Alaska in sep on Oasis —with kids

[martincath]

Better, best, subjective relative enjoyment of things - absolutely, all opinions are valid but your logistical travel claims are misleading on both time and cost.

 

I haven't seen a $100 HarbourAir flight that wasn't loaded down with restrictions - off peak, standby, Student fare, no luggage or a combination of these - since they bought out their last competitors several years ago, and now that V2V has folded there's even less reason for them to offer any discounted fares at all in tourist season. The ferry sail time may be ~2hours, but by the time you get to Tsawwassen and then from Swartz Bay to Victoria that timeframe almost doubles - drive your own car and the requirement to check in earlier cancels out the faster travel time compared to a bus, especially if you make a reservation. Horseshoe Bay has shorter drive time, but unless OP wants to visit Nanaimo it involves a much longer drive on the Island end and very limited other travel options than a rental car.

 

Not disagreeing that Vic has plenty to do - OP could absolutely spend an enjoyable 2 or 3 days in Victoria with kids - but Vancouver has over 6x the population (>600k vs <90k) and the greater metro areas around each are similarly disproportionate (~2.5M vs <400k) so even if Vic had twice as many things to see per head of population Vancouver would still outweigh it threefold in options. Personally the Royal BC museum is  a much bigger draw than Butchart, and definitely offers more kid-focused programming - Butchart does not give kids much to do other than run around, which they could do for free in, say, Beacon Hill park as well as checking out the kiddies 'petting zoo' there (that's one kid-centric thing Vic does offer that Van no longer does).

 

Lastly, Victoria is well-known to be demographically the oldest Metro in Canada - everything from government services to privately-run dining and entertainment venues therefore skew older in their target audience, not younger, because that's who needs the services/has the disposable income they want to get. Over 21% of Victorians are Seniors, and at nearly 4% there are almost twice as many folks 85+ in Victoria than the rest of Canada - the suburb of Oak Bay has over 6% of their population aged over 85... I might even move there myself if I get too much more decrepit 😉

 

There are virtually the same number of kids (<15) in Metro Vancouver than Metro Victoria's entire population (362k vs 367k at last census) - and over 20% more kids as a proportion of the overall population in Vancouver than Victoria - so it's only logical we have more kid-focused stuff over here, and we do.