Best reliable transportation from Canada Place to airport

[b714210]

United changed our 3:30 flight out of Vancouver to 12:20. I am stressing over getting quick, reliable transportation to the airport. I have cruised frequently, but never ported in Vancouver. We arrive on a Monday morning, 4/29. I received a quote for a private car for approx. $150.00. Some questions I have are, for those of you who have experience debarking in Vancouver, and going through customs, how long did it take? What time should I have a car pick us up at the port to make it to the airport, hopefully not feeling rushed. We are US citizens. I am semi freaking out, and completely annoyed at United, who tell me we can’t get home until the next day unless we take this three hour earlier flight. Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Bruin Steve]

Most reliable may just be the train...You won't have to worry about traffic...and it's dirt cheap...I think, in that direction, if I read it right, $4.20, under $3 for a senior...takes about 25 minutes...and the trains leave every few minutes.

You have to walk about two very short blocks from the pier to the Waterfront Station...and it takes you right to the airport.  We will be taking it in the other direction to get to our cruise this Monday morning.

 

https://www.translink.ca/Schedules-and-Maps/SkyTrain.aspx

 

 

[martincath]

Steve may have the initials BS, but his info is correct 😉

 

Booking ANY transport means you have to pad the schedule for meeting them - and there's is no way to know exactly how long it will be (maybe you get tapped for secondary inspection, have to open your bags for CBSA etc) so you have to err on the side of caution, which means you will be wasting time. Don't book any transportation - but DO book the first disembarkation slot and carry off your own bags, if you want to maximize your efficiency and guarantee that you get to YVR as soon as you possibly can.

 

To reassure you though - cruiselines accept bookings on their own shuttles for flights at 12:30pm. And cruise shuttles are not just the most overpriced way to get to YVR, they are the slowest. They sit around waiting to fill a whole bus, and none of them leave much before 9am even though the first folks off the ship are actually standing around on the sidewalk well before 8am. If you are one of those first folks off, there are cabs lined up waiting - it's only on the busy days with 3+ ships, for folks who get off in the later groups and collect their luggage and then walk out to find that a thousand or more people are ahead of them so the cab queue is now an hour or more long that run into trouble. Because after they finally arrive at YVR, all those folks who got in cabs ahead of them are now clogging the Check-in, Security, and Preclearance lines! This is why YVR 'suggests' three hours early - it usually takes an hour or less from sidewalk to gate, but with literally thousands of cruisers all slamming the airport within a short block of time, queues get nasty.

 

NB: none of that will happen to you, because there's just one ship in port - yours! You could literally WALK to the airport from downtown, at average person pace, in 3 hours so if you walk off the ship with the first batch of self-disembarkers you could actually manage to just make your flight on foot! Any transportation method whatsoever you WILL make it in time unless there is a truly catastrophic, 'nobody is getting to the airport this morning' kind of issue (your ship loses power for a day+, is attacked and sunk by vengeful whales, your captain is Francesco Schettino, there's an alien invasion, all of Vancouver is in a blackout, your limo driver is really Lex Luthor and he kidnaps you, civil war erupts - that sort of stuff).

 

But to play it safe - self-disembark, see if there's a wait for cabs, and if there is not get in one. Pay the meter rate with credit card ($32-35 outbound on a Monday morning if there's no construction or traffic accident en route as you are going against all the commuters) and tip as you would at home. Check in, drop bags, go through Security then US preclearance and arrive at your gate two hours early. If the cab queue is already long, do what Steve said and walk to SkyTrain: then check in, drop bags, go through Security and US preclearance and arrive at your gate two hours early.

 

Assuming you want to stick to the private car - which I really think is an utter waste of money and time on a 1 ship day, but maybe you actually want to splurge on a super-comfy limo and feel like a rock star - CAD$150 is about right for a large SUV/Limo with an extra Meet & Greet/1 hour wait fee. If it's US$150, you are paying too much - limo pricing is set by law here, within minimum and maximum price ranges for the size of vehicle. If it's any company except Aerocar, they have to charge you for a full hour (this is at least $75). Aerocar however are allowed to charge for less than an hour IF they are going to & from the airport - they have the exclusive airport franchise. So they are always the cheapest limo firm as they can off a fixed rate fare that nobody else is allowed to - that starts at $64+tax for a towncar (up to 4 people, but comfier with 3) and goes up to roughly double that for a stretch limo. Meet & Greet fee is standard fixed $50 on top regardless of car size.

[terry&mike]

18 hours ago, martincath said:

 

 

NB: none of that will happen to you, because there's just one ship in port - yours! You could literally WALK to the airport from downtown, at average person pace, in 3 hours so if you walk off the ship with the first batch of self-disembarkers you could actually manage to just make your flight on foot! Any transportation method whatsoever you WILL make it in time unless there is a truly catastrophic, 'nobody is getting to the airport this morning' kind of issue (your ship loses power for a day+, is attacked and sunk by vengeful whales, your captain is Francesco Schettino, there's an alien invasion, all of Vancouver is in a blackout, your limo driver is really Lex Luthor and he kidnaps you, civil war erupts - that sort of stuff).

 

But to play it safe - self-disembark, see if there's a wait for cabs, and if there is not get in one. Pay the meter rate with credit card ($32-35 outbound on a Monday morning if there's no construction or traffic accident en route as you are going against all the commuters) and tip as you would at home. Check in, drop bags, go through Security then US preclearance and arrive at your gate two hours early. If the cab queue is already long, do what Steve said and walk to SkyTrain: then check in, drop bags, go through Security and US preclearance and arrive at your gate two hours early.

 

Assuming you want to stick to the private car - which I really think is an utter waste of money and time on a 1 ship day, but maybe you actually want to splurge on a super-comfy limo and feel like a rock star - CAD$150 is about right for a large SUV/Limo with an extra Meet & Greet/1 hour wait fee. If it's US$150, you are paying too much - limo pricing is set by law here, within minimum and maximum price ranges for the size of vehicle. If it's any company except Aerocar, they have to charge you for a full hour (this is at least $75). Aerocar however are allowed to charge for less than an hour IF they are going to & from the airport - they have the exclusive airport franchise. So they are always the cheapest limo firm as they can off a fixed rate fare that nobody else is allowed to - that starts at $64+tax for a towncar (up to 4 people, but comfier with 3) and goes up to roughly double that for a stretch limo. Meet & Greet fee is standard fixed $50 on top regardless of car size.

Very clear and detailed advice, thank you. If there are 2 ships in port, and our ship docks 30 minutes later than the Holland America ship, any thoughts on this? Going to have my Mom with me, so I have to eliminate the Skytrain option, as she cannot do the walk, but will be doing self disembark on the early side.

[martincath]

3 hours ago, terry&mike said:

Very clear and detailed advice, thank you. If there are 2 ships in port, and our ship docks 30 minutes later than the Holland America ship, any thoughts on this? Going to have my Mom with me, so I have to eliminate the Skytrain option, as she cannot do the walk, but will be doing self disembark on the early side.

If your mom is physically capable of self-disembarkation, she's also capable of walking to SkyTrain (perhaps after a rest). The distance from onboard your ship to the street can easily be longer than the walk to SkyTrain (about 300 metres/330 yards) depending which berth your ship is in at the pier and where the meetup point is onboard - the walk to your gate at YVR will be even longer.

 

Just don't use the SkyTrain entrance on Howe Street that you can see from the pier - it goes to the wrong platform, and schlepping your bags up and down and around inside the station is longer than just sticking to the street above instead... so walk past it and turn left on Cordova, where the super-obvious sets of doors behind the big columns put you directly above the correct platform for the Canada Line to YVR - and there's an elevator as well as escalators & stairs down.

 

If you still want a cab and those inconsiderate HAL people have taken them all, the trick to avoiding the long cab line inside the pier is to head upstairs into the Pan Pacific hotel. Both this hotel, and the Fairmont Waterfront across the street (and the Fairmont Pacific Rim a couple of blocks down the street) have customers who expect cabs to be called for them regardless of what's going on at the pier - and unlike cruises, they are year-round operations so there are ALWAYS some cabs that skip heading into the pier to instead go collect pax at the hotels. Most folks don't do research though, probably 95%+ of cruise pax have no idea that they can do this... so the wait time for a cab upstairs is much less.

 

 

[b714210]

Thank-you,  thank- you for the GREAT advice. I was a bit nervous about self assist, as we will have 2 large, 2 small, and two carry on suitcases. Please don’t judge, we are already in Oahu exploring here before boarding the cruise so I needed leaving Wisconsin, sailing to, arriving in Vancouver clothes, beach and relaxing clothes for Hawaii and dinner clothes for the cruise. I read somewhere that if you don’t have one hand free for the escalator, you can’t do self assist, and we will likely have no free hands. Feeling desperate, I called United, and now have the latest flight I could get that will get me home on the same day. We now leave at 1:35, so an extra hour. We are platinum, so I know we are able to depart earlier than others, and will follow the cab first, train second advice. Whew. Hoping that things go smoothly on the 29th, and again, thanks!

[martincath]

10 hours ago, b714210 said:

...I read somewhere that if you don’t have one hand free for the escalator, you can’t do self assist, and we will likely have no free hands. ...

With your changed flight time you can definitely walk to YVR in time for your flight - though you may have to steal a luggage trolley to handle all your bags 😉

 

The 'one hand free rule' is indeed enforced at Canada Place on the escalator - but there's an elevator. The downside of that is the lack of speed - plenty of folks self-disembark dragging two bags behind them, one in each hand, and ALL of them have to wait for the elevator (which as you would imagine since everyone has many bags can only hold a very small number of people each trip!)

 

Even if you were on the last group to disembark, you'd still be fine making your flight though - if you aren't off the ship by ~9:30am then people will be looking for you so they can 'zero out' the passenger count (nobody is allowed on, not even in-transit passengers on a B2B, until ALL pax have been confirmed physically off the vessel).

 

So your worst case scenario is that you hit the street outside by 10am, have to walk a couple of blocks or wait a while to get a cab, most likely still arrive at YVR before 11am and then have to kill 90mins-2hrs at your gate... dining establishments at YVR are pricier than in the city and rather lacking in quality options, but still better than airline food so I'd be tempted to grab lunch after you've gone through all the security/immigration rigamarole (one last Timmies perhaps?)

[CHEZMARYLOU]

12 hours ago, b714210 said:

Thank-you,  thank- you for the GREAT advice. I was a bit nervous about self assist, as we will have 2 large, 2 small, and two carry on suitcases. Please don’t judge, we are already in Oahu exploring here before boarding the cruise so I needed leaving Wisconsin, sailing to, arriving in Vancouver clothes, beach and relaxing clothes for Hawaii and dinner clothes for the cruise. I read somewhere that if you don’t have one hand free for the escalator, you can’t do self assist, and we will likely have no free hands. Feeling desperate, I called United, and now have the latest flight I could get that will get me home on the same day. We now leave at 1:35, so an extra hour. We are platinum, so I know we are able to depart earlier than others, and will follow the cab first, train second advice. Whew. Hoping that things go smoothly on the 29th, and again, thanks!

If you don't do self assist ask for an early disembarkation #.  Once you get to the terminal find a porter.  It is well worth the tip to have your luggage handled, taken to the front of a customs line and over to a taxi.  Porters make their money on tips so the faster they get you through the more tips they can make.  We also did this at the airport. United does not allow you to check in until 3 hours prior to your flight in Vancouver.  The porter took our luggage from the cab, bypassed the check in line, got our luggage tags and put our luggage on the conveyor for us.  Again, well worth the tip.