martincath

The only actually-open things are likely to be the pubs & restos; maybe the Royal BC Museum if it's a Fri/Sat and they do their late opening again this summer; maybe a few touristy shops in peak summer still open too. But Victoria is very pretty, and you paid the port fees, so frankly even if all you do is walk along the harbourfront for an hour or two, enjoying Ye Olde Buildings nicely lit-up, it's money and time well-spent! Personally I couldn't imagine even this short a stop without sinking a few pints in Swans - you can compare and contrast the same brew in it's original form (~10C, hand-pumped without extra fizzy gas added) as well as in the way the unfortunate souls of this continent have been conditioned to believe beer should be served (~4C, with extra fizz) because they maintain two beer cellars at different temps, virtually unheard of anywhere else on the continent (Spinnakers, also in Vic, also does this). 😉

I'd say that if your flight is US-bound, show up no earlier than 4:30am - this gives you time to check in at the airport, drop bags, and head through Security without having to wait too much before Pre-screening opens (officially CBP start work at 4:30am, but their briefing always eats up 10-15mins before pax start being processed). You will most likely still find a slow moving glut of folks who showed up 3 hours early for flights at 6 or 7am unaware of this problem, but they'll at least be moving when you get to that stage. All the staff are aware of the CBP timing issue, so all those 6am flights expect to see panicked passengers running desperately for the gate - the one downside of a flight that early is they very often end up delayed by 15-30mins precisely because of this! If we are flying with carry-ons only, a 6am flight and arriving on the first SkyTrain at 5:11am is perfect - that first big crowd of folks clogging up CBP have worked their way through, so we basically only stop walking when we need to organize our stuff for the X-ray machines and we can usually go straight to boarding the plane when we hit the gate... First time we did this, even with NEXUS to get into the short queues, we were a little nervous - but it was smooth as silk so now it's what we actually try to book every time if we can! If you have checked bags though, you MUST get them into the system at least a full hour before the flight - which means you'll almost certainly see at least a few folks queuing to get into the prescreening area even if you shave the margins as tight as possible and drop your bags just before 5am. If you have Global Entry BTW, even one person in your party can get you all into the short Security line - and there are dedicated prescreening kiosks for GE that you can use when leaving Canada. As to hotel - you should expect horrific rates across the board, and probably no availability in any decent not-super-swanky hotel already, as between the national holiday and the typical cruise season numbers it's possibly the busiest night of the year. If the YWCA has any 5-person rooms left, book one right now - you absolutely will not find a better deal anywhere for 5 folks. But since they're probably sold out long ago, you realistically need to look at the 'condo hotels' with multiple bedrooms like Times Square Suites or Rosedale on Robson - 4 of you should get a real bed, provided it's 2 couples or singles who don't mind sharing a bed, with a sofabed for the 5th almost certainly as I don't think they have any 3-bedroom suites. The Sylvia Hotel in English Bay also has one family 5-bed suite, not listed on their website so you'll have to call. What to do? Join in with the celebrations! This page should update within the next month giving details of what's going on at Canada Place, usually the heart of the party zone. Dining as far away from Coal Harbour as possible will make resos easier to find, and if you want to avoid the crowds then look at visiting places well outside the core (and also West/North Van, who have the opposite side of the harbour for firework viewing so their waterfronts start filling up with people before noon too). Chinatown shouldn't be any worse than normal, Queen Elizabeth Park and UBC campus sites are far enough away there's not going to be extra crowding, or even out of town entirely like Steveston in Richmond, a quaint little fishing village area where you could go whalewatching form. If you can only find airport hotels by now, Steveston is going to be much easier to get to as you're already going to be staying halfway there!

SkyTrain or cab will both have minor issues - streets have historically been blocked off for events on the day, continuing to at night IF the fireworks return (they did not run last year despite Covid restrictions having been lifted to allow crowds to gather for the other stuff like bands). So a cab will have very limited access to the hotel - only from the Burrard Street side rather than also from the next block over. But since cabs from YVR are fixed rate, that does not impact your wallet! SkyTrain you'll be walking with bags on perhaps unusually crowded sidewalks - I say perhaps, because it really depends entirely on the timeline for the day! Flight on time, you'll be downtown 7-8pm, still daylight, firework crowds will be building BUT not on the sidewalks without a view... Canada Place itself along the sides, especially on the tip of the pier, will be hoaching with bodies - and much of the Seawall all the way west toward the park likewise - but the folks staking out their viewing areas won't be in your way walking from Waterfront, just the ones also arriving on the train with you or heading back home if they are not staying downtown for dinner and fireworks. You might be hardly inconvenienced at all, or you might have a bit of a crowed to trundle bags through for 3 blocks, but again it's more that the walk may take a bit longer due to extra bodies that not being able to get to the hotel.

There's no Vancouver-specific forum; usually we're a (dis)embarkation port, so the most relevant board is West Coast Departures; but occasionally a Port of Call which is when this board or the Cali Coastal/PNW or the Alaska board might all be the most correct depending where else your cruise goes. But since you did clarify that you mean Vancouver, it's an easy answer - there's only one pier (Canada Place) and the shuttles to both Capilano bridge and the SkyPilot bridge up by Squamish (sold as the Sea to Sky Gondola tour, as you ride that up the mountain to get to the bridge) go from right outside the pier. As to a coastal zodiac tour, the only one of those I can think of that goes from around here is the Howe Sound 'Sea Safari' run by Sewells - their dock is in Horseshoe Bay, an entirely different municipality on the other side of the harbour from Vancouver about 20km/13miles drive away, but they will shuttle you from downtown hotels for an extra $20pp so you could get picked up right outside the pier for this too (the Pan Pacific hotel is right on top of the pier). There is a Boat Lift Lane in town, on Granville Island, which does have a marina from which some tours operate - if memory serves it's more of a 'rent a boat for the day' kind of place though, with kayaks and seadoos as well as regular small motorboats, although I have a vague recollection of some organized 'come with us to Bowen Island for dinner' guided group seadoo tours that could certainly be pretty exciting, but VERY prone to cancellation for even remotely bad weather (unskilled operators riding a 'sea-motorcycle' is a recipe for disaster in less than ideal conditions, even with a guide!)

If other folks can take their bags for them they might be fine - it's less than a quarter mile, a slight uphill or downhill slope depending which exit from Waterfront station you take (Hasting Street gives you the downhill!) on the downtown end, maybe 700 yards from the hotel to Lansdowne. Cost can't be beat - no airport AddFare, so even on a weekday you'd be paying <$3USpp if you just tapped credit cards, almost a buck less for the Seniors if you buy Concession tickets from the vending machines. Edit - link to googlemap, which has all of our transit integrated. But with that many people, consider booking a minibus for you all - the price would likely be somewhere between taking 3 cabs and using the hotel shuttle ($19pp, but very limited timeslots, and an anno6yingh slow 'milk run' route around many hotels). Cabs from the hotel would be metered, so price is dependent on traffic etc. To guarantee pricing, you can take the hotel shuttle back to YVR - cabs from there are fixed price at $38 each to the pier (CAD - pay with MasterCard or Visa, many drivers will happily take USD cash too but do NOT leave an extra tip in that case as you're paying a 33% premium at bank rates and the cabbies will pad that rate at least a little more!) Other alternative - load the biggest bags and the seniors into one cab from the hotel, with one able-bodied person; everyone else head for SkyTrain; given how quick the latter is the other 7 would likely arrive at the pier in time to help unload! Total cost approx US$30 for cab, $21 for SkyTrain tix. Keep in touch with messenging service of your choice on phone/tablet, using free local WiFi if you don't get free data use in Canada. City provides #VanWiFi just about everywhere downtown, and Translink has their own WiFi on the trains.

+1 for all of the above locations - statistically, the average American is still less likely to be harmed in our worst neighbourhoods than at home, but the perception of danger has definitely ramped up locally even if the actual increases in crime rates are much smaller. Since just about everyone everywhere seems just more on edge, less patient, basically suffering emotional burnout, like Milhouse I've been erring on the side of 'maybe don't stay in that part of town' these days though, which sometimes comes across as a bit too apocalyptic! Prior visitors - you'll notice tents on sidewalks, not really a thing in TheBeforeTimes, but realistically the actual tragedies happening locally are folks dying of drug overdoses in huge numbers rather than tourists being targeted for any criminal activity. New visitors used to gritty urban environments will be fine - just be sensible, walk away if any odd interaction happens - but if you're from a gated community, quiet suburb, small town etc. you might be genuinely disturbed by some of the sights. Unfortunately Gastown, the biggest tourist 'hood, overlaps into the seriously poor part of town - but since the Gassy Jack statue got pulled down there's no more real tourist enticement further down Water Street than the Steam clock. Maybe consider ordering an Uber/calling a cab from inside the resto if you are dining late in Gastown or Chinatown and you were in any way uncomfortable on the way?

Any particular port or ports you're referring to? I might have an answer if I knew the context!

Cost is the cost; 1 person with no bags, or a trunk full and bums on all seats, the same. The problem is that an overwhelming majority of local cabs are various models of Prius - because in a set-by-law-price environment the biggest contributor to better profits is lower running costs! All those batteries do make for less luggage space... 4 adults traveling light, no problem. 4 adults with a carryon/backpack on their laps, you may still not have enough room in the trunk for 4 suitcases... Minivans make up ~17% of the fleets - but only because by law, Accessible vehicles for wheelchair users have to make up this proportion of the fleets. Instead of the middle bench or rotating cabin chairs, there's an empty space with wheelchair tiedowns (or else only a middle bench, with the rear bench removed to allow a chair or scooter to be rolled up a folding ramp into the back). Either way, this means virtually every van taxi still only has 4 pax seats - but they're ideal for folks with a ton of luggage! The issue is no guarantee which cab will roll up at YVRs 'first come first served' queue - and the karmic issue that if you get lucky with a van cab, but behind you there's a little old lady in a wheelchair with all the other visible cabs in the approaching line small Priuses, do you do the nice thing and step aside to allow the person who MUST use a van cab get 'your' one? Personally, unless everyone packs light, if you want to avoid SkyTrain I'd be inclined to book an Uber - as with those you can specify an XL, which should easily fit four even with loads of bags. It will be more than a cab, even without Surge - regular Ubers only save a handful of bucks on the airport-to-downtown route, and I think XLs attract a 20-30% premium - but at least you'll know that your vehicle will fit you all and it should be a fair chunk less than two cabs. But if the SkyTrain avoidance is more down to just not wanting to schlep bags around, then loading 3 of you and ALL the bags into a cab would work - and whoever volunteers to ride the train can do so without their bags, making life nice and easy... and probably being at the hotel before the cab folks to help unload it!!!

Lynn Canyon has had a cafe for decades - it did reopen after Covid closures. Confirmed by both the park and local tourist board on social media as operating within the last fortnight, although with the prior caterers bought out there isn't yet an online menu available to peruse. Bonus - since the primary market is local hikers, not tourists, and the park operates not-for-profit historically prices were both significantly lower and portions more generous than at Cap. Since the previous operators were the pretty-good-but-not-great The Butler Did It who were bought out by hands-down the best large caterer in the region, Culinary Capers (now rebranded as SavouryChef) if anything changes significantly the food should actually be better than it was (and it was pretty good in TheBeforeTimes, especially the brunchy options). As to access, Cap is inarguably easier - or rather more convenient thanks to the extra option of the shuttle - but Lynn is not remotely challenging to get to even for folks in town without access to a car. If you spend some cash, Lynn is just as easy as Cap to reach: hopping in a cab or uber from downtown to Lynn is maybe 10mins more drive time than to Cap, but with nobody else fighting for seats on the 'free' shuttle, and able to do it whenever you want instead of being stuck with the fixed frequency of shuttles (and possibly having to wait 20-30mins for the next one if it fills up before you can get on - on cruise days the Cap shuttles and the HOHO can easily fill all their seats and then some at Canada Place) means that it's probably quicker on average from most downtown hotels to get to Lynn than to use the Cap shuttle. The 227 bus stops just outside the parking lot too, so both bridges have a dirt-cheap public transit option available if folks have more time than money available. TL;DR - Cap is absolutely worth visiting, at least once, and if I were being purely selfish I'd recommend all the tourists go there and never even mention Lynn... but I feel bad failing to mention the much-larger, less-crowded, less-developed, cheaper-to-eat-in, non-profit, publicly-run, more-educational (the Ecology Centre runs lectures on all sorts of stuff and has some interesting info as well as staff on site to chat about e.g. the best trail to choose for your group, and doesn't even charge for entry just asks for a suggested donation of a couple of bucks) Lynn Canyon park. All that's verifiable - but going subjective, the canyon itself is also a metric buttload more spectacular than Cap: comparatively slow-moving water way below in a wide valley under the bridge at Cap doesn't come close to the spectacle of surging whitewater in the narrow canyon at Lynn with rock walls both sides IMO!

I responded quite extensively on the pubby side of things in the thread linked just above, so won't repeat - but the single most popular Dining Thing in Vancouver is without a doubt eating on a patio. Since Covid it's become a little less traumatic, given the massive expansion of very practical patios with roofs and walls to enable outside dining even in less-than-great weather, but for proper old-school 'totally exposed to the elements' dining the demand on a nice day still stuns me - folks would rather queue for literally hours to get a table outside than walk into a completely empty inside space and eat right now! So if you want to dine like 'Real Vancouverites' just join the queue for outdoor seating at, say, Tap & Barrel at the Convention Centre, one of the biggest patios with a great view across the harbour to the mountains, watching floatplanes and ships.

It also suffers mechanical issues with very limited availability of volunteers with the skillset to maintain it - which I believe is the primary reason for the 'no running in dodgy weather'! We've managed to ride it once, on our first visit to Astoria many moons ago - every other time it's been unavailable or worthless to us for various combinations of 'broken for months and no idea when it will be back', 'broken for months but now we have repairs scheduled, come back next summer', 'trolley is fine but the tracks need fixed so it doesn't go as far as the Maritime Museum' or just 'it's raining, no trolley for you!' This is the only railway in the world that makes British Rail and their 'no trains because the wrong kind of leaves are lying on the tracks' look reliable! 😉 Frankly you can also walk along the entire route, likely faster than the trolley moves on average, so it really should be looked at the same as the wee trains at some zoos, Disney etc. - not as practical transpo to get somewhere, but just a fun experience as it is a cool thing to ride on.

It was originally a hotel linked to the private members club below, and known as various combinations of The Hotel At Terminal City Club, Terminal City Club Hotel etc. which due to worldwide links to other swanky clubs needed available nice rooms for out-of-town members but also rented rooms to Joe Q Public when not needed. Rebranded to Auberge several years ago now and became a little more advertised, fewer rooms held back for members and more available for tourists, but still remains deliberately a smidge under the radar to avoid enticing too much riff-raff in to share a building with club members! It's not a 'stuffy' place like the stereotypical London club, but you'll see a much higher proportion of be-suited locals than is normal for Vancouver, where dress codes anywhere except private clubs pretty much consist of "Duuuuuuuude! Skiboots? At least clean them before you come in!" rather than Jacket and Tie Required 😉

+1 to what GL said. Cap's fine, certainly very pretty, added more bells and whistles over the years, but still we have never returned after our first visit - whereas Lynn Canyon we take all our visitors to. Lynn's only real downside is the lack of a 'free' shuttle to take you there, so without a car you have to spend about an hour each way on transit (to be fair, Cap's shuttle is also a 30min drive each way from downtown) or spend enough on a cabuber that for one person Lynn doesn't have much of a discount...

Personally I'd do SkyTrain as well; but if you're tired and don't feel like the walk a cab from YVR will cost exactly CAD$34 - although note that since Hastings St is the zone boundary on that block, a weaselly cabbie will tell you it's inside the $38 pier zone. This is explicitly not true, both sides of all boundary streets are charged at the lowest applicable zone price and this has been the case for years, so if the cabbie does ask for $38 do not tip!

Sorry @challahmom, never stayed in the PP so can't commend on how generous the Club Room nibbles are - but there was a rumour floating around that they were suspending free breakfasts until June. As to the cruise package, I really don't understand why they even offer it given how many folks have reported being able to get their bags taken to the ship without it, from all classes of rooms; while the 'officialness' of the process seems to have varied a little over time I haven't heard of a single person being refused the service!

Personally I avoid the late red-eyes from YVR to the US, because the big advantage we have here (prescreening) is not available for them as CBP stop work at 8:30pm here. Being pre-screened means your connecting flights are Domestic, so transfers are simple - a flight at 10 or 11pm can't be pre-screened so you'll need to do customs & immigration at your first US airport. The last thing I want after an overnight flight is having to face a (usually without-enough-staff!) immigration queue on arrival in the wee small hours! @Nelsj099 Flights as early as even 10am are doable with a few caveats - First, you REALLY should be self-disembarking so you're among the first folks off. If you're not physically capable of moving all your own bags with one hand free (port staff will prevent you using the escalators unless you have a hand free to hold the rail; the alternative elevator queue can be a nightmare!) you're going to have trouble using SkyTrain so might want to reconsider the flight... Secondly, the biggest factor which is entirely outside your control is how many other pax are also getting off that day - one ship, yours? No problem! Hop in a cab, take SkyTrain, either way you'll be at YVR within about an hour of walking off the ship. Four ships, three of whom get cleared to start letting pax off before yours? The wait for a cab could be over an hour even if you are the first person off your ship, so SkyTrain becomes a necessity for your planning! Thirdly, what's the routing? If it's not direct, then a Domestic Canadian first leg is safer - US pre-screening gets done in the last Canadian airport, right before physically flying over the border, so you need a longer transfer time downstream but save time at YVR as there's one less step to do here. Fourth, within your control but too late now if you haven't already started the ball rolling - Trusted Traveler cards! NEXUS and Global entry both work for leaving Canada - access to both a shorter Security queue and also dedicated kiosks not shared with Joe Q Public. There is little in life more enjoyable than the first time you get to walk past a ludicrous queue for immigration to join the teeny-tiny queue for TT folks! NB: TSA Pre is worthless, no TSA in Canada, come renewal you should definitely upgrade to NEXUS (if you live close to, or travel through frequently, Canada; it's both better and cheaper than Global Entry but does need an interview with CBSA on top of GEs requirements) @larrybritt since you didn't indicate that you must be home right after the cruise ends, I'd also advise you to stay overnight post-cruise - in terms of $ budget, take one less pre-cruise night and it should be a wash for the hotels. As you'll see if you check the schedules, eastbound flights tend to have two major 'waves' here - the first is mostly too early for a same-day-disembark-and-fly-home cruiser encompassing ~6am-10am, and the second after dinner. Bigger markets also justify middle-of-the-day nonstops to major eastern cities, but those always* cost a lot more because they're the most convenient (no overnight on the plane, no early wakeup to get to the airport). Overnighting after the cruise doesn't just give you access to more flights, it also reduces the time you need to spend at YVR in the queues for check-in, bag drop, security, and pre-screening - any flight that is too early for cruisers means literally thousands of people NOT being at the airport. YVRs busiest days are always when there are multiple ships in port - most summer weekend days mean 5,000+ cruisers flying out, and the first cruise transfers start hitting YVR about 9:30am. It's those busloads all arriving at once that really clog the queues - they just get busier and busier until the buses finally stop rolling in over lunchtime. Even arriving 3 hours in advance is tight if you're part of that horde! The only issue with an early morning next day flight is getting here TOO early - CBP hours begin at 4:30am, but they always do a staff briefing that tales 10-15mins before actually letting any pax in. So folks with a flight at 6, 7, even 8am who are not familiar with YVR show up far too early and join a queue for CBP that does not even start moving until ~4:45am! Roll in on the first SkyTrain of the morning at 5:15am and you sail through all the other queues in no time, and also find that CBP have gotten the too-early folks processed! *of course, there is never an absolute with airline pricing! But in cruise season with demand high, it's about as close to a certainty as it gets that a 2pm eastbound flight will cost more than a 7am!

From Pac Central you could walk to the YWCA Hotel if you're in remotely good shape, or spend about $6 on a cab - if they have a room for you it's the best deal in the region, the only hotel that is both budget AND modern, rather than a reno of a really old building (the new wing was built right before Covid hit, the old one renovated just this year, and it's a modern concrete tower building). If you can handle schlepping bags upstairs, then the Barclay is in a nice, quiet West End location and even cheaper than the Y but lacking the mod cons; say $15 cab from Pac Central, $10 to pier next day. Glad to hear a review of the actual hotel for the Atrium; em-sk is correct that the blocks immediately around it are fine, it's really just traversing the space between it and downtown that sucks - buses along Hastings are among the worst in the city for 'binners' bringing their haul aboard, which makes for an often-loud and sometimes-stinky journey. And if you're cabubering everywhere because you don't like taking the bus, whatever you might save at the Atrium compared to a downtown budget hotel would be frittered away fast! From Pac Central or Chinatown I'd guess $20 on the meter each way; downtown core ~$25; so easily a $50-60 round trip with tips if you checked in and dropped bags then decided to hit up a nice resto for dinner. But if you're going to be hit with a cancellation fee or just can't find any rooms downtown that are remotely comparable in price for your date, for just dinner the Atrium's location could be worse: there are some good casual spots for dinner that are walkable from the Atrium; personally I'd be comfortable walking quite a bit west to at least Nanaimo St: the likes of Tamam (Palestinian), Petit Saigon (Vietnamese), James (Chinese), and several decent Pho joints are all closer than that, within a quarter mile and right on Hastings so easily found. Just shut your eyes on the shuttle next morning! Getting to the Atrium from Pac Central on arrival, tell the cabbie to take Terminal to Renfrew - this loops you well outside the most tragic bits of the DownTown EastSide, as well as hinting to the cabbie you're familiar with town as it may not look it but thanks to some roadworks, one-ways, and central dividers it's almost the shortest and definitely fastest unless you get stuck in commuter traffic; ***** about the road closure at Prior making you go the long way if you want to sound hyper-local!

Since this is a specific-to-Princess-policies question Larry, I suggest you repost it on the Princess board (or flag the post to the Moderators and ask them to move this post). There aren't too many of us who regularly check this Pacific Coastal board - you're much more likely to get a useful answer over there! I do know that you're allowed TWO bags on cruise tours - a day pack you carry yourself on the bus/train and then also one bag that will travel like a checked bag to your hotel/lodge each night. Given the logistics of cruising to Alaska almost always involves flying, I'm 99% sure that if Princess could not handle a typical 'checked baggage on a plane' <50lb, <62" linear suitcase they'd list the max dimensions very clearly on their cruisetour FAQs, brochure etc. - but hopefully some experienced cruise-tour-takers over on the Princess board will confirm this 100% for you!

The last remaining hotel downtown with a shuttle was the Hampton Inn - and it is no longer listed as an amenity on their website since Covid. A handful of seriously high end hotels have towncars that will take you anywhere - so if you have the budget for $500+ a night, you'll get a 'free' ride to the pier... but a metered cab from any downtown hotel to the pier will be somewhere in the CAD$10-15 range, even with traffic! You definitely want to be downtown if you're here early for sightseeing - the downtown core has about 90% of our hotels and popular tourist sites, so every hotel is an easy walk to at least a few things to see and do. The Atrium OTOH, is one of few Vancouver hotels I would specifically recommend against. If you're literally just arriving late, want a bed, then head to the pier with no sightseeing planned - stay out by the airport. SkyTrain works great if you're able-bodied; there's a 'milk run' shuttle that picks up in a loop and brings you to the pier; but since it costs the same for 2 people as a cab from the airport... I'd be doing the cabuber thing if I wasn't willing or able to SkyTrain. Free shuttles from YVR to all of the airport hotels - and you can take the free shuttle back to YVR for a fixed-rate cab next day if you don't want to risk a metered ride, and since there are very limited access points to Sea Island every hotel shuttle also drives very near a SkyTrain station, and a polite request should get you dropped at Aberdeen or Bridgeport if you don't book a hotel you can just walk from. Atrium is in a great location for one thing - the PNE. So if your cruise timing is when it's on, and you had a day free and wanted to spend it at the big farm show/eat ridiculous fried stuff/ride midway and a famously-clunky old wooden coaster, or a 60s/70s band you had always wanted to see just happens to be part of the entertainment on your precruise night, I'd say that the many downsides of the Atrium might be overcome... in those specific circumstances. But otherwise you're looking at having to traverse the dodgiest of dodgy parts of the entire country every time you head downtown (and with zero walkable touristy sites you'll want to go downtown constantly - even if that shuttle is on-demand to anywhere 24/7, other guests will also want it so you'll have the choice of pricey cabuber rides or scary bus trips or standing around waiting). Even with the local press going wild over claimed increased crime rates, the skeeviest bits of town are far more tragic than actually dangerous for folks who don't live there - but it's genuinely depressing to see the tents, open drug use, prostitution etc. unless you're inured to that sort of thing already. There are individual restos, bars, breweries etc. around that part of East Van that are absolutely worth visiting, and as a local I'm fine with heading out that way - heck, I've even taken folks on foot around there to show off some of the public art - but I would strenuously encourage any tourist not to stay there unless they are a many-times repeat visitor and really, really want to get off the beaten track! Plus, the hotel itself has been rebadged yet again to try and lose its ever-longer trail of crappy reviews of all the prior iterations - I haven't stayed or even been inside since it became the Atrium so maybe this time around the reno is actually classy, but even the best case scenario is a nice-looking skin on top of old and crappy bones in a seriously inconvenient location.

YVR seems to have ramped back up to not far of pre-Covid numbers of pax, so yes it's almost a certainty that your bags cannot be checked more than 3 hours in advance - and if you're heading to the US, as I would guess from your home location @RedbirdFLCruiser it's even less likely you can get an early bag drop, as you must drop those yourself for pre-screening (no conveyor belt behind the check-in desks at YVR). You've got ample time to do a thing or two; a luggage-friendly activity I can think of is riding FlyOverCanada right at the pier (if you know Soarin' at Disney, same tech but a longer ride over the way more beautiful Canadian landscape - given how many California-set shows are filmed here, you may recognize more of what you see on this ride than on the Disney one!!!) The film during the queue and the ride itself last about 30mins, often some queue time outside as well unless booked in advance for a specific time slot, so between walking along Canada Place to leaving the ride you might spend 45-60mins; if you do a double-ride package (Hawai'i ends today, but by August the next 'guest' ride should be operating) then add 30mins. They will hold bags while you are on the premises, and for a short discretionary time after (I've heard folks ask to leave them while they go walk the pier for photos, grab a coffee etc.) Personally I'd consider just paying to store the bags though - the Pan Pacific hotel right upstairs will for less than the official pier storage, and since there's no obvious signs the queues are also much smaller! Without your bags you can easily go do whatever you like - pop over to North Van on the Seabus, rent bikes, visit art galleries/museums etc. or just pootle around the touristy areas without the hassle of your suitcases (sidewalks do get packed along Water Street, and the noise of tiny wheels clunking over the Ye Olde Worlde cobbles and brickwork we installed in the 70s gets wearing!) Not knowing you or yours, which would be the best thing or two to do for you I can't help with - but with easily 4 hours available if you self-disembark you definitely have time to safely do some stuff before heading to YVR. Tripadvisor rankings are a good place to start - where local knowledge comes in handy is when you have a short list you're interested in, when those of us familiar with locations and transportation can give you a better idea of the practicality of doing X, Y, or Z within your timeframe. I'd personally be quite comfortable showing up 2 hours early for a flight mid-afternoon; so leaving downtown by SkyTrain or Cab approx 1pm. This would also let you do a thing or two then grab a cheaper lunch from a much wider selection of alternatives than at YVR - although they have expanded their dining options since TheBeforeTimes, so if you are more nervous travelers who want to be there a full 3 hours early and eat after security you'll find something...

This shouldn't be a particularly unusual request for a local hotel; plenty folks pop over to the Island or up to Whistler for a few days before returning. Unless you have a lot of luggage, you're likely within limits to take it all with you even on the more-restrictive Rocky Mountaineer train (max 2 bags, 30kg total, Checked - you only have room onboard for one small day bag at your feet, ironically smaller in Gold than in Silver leaf seats!) RM transfer bags to and from your hotel rooms on the overnight stops. VIA have baggage cars and expect that folks using their sleeper trains will check big bags for the whole trip and only bring smaller bags with necessary stuff into their room(ette)s, but have more generous allowances and have plenty space for bags (even if you are not in a Sleeper cabin the carriages have decent luggage racks). 2x 23kg checked bags and another as Carry-on plus a personal item up to 11.5kg, or you can swap the big carry-on for two smaller ones. But if you'd rather not take bags with you and the hotel lacks the space to store your suitcase there are many alternatives now - unfortunately I can't recommend any specific one, as living downtown I've never made use of such a service, but if you just Google 'vancouver luggage storage' multiple websites will pop up that have local partner businesses. I'd avoid any unwilling to confirm where the partners are before payment, and some are strictly same-day storage, but you should find at least a couple of multiple-day, confirmed location stash points, e.g. I know that Stasher lists locations by hours open and does overnight not just day storage.

Basically, the Canada Line opening killed the shuttle market; there are cruise-specific shuttles in season going FROM the pier (Ace Charters), but pickups for trips TO the pier are only from hotels near YVR, not the airport proper (YVR charges a fee to coach companies for picking up pax, but cannot charge for dropoffs, so this has been standard practise for years); full vehicle charters are worthwhile for big groups, but for smaller groups it's cab or transit. Cabs are fixed rate, CAD$38 at the moment, so while in theory a couple would save a little by booking an $18pp shuttle the limited timeslots (2 per day) and hassle of getting to a hotel for pickup make for a poor value in comparison (none are walkable, in theory they all have free hotel shuttles but those are meant for guests - I doubt many drivers check reservations but you're cheating the hotel out of the cost of moving you so it's bad karma!) mean I'd even question the value of doing so for a solo traveler. Really, these shuttles are for folks overnighting in the 'burbs who don't want to have to shuttle back to YVR for fixed rate cab access!

I'm actually going to point you at a video for the horsey trolley - a frequent CC poster, @misguy, and his wife make vids mostly focused on accessible travel and for your question about what you see on the tour loop. I'm not shilling for them, I'm sure there's some ad revenue/kickbacks from the whole influencer thing but none of it comes to me 😉 But this seems like the quickest way to see those highlights rather than me spend thousands of words describing the route to you in writing! Personally I think the trolleys are a rip-off at $50 for an hour - middle seating on the benches suck worse than bus tours as you have the same 'multiple heads in the way' sightlines plus you're shoulder-to-shoulder with 2 people rather than having an aisle and you only see a quite limited loop, all on the east side. An outside seat, on the right, would be best for views across the Seawall e.g. at Girl In A Wetsuit statue. If you book a private carriage they'll take you wherever they can legally go, including other parts of the park the trolleys don't see, but you're looking at $900+! The same funds could rent you an eBike (for 3-5 hours depending who you rent from) to see more, faster, and stop wherever you want to for as long as you want. If you plan to visit Prospect Point, then unless you are a keen cyclist you'll appreciate the motor assist going up the hill! Bikes basically let you go anywhere you can walk, so they greatly speed up getting around the park even if it's the old-school muscle-powered kind.

Good call on the marathon warning Dennis - another volunteer gig for you? The park board changed the wording to include all traffic in Stanley Park's One Way part of the Seawall quite a while ago, but not sure exactly when - it's most easily seen on one of the maps, e.g. this one, where for both the little walking person and the cyclist the black line is one-way now compared to the two-way red lines. Not sure of the date this changed, but I know it wasn't a Pandemic 'social distancing' change - I first became aware when we last hosted visitors, 2019, and we did what we had done for years with folks who wanted to see the totems but not walk the whole loop - just walked back past the yacht club etc. I got some attitude from someone about 'walking the wrong way' and blew them off as like you I had understood it to be only the 'wheeled pathway' that the one-way applied to... and then got very embarrassed when I saw that indeed there was now a one-way arrow on the pedestrian sign too! Given the sheer volume of bodies on the Seawall on any nice day, it does help to keep all traffic going the same way - and frankly it's quicker to walk along the Stanley Park Drive sidewalk due to not having to dodge a sea of people, as well as cutting out some distance due to the Seawall following the water so tightly. I can't imagine there being any real enforcement other than grumpy 'right way' walkers, but I'm loathe to break rules once I know they exist unless they are entirely unjust - and this one does make sense so I follow it now.

The Westin is pretty much the perfect hotel to find the totem poles and cannon (although we've been having problems getting black powder supplies for it, don't know whether supply lines are restored permanently) as you literally just need to follow the Seawall toward the park. The totem poles are just off the path, if you reach the cannon you went a little too far (most are hard to see from the water's edge due to trees but there's a sign pointing you toward them and one pole is clearly visible in the open, e.g. see this viewpoint from Google). There are actually multiple dates worth of Google Streetview around both the Seawall and the roads of the park; not all the interior trails were walked/biked with the big camera backpacks but quite a lot were. Since the free city WiFi network doesn't cover the entire park I'd suggest downloading local maps to your phone - but if you have free data you should get a phone signal everywhere if you get lost. Official park map is available on the website for printing too if you prefer tangible stuff, although we're enough post-Pandemic now that hotels, tourist offices etc. should definitely have paper maps available too. If you don't want to walk the entire loop (about 8km/5miles), using some of those other trails enables returning to the entrance without getting in trouble (more karmic than enforced by fines!) for walking against the one-way system, which applies to bikes and people not just cars!