time IMO. A week, and depending on your tastes a 2 day/1 night Island or Whistler excursion might be enjoyed more than the same time spent in Vancouver itself. Unless you're here for at least 5+ days though, IMO a side trip to either is a poor choice time-wise - and 3 days or less it's sheer madness unless you are actually dying and have Butchart or Whistler on your literal bucket list!

 

I have to also offer a correction to kartgv's post above - the Whistler train stopped running a couple of years ago. Now it's only visited as an overnight on one of the Rocky Mountaineer's 4 day trips, no more day trips to Whistler by train are possible. You can get taken up & back by coach, as a day tour or booked each way with a hotel stay, but even for a couple a rental car is likely to be a better value option.

 

I'd also ditch Capilano for Lynn Canyon if you can spare the time - especially if you like to do what locals do rather than tourists. It's not just much quieter in terms of never seeing hordes of tourists, it's also much less developed - get two minutes down any trail and you're in real wilderness rather than a play-park! The price, at zero, also cannot be beat - and in Spring especially the frothing river is much more spectacular than Cap, which is so wide that there's usually more gravel than water below. There's only one thing that Cap beats Lynn on - length of the bridge. Of course you do have to find your own way there, since no entry fee means no 'free' shuttle!

 

Other than that though, without knowing more about you and your traveling companions it's hard to suggest what would be the best things for YOU. Unless you can spend a long time here, and therefore work your way through all the sites, you need to prioritize - and what's best for me is unlikely to be the same as what's best for you. Right off the bat I know that me throwing out ideas of what I like best is not going to be ideal for you, since if it were me I'd be ditching one of those cruise legs in order to spend that time on land instead! That way I could have more time here, as well as more time in Hawai'i without the worries of getting to and from the ship daily... so we obviously have some very different ideas of optimal vacation time spend.

 

Focusing on YOUR best day, two days, three days or whatever of things to see somewhere is where Tripadvisor excels. Go check out their Best Of lists, and the many suggested itineraries for a short visit (there are lots of 'a weekend in Vancouver' type suggestions, with and without kids). Read up on each, see if you like them as much as Joe Q Average-Visitor or whether you think it sounds better or worse than their rankings. Once you've got a better handle on YOUR best choices, those of us who live here are in a much better position to offer targeted and useful advice like the optimal way to travel between your sights, hotels in best location to see/do/eat the things you want to - without worrying about whether I'm steering you to something I'd love but you might hate!

[FionaM]

What they said. I live in Vancouver and take for granted the beauty of the city. Tourism Vancouver would have some good suggestions. Enjoy

[Kartgv]

...I have to also offer a correction to kartgv's post above - the Whistler train stopped running a couple of years ago. Now it's only visited as an overnight on one of the Rocky Mountaineer's 4 day trips, no more day trips to Whistler by train are possible....

 

Thanks for the correction, but that's very sad news. We did it about 3 years ago and it was one of the highlights of our trip - we hoped to do it again soon. You've given lots of very good advice!

[4774Papa]

We have booked a B2B on board the Eclipse Vancouver-Hawaii-Vancouver.

 

I have never been to Canada or Hawaii. We want to know the most important part of the city before getting on the boat.

 

How many previous cruise days would you recommend me? 1, 2, 3? and what places to visit. Any other comments are welcome.

 

Thank you in advance for your comments.

We spent a week in Vancouver prior to our Alaska cruise. There is a lot to do there. We stayed at the Hotel Metropolitan that is about 6 blocks from the cruise terminal.

 

Here is my review of our pre-cruise and cruise.

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=547125&et_cid=2764671&et_rid=17221689&et_referrer=Boards

[gerelmx]

Thank you everybody for your comments, tips, reviews, etc. We are very happy. I'm sure we will have a wonderful stay at Vancouver.

Merry Christmas.

[Hydrokitty]

Martincath: Loved your post....now I guess I'll have to plan another trip to Vancouver to see all the things you suggested! Only thing I disagree with is Capillano....it was one of my favorite things! I envy you, you live in a fabulous city and we even considered relocating to Vancouver....but your housing costs are worse than ours!!! :D

[martincath]

Thanks for the correction, but that's very sad news. We did it about 3 years ago and it was one of the highlights of our trip - we hoped to do it again soon. You've given lots of very good advice!

It's yet another change to ensure RM's already substantial profits keep climbing - and considering that the Whistler station was built specially for them by the town because it was supposed to bring in more tourists, but now that it's just a single hotel that RM have a deal with who see any money at all, there are a lot of peeved Whistlerites. The overnight hotel stays are the biggest proportionate gouge RM have, and this route was the only one that you didn't need to include a hotel.

 

 

Martincath: Loved your post....now I guess I'll have to plan another trip to Vancouver to see all the things you suggested! Only thing I disagree with is Capillano....it was one of my favorite things! I envy you, you live in a fabulous city and we even considered relocating to Vancouver....but your housing costs are worse than ours!!! :D

It's not that Cap sucks - it's that their pricing is ludicrously high for what you get (that 'free' shuttle costs money...) If you have a local driving license, you get a full year's entry to Cap for the price of a 1-day tourist ticket - that's how much you guys subsidize us locals, and yet I would still rather visit Lynn. Hordes of people on a bouncy bridge are one of the few things that trigger motion sickness for me! Next visit, put your Cap entry fee toward cab fare to Lynn (you'll still save about $10-20 a couple) and maybe you'll share my opinion;-)

 

 

We certainly aren't cheap, but it's all in CAD so you're getting a nice discount. We almost relocated to Manhattan when we first became expats, but the housing costs scared us off (and fortunately for us, since the missus would have been working in the Towers when they came down...)

[gerelmx]

We just booked the return leg of your B2B...Honolulu to Vancouver. This will be our 2nd Hawaii cruise.

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Just started the roll call https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2574926

 

 

Merry Christmas

[gerelmx]

Thank you everybody for your comments, I wish you all a Merry Christmas

[Zoedokey]

It's yet another change to ensure RM's already substantial profits keep climbing - and considering that the Whistler station was built specially for them by the town because it was supposed to bring in more tourists, but now that it's just a single hotel that RM have a deal with who see any money at all, there are a lot of peeved Whistlerites. The overnight hotel stays are the biggest proportionate gouge RM have, and this route was the only one that you didn't need to include a hotel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not that Cap sucks - it's that their pricing is ludicrously high for what you get (that 'free' shuttle costs money...) If you have a local driving license, you get a full year's entry to Cap for the price of a 1-day tourist ticket - that's how much you guys subsidize us locals, and yet I would still rather visit Lynn. Hordes of people on a bouncy bridge are one of the few things that trigger motion sickness for me! Next visit, put your Cap entry fee toward cab fare to Lynn (you'll still save about $10-20 a couple) and maybe you'll share my opinion;-)

 

 

 

 

 

We certainly aren't cheap, but it's all in CAD so you're getting a nice discount. We almost relocated to Manhattan when we first became expats, but the housing costs scared us off (and fortunately for us, since the missus would have been working in the Towers when they came down...)

 

 

 

We did the Capilano after five o’clock and got a nice discount. It was a beautiful area and the highlight of our trip.

 

 

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