Celebrity Eclipse- RT Vancouver: What time to book flight?

[Mandy1021]

Hi!

 

Hopefully I am posting this in the right place. We recently booked an Alaskan Cruise with Celebrity for our honeymoon (July 5th-July 12th, 2020) :). The itinerary says we dock back in Vancouver at 7:00am. We were looking to book our flight back into Toronto the same day and found one for a good price that leaves at 11:00am. Is that enough time? I tried to search for an answer and a lot of what I was reading was that it isn't enough time if you live in the states and need to go through customs but we won't need to do that since we are Canadians travelling in our own country, right? So let's say worst case we can't get off the ship till 9:00am; it's a 30 to 45 minute drive from the terminal to the airport (is that correct?) which would put us there close to 10 which would cut it close but don't we only need to be an hour early for domestic flights?

 

I also read something about if you are fit and able you can "walk off" your own luggage etc and get off with the first group. How do we go about setting this up if this is a thing? We've only been on one cruise before (Summit, Nov 2017) & didn't hear of this being an option or else we would have done it then as well.

 

If it's not doable we will of course do a later flight, we were just trying to avoid that as it puts us into Toronto later and then we have probably a 2.5 hour drive from Toronto home depending on traffic so I thought it'd be better to ask the experts than tell myself I think it's okay just because I dont want to deal with Toronto traffic 😅.

 

Thank you in Advance! :)

 

[d9704011]

If you book the 1100 flight, the worst case would be not getting off the ship until 1100 or so!

 

Walking off the ship first thing is easy to do and doesn’t need to be arranged in advance.  There will be plenty of information on the ship on how this can be done.  Walk off as soon as you can, take the Canada Line subway to the airport and I’ll bet you’ll be there by 0930 at the latest.... plenty of time for a domestic flight to Toronto,

[Mandy1021]

Thank you for your quick reply! 🙂 You're right, worst case would be us not getting off until 11, I guess I just meant that hopefully worst case would be nine. 

[d9704011]

Me personally, I wouldn’t want to book the 1100 flight but I perfectly understand there isn’t a shuttle service between Vancouver and Toronto so I’d take the chance.

 

You’ll likely get some comments with the general gist being.... what if the ship runs late, what if Canadian immigration at the port is slow, what if something else....  I pretty much plan around the cruise line schedule and if it doesn’t work out I’m prepared to take out my credit card to get myself moving again.

[bonsai3s]

Mandy1021...you'll be fine. 

Here's what we did on our Alaska cruise this year....Solstice.

We "self-assist", walked off with our luggage.

From the Canada Place cruise terminal, it was an easy/short walk, perhaps 10 minutes or less, to the nearest Skytrain...Waterfront Station.  From the Waterfront Station to YVR, it is approximately 35 minutes...no traffic. Happy Sailing! 😊

[SbbquilterUT]

With no docking delays you should be fine.  We walked off at about 7:35 (just a roller board bag each), into a taxi (4 of us) and were at the airport in under 30”.  Fortunately you are driving away from any rush hour into the city center so traffic was not an issue.  

[Mandy1021]

Thank you all so much! Very helpful :).

[martincath]

Even with a delay at immigration, you'll be fine as both Canadian and US authorities wany everyone off the ship ASAP (9:30am is the usual 'worst case' before you will be hunted down by security and removed from the vessel).

 

A domestic flight means you can arrive just an hour beforehand and still check bags and get through security; the majority of your fellow cruisers who also head straight to YVR are going back to the US, so they clog up entirely different queues; and if its a really busy day, you are delayed getting off, the cab queue is over an hour already then you will have a) Canadian cash, and b) Chip credit cards so you can easily make use of SkyTrain. The Canada Line was designed from Day One to be luggage-friendly, the end of the line is very close to the pier, and unlike cabs traffic is irrelevant so the journey takes 26mins end-to-end unless there's a (very rare) huge problem that stops the trains.

 

Since you already mentioned self-disembarkation you obviously don't have mobility issues, which means you should plan to take SkyTrain (and you will probably be on it by 8am). If you walk past the cab queue and see it's really short, by all means jump in a cab though.

 

Edited December 26, 2019 by martincath

[Mandy1021]

Thank you, that was very helpful and reassuring as we just Booked our flight :).

[scottbee]

For a domestic flight, I don't see this as a huge problem.

[Mandy1021]

Thank you! You have all relieved our worries :).