Post Cruise Day Tour With Airport Drop Off - Vancouver

[bvocruise]

Can anyone recommend a tour from the Canada Place cruise terminal that drops off at the airport?  Our flight is at 5:15.  We are currently considering BC Passport but would like to have a another option for consideration.

 

Thanks!

[martincath]

I'm pretty sure that BC Passport is just a reseller - and based on descriptions and prices they are not charging extra, but are still using the typical big players like WestCoast and LandSea, plus HarbourAir for floatplanes, BC Ferries etc. From skimming a few parts of their site it looks more up-to-date than many similar ones at least, though there's still out-of-date pricing page-to-page - like bus tours that pick up at Ballantyne pier which closed al most 5 years ago for cruising, as well as a few bits of misinformation (e.g. "Canadian beer is stronger" is a myth caused by the US using ABW instead of ABV for many years, which makes for a 24% differential in the number between beers with identical alcohol content)

 

So why not go direct instead? If anything goes screwy you deal directly with the people concerned instead of waiting for a go-between to get back to you, and all the money you pay actually pays the tour provider. The 'city highlights' tour with drop at airport looks like LandSeas 10am post-cruise tour (same stops and inclusions), and the only other viable tours that would get you safely to YVR by 3pm would be another LandSea resell, their 'Peak and Canyon'  5 hr tour at 9am (personally I think this is the single worst bus tour offered by anyone, as you just barely have enough time at Cap to hustle over the bridge, treewalk and cliffwalk and ~2 hours at Grouse is just insanely short of the needed time - that's a 5+ hour attraction if you do it independently, there is a ton of stuff including many shows which only happen a few times daily. Plus, both attractions have free shuttles - so you could EASILY do Grouse for a fraction of the price and do it justice, or else do Cap and something else downtown for a couple of hours instead).

 

Personally, given how easy it is to get to the airport independently, how cheap it is to store bags at the pier, and how inefficient ALL of the timeslots are for post-cruise tours I'd recommend just doing your own thing. Even if you want to take a cab rather than SkyTrain, you're looking at ~$40 incl tip shared among up to 4 people for the transport; $5 a bag to store at the Pan Pacific hotel bell desk, which you literally walk right past on the way out of the pier; and if you self-disembark you can get in a full two extra hours of sightseeing compared to when the post-cruise bus tours start (10am). This makes HOHO tours pretty enticing - only get off where you want, for as long as you want, instead of being forced to waste 45mins on Granville Island (not enough to actually explore it properly, but far more time than needed to grab a souvenir or some food at the public market) for example, which most of the City Highlight tours include.

 

[bvocruise]

Thank you for the information.  I currently used credit card points and booked the LandSeas f-hour tour but may cancel and do our own thing.  I'll research storing bags at the pier and the SkyTrain.