Princess Vancouver Disembarkation Questions

[jlacy1987]

We are cruising out of Vancouver in 2 weeks on Princess. At the end of the cruise, our flight home isn't until 1:45pm. It looks like the last self assist walk off time starts at 9am. About how long can we expect that process to take? Or should we utilize the option to let them take our bags and get one of the later times (9:25am being the latest)? How long should that take, including finding and retrieving our luggage? We don't need to head to the train station until a little after 10am to get to the airport by 10:45am and I would prefer we aren't just sitting around twiddling our thumbs for an hour. 

[martincath]

I can only answer from experience the first part of the question, but since you've had no other takers I guess a partial/theoretical answer is better than none, and hopefully not to late for you to do something with the info!

 

exact timing of walk-off with your own bags is still somewhat contingent on Other People, Other Ships - deliberately waiting until near the end rather than at the start pretty much guarantees some slowdown, just based on folks ahead of you also walking the same route (with and without bags) and the only real choice involved until you are at the end leaving the building is whether to take Elevator or Escalator (unless you have a free hand, the latter - and the stairs - you will be stopped from using for Health & Safety reasons... so it's elevator or bust if you need both hands to drag your stuff around).

 

Generally, even if Vancouver is your only Canadian stop so Customs happens here as well as Immigration, the delay to deal with CBSA is almost zero - unless you get some secondary questioning, you will at worst hand your customs card to an officer, maybe answer a token random 'why/how long are you visiting Canada?' type question, then walk on. If your customs cards were collected onboard, you may not even see a CBSA person unless you are called on the tannoy to report for a chat.

 

This time of year, I'd be surprised if it takes more than 15-20 minutes to walk off from cabin to curb - if you do the 'have my bags taken off for me' thing then maybe 5 minutes longer at most because if you wait until the end everyone else will have already collected theirs! Unless someone took your bags by mistake, they should be really easy to spot in the various 'corrals' set up for each time-based batch of bags.

 

So if you've seen Vancouver lots before, I'd let Princess do the bag thing for you just so you have a bit more time for a leisurely brekky onboard and less hassle disembarking unencumbered. Everyone, no matter what method, will, start getting reminders to get the heck off the ship at the time of that last timed batch - until every single passenger is physically off the ship cannot let anyone back on, both CBP and CBSA get really picky about this 'zeroing out' process so even folks on a B2B absolutely MUST disembark.

 

If you haven't seen and done it all though, an alternative - walk off in the earliest slot you can get, pay a few bucks to store the big suitcases (Pan Pacific bell staff, and many local stores have cut deals with online luggage storage companies, and every single one of them is cheaper and faster to use than the official pier storage which runs $12 compared to ~$6-10 per bag), and go see some stuff. While I wouldn't shave the airport time super close unless you have Global Entry/NEXUS, I would be 100% comfortable aiming for 90mins predeparture at this time of year - no kids out of school, shoulder season, and even on a multi-ship day it's the folks hitting YVR direct from the pier, 9:30-11am, that cause the really big queues so show up at Noon and everything should be smooth. Prebook your Security slot if you're at all nervous - I'd go for a 12:45pm slot myself with checked bags as you have to drop those at least an hour before your flight.

 

Working backwards, that gives you a 'leave downtown on SkyTrain' time of just before noon as safe - factor in bag retrieval and walk to station, an available sightseeing timeframe of as-early-as-you-can-get-off until as late as 11:30am if you're finishing up anywhere in the downtown core (where a cab ride more than 10mins is basically impossible except in peak commuter rush hours). With 2-3 hours, any one big attraction is doable, or a couple of small ones...