Question for recent Royal passengers

[mrogers]

Is the Royal Princess skipping the Inside Passage on all sailings this summer and navigating west of Vancouver Island???

 

We leave in two weeks and curious if this was standard or a one time event.

 

many

many

many

thanks,

[martincath]

Considering that BC Coastal Pilots refuse to 'drive' the Royal through the Narrows, and you cannot legally travel that route without a pilot, Princess are being basically a**holes by not just admitting that their route is ALWAYS going to be west of the Island.

 

There are multiple threads already so I won't repeat links - you can Google or just Search here on CC to find lots of prior examples - but it seems like Princess continue to lie, not just by omission about the originally-planned route but also because they couch the required earlier departure time out of Vancouver (expect an email warning to be at the pier earlier if you haven't had one already) as due to tidal conditions in the Narrows when in fact it's because not only do they go the long way around the Island but they also approach Ketchikan by a different, longer route so that it's easier to navigate into port there too (the Royal is also more prone to trouble maneuvering in wind than other AK-allocated ships).

[patrickmoran]

We were on the Royal July 6th - 13th (northbound). The ship sailed on the west side of Vancouver Island.

We had a great cruise. Check out my review.

Edited July 21, 2019 by patrickmoran

[azbirdmom]

Just disembarked the Royal southbound Alaska cruise yesterday.  They do transit the western side of Vancouver Island which was a bit of disappointment, although we did see quite a few humpbacks and orcas early evening surprisingly.  I thought we'd miss that since we weren't on the eastern side but was happy for the wildlife sightings.  Also around 10 PM you are quite close to Victoria to take on the pilot.  The lights of Victoria were quite a sight.  Although I prefer going along the eastern side (which we've done three times), the wildlife show somewhat made up for the different routing.