martincath

1 card per person. The system tracks the card from first tap to last (or just times out at 90mins if you are on a bus, which you only tap to enter not exit), compares which Zones those were in, bills accordingly. I don't think retapping the same card from outside will even work to open the gate a second time - if it does, it may have actually just immediately tapped you out back out again (which is free within a few minutes, if done at the same station) but regardless, at least some of your party will be guilty of fare evasion (as an automated system, it's rare to get checked by Translink staff or Transit Police, but if you are the fine is almost a hundred times higher than a basic adult fare!)

Then I'll keep it simple with mostly some bar/pub reccos - best patio for views of the North Shore mountains on a sunny day is at Tap & Barrel's convention centre branch; the whole T&B chain offers better-than-it-has-to-be-at-the-price pub grub, a wide range of local beers and wines (including several custom made for them, cannot get anywhere else). Rogue (closest is inside Waterfront Station, really nice old space, many nooks and crannies) is the pub arm of Steamworks brewing - almost identical menus but I find that Rogue consistently does the same food slightly better than Steamworks (who are literally across the carpark - main difference is that Steamworks sells their own beers whereas Rogue sells a whole bunch of different PNW breweries' products, so depending whether you feel like trying several different beer styles made by the same brewer, or several different brewers takes on the same beer style, you have both options available just yards apart!) Moose's Down Under is one of the best value boozers downtown - not at all fancy, but unless you are an Aussie or frequent their expat bars while at home it should be a different enough menu to be interesting, and it has a genuinely fun, friendly vibe. It's in a basement, with the street level sign only about waist height, easy to walk past if you're looking up, and just around the corner for you. Broad menus in all of these, being Vancouver the average pub menu includes a few Asian dishes as well as burgers, fish & chips etc., and for everyone not your Sis at least a couple of different cooked fish dishes plus some sushi and something in the shrimp/mussel/crab area. Lastly, a low key but long-lasting Vietnamese cafe is just up the street, Joyeaux - they're rarely bigged up by local foodie types these days, but they survived Covid and continue to just keep doing their thing (their website is almost hilariously old school, no social media budget for these guys!) which includes one of the best-value breakfasts in downtown in case your hotel rate doesn't supply brekkie. A wee map with all of these and your hotel here - even if you walked around all five reccos you'd rack up barely more than a mile)

Appreciate the corrections! @yolotraveler , sounds like this person's been on more WJ flights more recently than I have so I'd give their commentary more weight than mine! My beef with Rouge wasn't pitch, but lack of cushioning - I've never had a sorer butt after a flight than my flight to Vegas on Rouge, which AC swapped on us from a regular service with no compensation. If WJ have just reduced pitch in the back rather than changing to thinner seats I'd still prefer their Economy product to Rouge... Our only WJ flight since they started offering the PE cabin had exactly the situation you describe - swapped metal, no PE, no compensation 'because you still have a premium seat' - hence my comment about 'most' of their planes lacking such... to be fair, I could have checked the current fleet numbers to see if the Covid cull means that now most of the planes do actually have PE seating, but even if 'some' or 'a few' were more accurate descriptors, it's still craptacular to even pretend that the old style 'no middle' is as good as a wider seat - the battle for the armrest also simply shifts to 'who gets to leave their stuff on the unused middle seat' if you aren't traveling as a couple!

Yes, if it's all going on one card you'll have to use the kiosk! If you tap the same card over and over, it only bills it once so everyone else is fare-dodging 😉 It's been ages since I actually bought an individual ticket, thanks to the reloadable Compass card, but if memory serves during evenings/weekends if you try to buy a multi-zone fare the machine won't let you, so it's just how many tix are Concession (>65) or regular (13-64). Also, I think you can 'buy' a free child ticket just so they have something to tap and a wee souvenir - if not, make sure someone taps and lets the kid walk through right in front of them, as the faregates close pretty quick to minimise the chance of someone tailgating you through for free. However, just so you have the comparison at hand, with 6 adults and a kid you might consider 2 cabs instead unless you were coming in early enough to be able to reuse a DayPass efficiently... with AddFares on top, SkyTrain does not save much cash (more on weekends with 1 zone pricing) as a cab is only CAD$37 to the EXchange. Four adults and baggage can be tricky in a Prius, but with 3 grownups per car and the kid taking the middle seat in one, they should be comfy enough even if no vans roll in. Note that you'll need a car seat for DG on many AK excursions unless she is rather tall and heavy for her age (even schoolbuses up there, a fairly typical vehicle for tours, require boosters installed if there's a seatbelt to enable attaching them); technically 'professional drivers' like cabbies are exempt from requiring car seats here in Vancouver, but they're also not allowed to charge you for car seat install/removal time even on metered fares when you choose to use them. Of course, if you've chosen excursions that don't need car seats to avoid bringing one, transit's the safest option even if it doesn't save much. Recco for travel with a little'un is to board the front of the train at YVR (the back if you see it roll in - it reverses a few minutes later) so GD can pretend to drive the train! Or in my case, justify pretending to drive the train myself by instead pretending I'm sitting here for the benefit of my nephew... 😉

I'll goe ven further than Bruce - if you really want a wide sample of opinions on westjet, you're not going to get it anywhere on CC, 'flyer talk' forum (not sure about linking to a travel competitor, but a quick search should find it!) would deliver. My two cents - most folks I know with a preference between WJ and Air Canada like WJ a little more. In theory all staff should be 'more invested' in success because they are all owners (of teeny tiny proportions, but still if the company does well, they win). Planes run a bit older, their idea of 'first class' is basically 'do not sell a middle row' on most aircraft, but if you're buying economy tickets seat comfort is better than AC Rouge but a touch worse than regular AC, so it's overall about a wash. Honestly I generally do find service aboard aircraft better on WJ, the general vibe reminds me of Alaska with just a little more happiness from the crew, but because they codeshare with Delta for US flights and we have never had anything but absolute crap treatment on Delta we no longer book them in case we end up on Delta metal! If AC were the same price I'd prefer them to WJ regardless; but I'll take WJ over any AC Rouge plane.

Any chance you narrow down (dis)liked foods/genres, budget, how far you're willing to walk, whether you care more about a view than the best food, and some idea of what sort of restos you can access easily at home? 'cos from that hotel there are literally hundreds of restos that I'd personally consider an easy walk away, running the gamut from swankadelic to cheap & cheerful and covering at least a dozen ethnic varieties. Without anything else to narrow down the field, for a single dinner in Vancouver I'd be inclined to point you to somewhere that's almost impossible to find anywhere else, and while not cheap it's at a very good pricepoint for the quality (but it would involve a bus or a ~$15 cab ride): Salmon'n'Bannock, our only Indigenous resto. Even if you're a Steak'n'Taters kinda person, they can feed you (try the Bison pot roast!), but if you enjoy game meats and interesting (cooked) fish that's where they really shine.

If it's fresh, then it's against the law - you can plant a ginger root! This is 100% not going to be allowed in any border crossing, whether Canada to the US or vice versa. Buy candied ginger in Canada and you're fine - you can't stick a sugary lump into the ground and get a plant to grow 😉

Just Tap the cards directly on the fare gates, don't bother with the ticket machine at all! The only reason to not do this is if you are entitled to Concession fares and are willing to figure out your required Zones etc. by yourself to save a buck or so per person - tapping directly saves you time and costs exactly the same as a regular Adult fare, with all the math done by the system based on where you then tap back out. Just be sure to tap out with the same card - if you have more than one chip card in your wallet take the one you want to use out, as multiple NFC capable cards in a wallet basically one of them will be billed but not necessarily the same one as last time so instead of one accurate transaction (Card X went from YVR to Downtown = 2 zone fare + AddFare) you will be hit with 2 maximum fares (Card X boarded at YVR and never left the system; Card Y boarded downtown, never left the system; both get billed 3 Zones with X also getting an AddFare!)

Yes, City Centre is closest - it's an almost perfectly flat 1km route to walk, you can use pretty much any street to cut over to Robson from W Georgia (although I would recommend walking at least a couple of blocks on Georgia, to avoid the pedestrianized block between Howe and Hornby behind the Art Gallery, as it is often chock full of temporary stalls making it a hassle to walk through - if you stick to Georgia until you hit the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, any left from there to Bute is fine, you'll walk the same distance... Jervis onward and you overshoot the hotel!) Day Passes don't require a location - they operate across all three zones every day, so only have 2 prices these days (regular fare and Concession for kids & seniors). If you're only planning to head downtown to the hotel, or even take 1 or even 2 rides somewhere else, better to just pay for your fare separately each time... Day Passes start saving on the 4th trip around downtown, and that's only by a few cents -even if it's a weekday when the fare inbound from YVR is 2 zones, so a Day Pass wins by about a buck and a half on that 4th trip, or breaks even on the third trip if you take another 2 zone ride to e,g, North Van by Seabus. Even regular tickets only break it down by zone, not by stop, so you cannot book any kind of ticket to <Insert Station> you can always travel freely within the zone(s) you paid for for 90 minutes between boardings and then as long as it takes to get to where you're going. So if, for example, you ride into town from YVR (<30mins), walk to hotel (~15min with bags), check-in and drop bags, you could jump on a bus outside, or even walk back toward the pier and hop on a Seabus (~25min walk from BH) as long as you tap the last entry gate before 90mins from when you first tapped your ticket to enter the system back at YVR. So that same 2 zone ticket could get you all the way over to North Van to enjoy Lonsdale Quay without buying a second one - and if you stayed until after 6:30pm everything becomes 1 zone regardless of day, so the fare coming back would be cheaper. And all of this 'which zone(s) do I need to buy!?' stuff is irrelevant if you just tap a credit card or smartphone with a card in a virtual wallet on the gates - the system will do the math for you, so for folks who don't qualify for Concession rates it's the same price for less work and no time wasted... also note that if you buy a ticket of any type, even a Day Pass, at the YVR station (or tap to enter) you will be billed the $5pp AddFare for inbound travel - Day Passes only save you the AddFare if they are bought elsewhere. If you want to avoid the AddFare you can buy an old-school Day Pass at the 7-11 inside the airport - this is still ~$2 more expensive than a 2 zone fare with AddFare though, so unless you plan at least one additional use of transit the day you arrive, don't waste your time!

Even wider spread here - I applied last September, my wife didn't get around to hers until November, her card appeared in the mail this Jan without even getting an email that she'd been approved (same thing happened to me 5 years before), but my case hasn't progressed beyond Pending Review. Technically my current card remains valid until this July so I'm not concerned yet, just growing more annoyed at the difference - especially given neither of us has traveled to the US or anywhere else without each other within the last 5 years; same age, same foreign country of birth, even identical Canadian citizenship date; aside from gender and appearance we're virtually identical in everything that we have to put on the renewal form!!!

Yes to the accessible cabs - legally every fleet has to provide ~17% of their vehicles as vans suitable for wheelchairs/scooters. Apps are a bit iffy - last time I checked with Yellowcab they would not guarantee vehicle type on the app, and there are zero accessible UberLyfts - so you may have to do the old-school phone the cab company thing to get to the pier, but post-cruise about 1 in 6 cabs rolling in will randomly be vans. Given it's Bellingham I imagine you planned to come up same day; if you added on a night in the Accent Inn by the airport though you could get 2 weeks parking for $80 on top of room rate - not sure if extra individual days are a similar cost per day or a bit extra, but you'd probably be saving almost half the cost of parking even with two cab rides... they do have an airport shuttle, and SkyTrain is totally RORO, but no idea whether the shuttle vehicle could handle DHs chair... I'm afraid that all local cab firms run randomly good to bad in quality of service, so I have no recommendation for who to call, but the hotel might. Alternatively, if you park in YVRs Value long-term lot you can access SkyTrain directly from the lot (daily rates here but no cab fare might still be a bit more than a night at Accent though...) To avoid any Vancouver transpo needs, you could also book in the other half of the Convention Centre - it's literally just a few hundred yards along the sidewalk, and rates run approx. $26 a day which seems to be half what you've been quoted for the pier if you didn't mistype that $900!

It's been a while, but Rob Roy seems to have only improved since the pre-Covid days when I was last there (nominated for a Beard award last year for food) and is very convenient to walk to from Hotel Five. Very glad I tried them back in the day - I actually detest the eponymous cocktail so I nearly skipped them! Aside from the lack of view I think it checks all your other boxes.

A 1:30pm flight is late enough that every cruiseline would sell you a flight at that time - and their shuttles are by far the slowest way to get to YVR! I agree that a 6am arrival won't see you off the ship any quicker than a 7am one due to CBSA hours at the pier, and having to do US Preclearance as a Brit could make the process a bit longer - be sure to get your ESTA organized before you come over! - but 3 hours early is trivially easy to manage even on a really busy 3 ship day. In fact you might not even be allowed to drop your checked bags if you arrive too quickly and it's a busy day, as only so many bags can be held for screening by CBP so if you actually roll in before 10:30am you may have to wait until then! Since you plan to self-disembark, you are definitely physically capable of getting your bags to SkyTrain so you absolutely should do that - with no traffic and automated trains, travel time almost never goes more than seconds beyond the scheduled 26min trip from Waterfront to YVR. Even if you just miss a train, the next one to YVR departs in <7mins midweek, <15mins weekends, and it's maybe a 10min walk from the pier. Tappable Visa/MC cards mean you can even skip the time to use a ticket machine - unless you're >65 or 13-18 and want a Concession fare the pricing is the same for a regular adult fare and tapping the gates directly. Just walk out, turn left, ignore the first entrance on Howe (wrong platform!), hang a left onto Cordova, head inside the big and obvious station building a wee but down street, platform is right under the lobby you enter this way. Map.

For wines, try the Alberni & Bute Signature BC Liquor Store (government = cheapest prices, but sig stores have better-trained staff to advise on comparable wine to your preferred type, which I've never seen in BC myself and no searches of the bigger private liquor stores have proven fruitful either). If you like slightly-sweet red wines, and you can't get a better recco from someone in store, we really enjoy a dirt-cheap blend called Bodacious - their bourbon-barrel aged red is a 'semi dry' with just discernible residual sweetness that's super smooth and easy to drink, and for the the price is ludicrously good value. It's the 'quaffing plonk' we have in the house constantly for cooking with, or to open a second bottle after dinner, but we've fooled a few fancy friends about the pricepoint by decanting it too 😉 For groceries your closest supermarket to the Hyatt would be Urban Fare, also on Alberni - map of both stores and your hotel here. But depending what you're after and where else you go in town, there are cheaper supermarkets (No Frills at Denman Place Mall probably the lowest-priced in downtown) and also large pharmacies (London Drugs, Rexall both have large branches downtown) which stock plenty of e.g. soda and snacks - check who's got what on sale if it's common stuff you're after!

Yes - but it's best to get off at the back of the train (the front if you see it pull into YVR as it goes backwards on the same track from there) and take the elevator/escalator up following signs to Granville St rather than entering the station proper. Saves most of the uphill walk! The info above is... extensive, but out of date on pricing by between two and five years so I'm guessing this is ChatGPT produced as it has a dataset within the right timeframe. The lack of human knowledge would also explain why a pointless map to the pier was included, literally worse than useless for the walk from train to Auberge: try this map instead.