Wine, flowers, and reboarding in Vancouver

[DougK]

I'm a US citizen leaving from Vancouver on a Princess cruise in a little over a week. I'm going to be parking at Canada Place. My initial plan was to drive up, drop off luggage, check in, board, have lunch, and then get back off the ship, buy some flowers for the cabin, and reboard with my carry-on luggage (including wine). If it were a US departure port, none of that would be a problem. But I just realized, belatedly, that things may be entirely different because it's a Canadian port, and I think we clear US customs before we board. That raises these questions:

 

1) Am I even allowed to exit and reboard? Do I have to clear Canada customs to exit and US customs to reboard? I have a NEXUS card, so customs isn't a big deal, but it's certainly a lot more hassle that just walking off and on the ship.

 

2) Even if I can't exit/reboard, am I allowed to bring cut flowers aboard? Or, more specifically, am I allowed to bring flowers through the US customs check (I know Princess doesn't care)? In other words, is there any point in buying flowers in Vancouver before boarding? It would also mean I'd probably want to delay boarding until I'm sure I can go straight to my cabin.

 

3) How does wine work? I had been thinking I'd take multiple bottles, and just pay Princess the corkage fee for bottles beyond two (for me and my wife). But now I'm thinking that might run into limits on dury-free border crossing -- 1.5 liters pp for entering Canada, and only 1 liter pp for re-entering the US at the cruise terminal. Does anybody have experience with bringing wine beyond those limits?

 

Thanks much!

[martincath]

Answers in red.

 

58 minutes ago, DougK said:

1) Am I even allowed to exit and reboard? Do I have to clear Canada customs to exit and US customs to reboard? I have a NEXUS card, so customs isn't a big deal, but it's certainly a lot more hassle that just walking off and on the ship.

Yes you can get off, and that part should be pretty quick as you are a) not a Canadian resident, b) have NEXUS, and c) most importantly very few other folks will be getting off after ~10am. Getting back ON is the major hassle, especially if you do it after boarding early as you will hit the busiest time. Just bring ewhat you want onboard the first time - just drop your bags then go buy wine if you can't manage checked luggage, carryons, AND booze!

2) Even if I can't exit/reboard, am I allowed to bring cut flowers aboard? Or, more specifically, am I allowed to bring flowers through the US customs check (I know Princess doesn't care)? In other words, is there any point in buying flowers in Vancouver before boarding? It would also mean I'd probably want to delay boarding until I'm sure I can go straight to my cabin.

Short answer, yes as long as they're cut. Longer answer - make sure the flowers are all totally clean, not just no roots but no soil or moss anywhere, and avoid any bouquet with 'sticks' in it. The long and complicated, but only way to be completely safe, answer - check every plant species AND origin on APHIS (Vancouver florists regularly sell imported flowers, the rules for importing to Canada are not identical to the US, so even certain flowers can be illegal to bring in to the US but legal to bring to Canada from certain countries - and dead wood is virtually always forbidden, so fancy displays with twigs cause problems!)

3) How does wine work? I had been thinking I'd take multiple bottles, and just pay Princess the corkage fee for bottles beyond two (for me and my wife). But now I'm thinking that might run into limits on dury-free border crossing -- 1.5 liters pp for entering Canada, and only 1 liter pp for re-entering the US at the cruise terminal. Does anybody have experience with bringing wine beyond those limits?

Wine works by folks carefully processing then aging a combination of yeast and grapes, producing alcohol and various tasty flavour compounds which get you liquored-up while titillating your tastebuds. 😉

Personal importation of wine onto cruise ships OTOH, works like this: your US duty free limit is irrelevant because you are not actually importing the wine to the US - it's going onto a Foreign Flag ship and being consumed there. So unless you take if OFF the ship again, it's not an issue. We have taken 1.5l (2 bottles) every single cruise, sometimes extra with paid corkage too - CBP does not care as long as the wine is not leaving the ship. Immigration is far and away the most important part of the preclearance process, rather than Customs - they focus on stopping undesirable people entering, not scoring a couple of bucks on Duty (now, if you had tangible, non-consumable shiny things like jewelry they will likely pay more attention - it's worth filling out the paperwork to collect duty on a Rolex or diamonds!) Sometimes even the cruise staff don't care, and the 'tax table' is not there, or not manned, so you don't even have to pay for extra bottles - only a problem if you want to take your wine to dinner, when you need the 'paid' sticker attached o you may have to find someone onboard if the tax table doesn't have anyone running it.

 

Thanks much!

No worries.

 

Edited April 27, 2019 by martincath