Ken the cruiser

May I suggest you first check to see how many ships will be in port on the day you embark on your cruise. If there are 3, just make sure you get to the airport transfer collection point early rather than later. If there is just one or two, you should be fine.

Yes, we do enjoy the “hunt” for taking photos of any wildlife we are lucky enough to see, big or small! But there is just something about taking pictures of the “elusive” pigeons we see in different parts of the world that have given us an extra amount of joy. 😁

The Noordam set sail first, then we headed out around 5:15 pm, followed by the Ruby about an hour later. As you can see by my above post, we passed the Noordam a little before 9 pm. I’m guessing they’re getting into single file positioning as the Johnstone Strait we’re heading towards appears to be quite narrower than the waters we’re currently in. As far as what type of shape the Grand is in, not too bad. At least we haven’t run into any issues that were noticeable yet. But then this is only our first day.

Day 2 - May 1 - Sea Day

After a tasty dinner in the Crown Grill, we headed back to the cabin to take a few scenic shots as we had pushed off from the pier while we were eating. We then headed to the theater to watch one of the funniest comedians we’ve seen in quite a while, Michael Wilson. We decided to pass on the evening game show in Explorers Lounge, Musical Bingo, to go watch more of the snow-capped mountains pass by before it got too dark, as well as to look for any wildlife that might be hanging around. Unfortunately, the only wildlife we saw was too small to take any pictures of, as the only thing we saw was their little heads pop up for a few seconds at a time before going back underwater. This was our location around 9 pm when I took these few scenic photos. The Noordam is the yellow ship and we’re leading the way followed by the Ruby about a mile behind us. This was the Ms Noordam off our starboard side. Here are the senior officers on the ship.

There were 4 in port, but the Radiance of the Seas was at a totally different location.

They announced on the flight from SLC to Vancouver that they no longer hand out declarations and folks will have to fill them out using a kiosk once they arrive at the Vancouver airport.

Day 1 - April 30 - Vancouver BC (Embarkation Day)

Some information about the ports we will be visiting on this 8-day leg of the cruise. No tenders, yay!

We finally boarded the ship a little after 2 pm, over 3.5 hours after checking in with the ship transfer POC at the airport. The first part of the adventure took over 90 minutes to go 12 km from the Vancouver airport to the cruise terminal, mostly caused by some serious downtown traffic jams due to ongoing construction along with 3 cruise ships in port today! But after creeping along or standing still for over 90 minutes, we finally saw the ship! Then it took another 90 minutes to go through the checkin process. The main cause for this horrendous delay was that the embarking passengers associated with all 3 ships were being processed through the same cruise terminal, where normally there is only 1-2 ships in port on any given day! 😱 But we finally made it to our cabin and all is good, especially after admiring the view from our aft-facing balcony. 😁 And of course how could resist not taking a photo of the not so elusive Vancouver International Airport pigeon while we waited 30 minutes before boarding the ship transfer bus! 😂

Looks like the hotel has employed a couple of Canadian Geese to patrol the rooftop! Like I said, I can be easily squirreled by wildlife! 😂

We woke up this morning with an overcast view of Vancouver Island off in the distance from our hotel room. We'll be hanging out here until around 10:15 am when we will head down to the International Terminal’s arrival area to catch the PCL transfer to the ship, which is currently disembarking passengers at the pier. It won’t be long now! 😁 The clouds are forecasted to start clearing up this afternoon as we begin our cruise north through the Strait of Georgia. Tomorrow we’re scheduled to continue cruising north on our way to Sitka for a scheduled Thursday morning arrival. Out of curiosity I checked the 2-day Northern Lights projections, which are definitely showing potential for tomorrow night … and Windy forecasting clear skies! Wouldn’t that be awesome! 🤞

We have arrived at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel and were settled in our suite around 11 pm. One suggestion for those coming to Canada. Make sure you use the ArriveCan app to pre-register your Advanced CBSA Declaration document no earlier than 72 hours before your arrival. In our case we were the only ones on our entire flight that had, which means we were the only ones that got to go in the “Fast Pass” line to get through Customs after finishing the check in process on one of the special CBSA Declaration kiosks. It saved us at least 5-10 minutes getting through Customs! 😁

Thanks @joydisney and @HaveDogWillTravel for adding your recent experiences to the mix. Sounds like we should stick with our original seating plan and then play it by ear when we make the turn and head back down the mountain. FWIW we just landed at the SLC airport and got our first glimpse of snow covered mountains! 😁

That’s definitely a lesson learned worth remembering!

Now you know one of the reasons why I do so many Live From threads! I usually take 100-400+ photos on each excursion with my iPhone SE, post the best ones to my Live From thread when I get back to the ship, and delete the rest! 😂

Thanks! That sounds very similar to the excursion we took about 10 years ago on our first cruise to Alaska on the Celebrity Solstice, which was definitely one we would recommend as well! 😁

My DW just “squirreled” me away from talking about the train ride excursion, which I might add is easily done when wildlife is involved. In this case there were two scruffy and very elusive Atlanta International Airport pigeons that magically appeared while we are waiting for our flight to Salt Lake City! 😂

The anticipation continues to mount! 😂

I’m curious about this as well. But if it’s a round trip train ride, you would think some would have the better views going up while the other side would have the views back down the mountain. That is unless it’s a totally different set of tracks heading back down the mountain. The anticipation is really starting to build now for going on this excursion! 😬

From what the Special Notes say, no passport is required as we won’t be getting off the train.

You all got us to looking at the excursion details a little more closely as we initially thought it was a train ride up followed by a bus ride back down the mountain. To our surprise, it’s a roundtrip train ride, which makes us kind of wonder why we would need to change seats. But we will definitely also go outside between the cars to take pictures if the windows are too dirty. 😁

That’s cool. It will be interesting to see what happens on our train ride. Hopefully it won’t be too crowded this early in the season. But we’ll still try to plan ahead and sit on the left side in the last car just to make sure we get a good seat at the beginning of the ride. 😁

We have arrived at our regional airport with 90 minutes to spare before boarding and we were the only ones checking in or going through security. 😁

Our travel day is here and the weather between Alabama and Vancouver by way of Atlanta and SLC airports is looking pretty calm for the most part. Hopefully, all goes well and we arrive on time late this evening. 🤞