martincath

Totally incorrect - all Princess vessels except Royal class sail inside the island when porting in Vancouver, it's only ships out of Seattle, SF, LA etc. which generally take the outside route as from there it's faster. Carnival, HAL, Cunard - doesn't matter which line, if they homeport here for the AK season it's very unusual to go outside the island. For some bizarre reason NCLs Spirit - which has sailed the BC IP before - is going around this season, but usually anything that fits under the Lions Gate bridge sails inside Vancouver Island except Royal class (even including Ovation of the Seas, a larger ship than Royal class).

Sunday hours for many stores are shorter than Saturday hours here too, and retail staff numbers still down compared to TheBeforeTimes - if it's just picking up some soda or wine for the cruise, a few odds & sods, I'd be inclined to wait until embarkation day (drop bags at the pier, walk to the BC Liquor store/Dollarama/supermarket/pharmacy as needed, return for boarding). If instead you mean 'shopping as a fun thing to do' it comes down to which specific stores you intend to visit if there's any real difference in the hours - some very small places may even close entirely Sunday and Monday, meaning Saturday would be your only chance to hit some little boutique-y places...

It's not exactly good news, but if anything passing under the bridge is more spectacular after dark and you were never going to see the BC Inside Passage on Majestic anyway, regardless of the tide times - BC pilots refuse to allow any Royal class ship to traverse those waters due to lack of maneuverability, none of those ships have ever sailed it. Other big ships which likewise have trouble squeezing under Lions Gate like NCL Bliss are allowed in the IP - but they didn't cheap out on rudders and thrusters! Tide times are indeed published far in advance: if Princess wanted to they could easily list accurate to about 30 minutes timings two years out but they never do. Every year since the first Royal deployment there has been a series of emails sent to pax about a month before sailing claiming that there is a change to the itinerary (they even used to pretend that they planned to sail the full IP ans were somehow surprised when local pilots stuck to their guns that the ships simply are not safe on that route; it took a couple of years for them to finally admit that it was never going to happen and update their maps to display Royal class going the long way around the island). This year, to be notified just over two months ahead is actually an improvement in customer service!!! Every cruise line is equally guilty of weaselling 'Inside Passage' to mean 'we spend at least a few hours of daylight crossing some Alaskan parts of it as we go in and out of the ports' unfortunately...

If you're Costco members, we also have one of those right downtown - if you're looking to bring a flat of sodas onboard or similar, that's your cheapest bet; you may also find odds & sods in the Dollarama right next to the liquor store linked above, especially if you're looking to buy the cheapest possible thing because you'll chuck it before flying home again.

On cruise morning, keep it simple and free - leave bags in your room until check-out or just drop them at the pier early (any time after 9:30am usually works, although officially they don't guarantee being able to drop until some time between 10 and 10:30am). After the cruise, if your hotel is downtown take your bags right to it. If you're staying out at the airport or somewhere else in the boonies, then the Pan Pacific stores non-guest bags for cheaper, with shorter queues, and for longer hours than the official pier storage (unless you book a tour through WestCoast, the local gray line affiliate, when they cut the cost of storage by half it's the most expensive bag store in the city and always has the worst hours, you have to come get your bags again by 4:30pm!) But if you are happy to pre-book storage non-refundably, there are multiple services online that have local stores and hotels signed up as storage locations - costs vary from about $5 to $10 a bag, including insurance. I can't recommend any personally, living downtown I've never needed to use one, but googling 'luggage storage Vancouver BC' brings up several - I'd check those which let you see exactly where the locations are first, then Googlemap the walking directions from the pier.

If you're mobile enough to handle schlepping your bags up and down stairs, there are a couple of options downtown that might be even cheaper than the YWCA Hotel - the Barclay Hotel gets decent reviews within the context of 'simple but safe and clean' accommodations, no frills. Realistically though a room at the Y is as good as it gets - depending on your group size, the Jack'n'Jill rooms which share a bathroom between pairs of double rooms might work out, and those are even less than the regular private bath en suite doubles/queens. A big enough group that 2 or 3 bedrooms are needed might find the 'condo hotels' a good value spend too - Sunset Inn & Suites, Rosedale on Robson, Times Square Suites - but for couples who demand a private bathroom and elevator, there's the Y... and that's about it for cheap, safe, clean and well-located. Sometimes a decent airport hotel looks slightly cheaper than the Y for similar amenities, but by the time you factor in even SkyTrain costs it's often a wash in money budget and always a bigger time suck; if you are not someone comfortable using public transit then assume an extra $80-100 a day to use cabs, Uber etc. from airport area or other suburban cheap hotels to downtown (which is where we keep the pier and 90% of the tourist attractions). There truly is no other good location than downtown for a short visit if you want to see and do stuff.

From your other responses, with 5 people and bags to move I'd suggest either UberXL or the local rideshare Kabu, whose 'plus' service offers 5-pax-plus-bags vehicles. Local cab firms are overwhelmingly 4 seat Prius cars; even their accessible Vans have the middle row removed to remain with 4 passenger seats. If you roll your bags onto Expo or Millennium lines after rush hour, you'll probably get lucky and not see any staff so the fact your bags will be on seats, blocking aisles, or in designated wheelchair spots comes down mostly to your personal ethics - and if you do get unlucky, provided you leave when asked you've only lost the ticket price, the fines are only deployed when people resist orders to leave. But the best option, since from your other responses you've never been here before, would be to simply stay downtown for maximum sightseeing and dining ease which may remove the need for any transportation on cruise day if you can roll your bags around on sidewalks. Even if you did want cabs to get to the pier, you'd be looking at $10 or less per vehicle from most downtown hotels. If even one of you felt like a walk you could easily move all the bags and 4 people in a van taxi... for less than the cost of 4 single zone SkyTrain tickets! The Canada Line does give good access to several modest airport area hotels, but all the other lines have very few hotels near them and the neighbourhoods are heavily residential - you'd have to spend a lot of time on transit every day to do stuff. If you're looking for budget accommodation, the YWCA Hotel (which is slap bang downtown, one of the best-rated hotels at any price in the city, and freshly renovated this very year) has rooms that could have been designed for your party - five beds and a private bathroom - that will be cheaper than any hotel or B&B that isn't a literal fleapit and probably even less than any legal AirB&B, even one in the burbs, that you can find...

Provided you mean the Canada Line to or from the airport I'd go so far as to say Dave may be overselling the difficulty! If you're staying in town pre- or post- and were considering accommodation along the other lines though, personally I would recommend against using SkyTrain unless you're an efficient packer traveling with carry-ons only - zero luggage space on any other line, there is literally nowhere you can put a large suitcase that doesn't break the rules and risk you getting kicked off or fined. Automated trains mean no drivers, so enforcement of rules is rare - but unless you're way out in the boonies a cab or uber just isn't enough more expensive to justify taking any risk whatsover IMO. But if it is the Canada Line, you're golden - if you can wheel your bags along a flat floor and manage to pull the wheels over the tiny gap to access an elevator, then that's all you need to be able to do. All platforms are the same height as the train floors, gaps are very narrow, elevators are available at all stations, it's designed as a fully RORO system. Baggage space on the Canada Line is under the seats, nothing overhead so no lifting needed - if it's busy (i.e. sitting a big bag in the aisle next to you would be getting in the way of other pax) then you really should also be capable of tipping your bag to the ground and sliding it under the seat, but if the carriage is half-empty you can (NB: this is technically breaking the rules, so if any Translink staff or transit cops board the train they might ask you to do it right!) skip stashing your bags underneath. If you've got wee stubby legs, you may even be able to fit a big suitcase in front of your knees when seated - the legroom on the Canada Line is huge, at 6'1" I can easily leave my 21" carryon bag ahead of my legs and my 28" roller case under the seat. Since for cruising purposes most travel is from terminus to terminus, you also never need to worry about not getting a seat - going straight to the airport you're evenagainst rush hour commute direction so the southbound Canada Line is quiet. Flying into town timing is a bit more random - but even if your flight lands at 7am so you're fighting peak northbound commuter numbers, the branch line from YVR is only fellow flyers, no residences there! By the time you hit the main line at Bridgeport, you're already in your seat 3 stops prior, no standing for you 😉

*****!? Last time I checked, your own private towncar between Seattle and Vancouver only cost $400! Cruise transfers used to be priced only a little more than QuickShuttle, US$79-99 for years - the problem was that they didn't always run rather than that they were pricey! Even if car rental prices are still much higher than pre-Covid, you should easily find a one-way car for less; Amtrak Saver tickets remain $34pp if you book before they sell out; Greyhound/Flix are sometimes even cheaper than that!

There are certainly more puffins in Newfie, but there are multiple puffin nesting sites around Nova Scotia. Both your Halifax and Sydney stops would be feasible to do one from - if you were visiting a month later (the puffins will be on land by early May, breeding, but until they actually lay eggs later in May, even June further south, it's irresponsible to visit the islands - visiting earlier would disturb their breeding so while there may be some people there for science, tourist trips close to the nesting burrows are scheduled only after the eggs are laid). It's also easier to see the birds once their eggs hatch - the parents start constantly shuttling back & forth to catch fish for their voracious little pufflings The 2023 NS puffin tourist season begins May 21st for Bird Island (who guarantee you'll see puffins in season) out of Baddeck, which is an hours drive from Sydney; tours to Pearl Island begin in June from Peggy's Cove, which is less than an hour from Halifax. If you're mad keen to see them, and even handle some Pufflings, consider a trip to Iceland in August/September - a major colony there is too close to a town, the lights confuse the new crop of birds, so there's an active 'Puffin Patrol' nightly to safely gather them up and release them further out of town!

Slept on this one - given only spicy/curry as a hard limitation, there's just sooooo many options. Even being a Sunday it doesn't knock too many off the list (although the specific cash only, very local spot I was initially thinking of is unfortunately closed Sundays). So I came back around to the crux of the matter - you've only got a day, two meals (well, three if you skip brekky on the ship), maybe a snack/coffee break, so overwhelming you with options just doesn't seem very sensible! Therefore instead of a scattershot 'bunch of good places all over town' I'm going to give you a rough route to follow with some sightseeing options as well as dining spots - everything connects, so if you're in the mood to walk a lot in smallish chunks, you could do it all on foot... but there are also points where hopping in a cab or a bus to skip the longer walks is a good idea. A few Googlemap links will be embedded for your convenience. The wee boats along False Creek also enable skipping sections if you e.g. like the sound of Granville Island and Chinatown, but don't fancy Mount Pleasant/Broadway corridor - both Aquabus and False Creek Ferries let you hop from the Athlete's Village or Plaza of Nations direct to GI, but FCF are cheaper due to their fare zoning ($5.25 vs $7.25 at the moment). First - drop your bags off upstairs at the Pan Pacific, then hang a left and follow the curve of Canada Place. Turn left on Cordova - you'll see Waterfront Station on your left as you walk down into Gastown, which should help at the end of the day as SkyTrain will be convenient to get out to your hotel. Water Street is probably our biggest tourist drag, more souvenir shops than you can shake a stick at, the Steam Clock (gives a little show on every quarter hour with a bigger one on the hour, hordes will throng all four corners of the intersection around these times trying to get pics/vids - if you've never seen it before, by all means hang around and watch). From the steam clock there are a few routes to choose - I'm mapping the least-obvious one here as it goes through a building - as even good ship coffee basically sucks, if anyone feels the need for tasty locally-roasted coffee then Nemesis is just a block out of your way at 302 W Hastings. The Woodwards building I routed the map through is a great example of a very Vancouvery architectural concept (keep facade of old building, plonk a new tower or two on top with a tree), a cool indoor public space (free piano, weird staircase that goes nowhere art installation, photorealistic 2 sided painting above the doorway of the gastown riot back in the day), an iconic sign (the big rotating W on top of the tower is new - the original is in a display case in the alley you'll walk down) and also has both a supermarket (Nester's) and pharmacy (London Drugs) in case you want to shop for Canadian candies, grab some bottled water for the walk etc. As soon as you peel off Water St you'll leave 90% of the tourists behind - the classic walk is all the way down to Maple Square... but since the Gassy Jack statue got pulled down a couple of years ago, there's really nothing to see except more of the same fake Ye Olde cobbles and cast iron decor that the first block has! Which is why I routed you down onto Pender after the Steam Clock - if you're enjoying Water St by all means continue another block or all the way to Carrall, then turn right and backtrack as needed to catch up with the map locations. Why Pender? Two things that you won't see anywhere else in the world juxtaposed - a totem pole on top of a building (Skwachays Lodge; cross to south side of street and look up - then if you want any kind of First Nations souvenirs, go inside the gallery and buy here, as profits remain with an indigenous owned operation that way and you might even meet the artist as they do an Artist in Residence program) with a Chinatown gate just down the block! Skwachays operates as a regular hotel too - and if you get VERY lucky you might be able to enjoy an indigenous brunch here again by your visit (ground floor cafe space at the back of the gallery, it died before Covid but with now a few bannock trucks and S&B expanding to the airport there's more demand than ever, so I'm quietly hopeful we might see it return... The huge gate across Pender is the second one - the original fell apart, but a metal copy of it was made which can be seen on the next bit of sauntering... a very short walk from the new Gate to the old one (check Streetview) past the Sam Kee building (the thinnest commercial building in the world). The reason I stopped that map where I did isn't to buy stuff in a cheesey gift shop, but because it's right next to the metal copy of the original gate, and also because Google gets confused about where you can actually walk on this block - if the red gate you can see in the Streetview is open, just walk right on in (look down, there's a large inlaid Zodiac on the courtyard surface) past the statue toward the round gate in the wall ahead. That statue is of Dr Sun Yat-Sen - who the park and garden behind the wall is named after. If the red gate is closed, backtrack onto Carrall, head south, take first left into the alleyway instead - this gate is always open when the park & garden are (again, gift shop map point is convenient rather than suggested to buy in!) Happy to spend some money? Head inside the entrance to the garden, enjoy a fascinating guided tour, revel in the insane authenticity of bat-tiles, smashed teacups, real Taishu stone, etc. etc. Or if you want to get a vibe of the place without spending a penny, check out the city park through the round gate (if this is closed, just follow the wall - there's a narrow covered passage that leads to another gate into the park) which shares the same pond. While the rocks on this side are knockoffs imported from Mexico and the tiles concrete rather than artisan-made you can still sit in a nice gazebo by the water looking at lillies and turtles, and Koi if the otters haven't massacred them recently! The Chinese Cultural Centre is on the east side of the park and well worth a visit - suggested donation rather than tickets required - if it's 11am already. From here, jink back up onto Pender - if it's late enough and you're feeling like BBQ for lunch then Chinatown BBQ; if it's too early for lunch then just a snack stop in New Town bakery (their apple pies are quite literally world famous; Ryan Reynolds smuggles them over the border [NSFW]; they are the things that McDonalds Apple Pies hope to become after their deaths; in their pastry religion, the good pies get to be reincarnated as New Town pies😉); if you feel like something more traditionally brunchy, then whether you head across on Keefer or Pender from the garden head south on Main, past where Jimi Hendrix spent a few years hanging with his granny, Nora, who cooked at Vie's Chicken & Steak - now a dirtcheap student residence, but with a weird little copy of the Seattle Hendrix grave monument outside - to the Hunnybee Bruncheonette at Union & Gore. As the name suggests, Hunnybee is a great brunch option - and these two buildings are about the only remnants of Vancouver's African-Canadian neighbourhood of Hogan's Alley. I also stuck a couple of quirky but delicious food options on this map, Crackle Creme (dessert cafe, creme brulee is their big thing but also proper Liege waffles, macarons etc.) and Harvest Community Foods which does homemade noodles and a very short list of other prepared foods to take out or sit-in at their handful of seats (it's mostly a local, organic, grocery store). E. Georgia St, a block up, also contains two heavy-hitters in the local noodles with broth game, Fat Mao and The Ramen Butcher, so if it's a nice day you could grab a takeout bowl from each and have your own noodle review session! If you're craving a Full Irish Breakfast, then Chinatown is weirdly enough a great place for that too - the Irish Heather on Georgia does weekend brunches with both black and white puddings (although they seem to have ditched their soda farls for sourdough these days, so for a more traditional bread head a few blocks south on Main to Johnnie Foxes where soda bread remains available - as well as a barely-portable brekky sammich, probably the biggest in the city, a big slab of baguette stuffed full of unhealthy meats!) Unless you fancy an Irish brekky though, this would be the time to hop a bus - anything going southbound on Main (003, 008, 019) takes you up the hill into Mount Pleasant. Option - before, or instead of, Mount Pleasant you can pop into the newest downtown neighbourhood, The Village, where the athletes were housed in the 2010 Olympics. There isn't really any Olympic stuff left aside from the buildings (now condos and rentals), but there are a fair few restos - Tap & Barrel's original location is on the water here, a great 'meal with a view' option, decent pub grub at not too gougey prices, great beer list. Craft is inside a historic building, the old Salt warehouse, but otherwise has zero to recommend it (craptons of beers, but like 90% of them are boring macro lagers, and a notoriously bad kitchen). It's a nice, family-friendly area to walk through with a few remnants of the old rail line, some nice public art, the Seawall and wee ferries, but in terms of food you're definitely better off continuing up into Mount Pleasant. I like to walk folks through both as a comparison between New and Old Vancouver, stuck right next to each other, while explaining what False Creek used to be like when it was an industrial zone - but unless you organize a guided tour there's not much to actually see. Food-related options in Mount Pleasant abound, very few chains; Main Street was also the original focus of an annual Muralfest for several years - they are more widely scattered across the city now, but many murals are visible from Main itself as you bus up the hill. All are pictured in the gallery here, so if you spot some you particularly like you can see exactly where you need to go to see them live - there are also some neighbourhood maps for mini self-guided tours. This is Vancouver's original suburb - the first neighbourhood built outside the core, the first streetcar line, and many historic-by-Vancouver-standards buildings remain. Popular spots with locals, and the tourists who do manage to get outside the core, include (from south to north heading up towards Broadway) Earnest Ice Cream @ Quebec & 2nd (queues can extend over a block on a hot weekend day!); the Swiss Bakery (does a Cronut by any other name taste as sweet? Find out here, with their Frissants!); Brassneck Brewing (not food, but beer - you might be thirsty after walking up the hill! - although there's usually a Food Truck outside); I'm one of the few people I know who does not frequent Cartems Donuts regularly (I'm diabetic, only treat myself to donuts twice a year, so I stick to Swiss Bakery Frissants here or Blue Star's blueberry bourbon basil brioches in Portland - Cartems are mostly old-school cake-style so just don't quite do it for me). If you're doing this walk out of order and it's evening, then Como Taperia (outstanding Spanish), Bar Susu (quirky as hell, but delish), and The Narrow (basement dive bar, relative bargain drinks and food that's very good Mexican... by Vancouver standards, so don't eat here if you have actually-good Mexican food at home!) all pop into the mix, but if you're looking for a superb locavore dinner, even a possible Elk-serving resto with a little luck, in this neck of the woods then I cannot recommend Burdock & Co highly enough - Andrea Carlson somehow remains among our unsung kitchen heroes despite being one of the hardest-working and best chefs in the city (she also owns - and cooks for - Harvest and Bar Gobo, the woman is a workaholic!) Now we're turning Westward, along Broadway - another chance to hop a bus, as the real big hit is pretty far along (Salmon & Bannock). For most visitors, this is a prime street for eating - worth the annoyance of longterm roadworks as the new SkyTrain line gets constructed - but for your group I'll only suggest a couple of options other than S&B as the Malay, Indian, and most spicier Chinese options need avoided for you guys: Peaceful @ B'way & Ash (hand-pulled noodles, very rare, but be careful as the menu does run spicy - avoid any Szechuan offerings and definitely not the DanDan noodles unless someone in your party does like it hot! If a little heat can be tolerated, and a LOT of cumin, then the iconic dish to have would be the cumin lamb over noodles; their beef rolls are excellent, a classic Northern Chinese dish that's hard to find most places, and they do pretty good XLB too, neither of these are hot-spicy at all; given how rare Xinjiang cuisine is I do feel this is a worthy spot to recommend even with your party's spice issues!) and Dynasty (linked last time around; mostly Cantonese so many not-spicy dishes). Now we're heading back toward the core, via Granville Island - walking down from Broadway isn't too bad, much better than the opposite direction as the hills are very steep here with some sidewalks having actual stairs built in! If you've made it as far as S&B, this map will take you the shortest walking route - and includes a little bit of Seawall. 6th Ave is very much a commuter road, very limited pedestrian crossings and access down to the Seawall, but if you only went as far west as Dynasty you can easily get down through Charleson park to the Seawall. I've used the Public Market as the end point on GI for both, as that's the place most folks want to see - it will be busy until at least mid-afternoon, but more tolerable than peak summer when frankly I avoid the market entirely despite how good some of the butchers etc. are! Lee's Donuts are super famous (if old-school jellies are your thing, this would be the place to go), and there are a ton of food-related stalls selling choccies, macarons etc. as well as more substantial fare. Two breweries (Dockside has the better food and a nice outdoor dining area; GI has better beer IMO), a Sake maker, various 'real' restos for a proper sitdown meal - there's not really any secret spots given how many tourists visit GI, but if there's anywhere I would say gets the lowest proportion of tourists compared to locals it would be Tony's (a very old school, fry a bunch of things from the sea, eat it with your fingers kind of place) or, if you fancy treating yourselves to a lobster or crab picnic, hit up The Lobster Man who will cook a crustacean you pick from their tanks and even sell you cutlery, lemons, bread etc. to go with it if you don't want to walk over into the market to acquire the fixins! From GI back into the core, there's a very convenient bus service (050 has a stop on 2nd Ave, and then takes you to Granville & Hastings, only 400yards from the PP hotel) or you could use the wee boats again to get across False Creek and walk up Hornby street. While normally 4 bums on seats in a cab works out cheaper than 4 bus tickets for short hops around town, GI is a nightmare for slow traffic - it might cost more to drive 500 yards off the island than the rest of the ~2 mile trip - and the indirect routing needed to get up the bridge height makes for probably an average of $20-25, so I'd do the bus myself. A transit day pass would be more expensive than just buying 2 bus tickets and a SkyTrain ride separately (you only start saving with the fourth trip) - weekends it's all just 1 zone fares, so about US$7ppin total, and if everyone has tappable Mastercards/Visas or Apple/Samsung/Google Pay phones you can just tap your cards on buses as you board and SkyTrain faregates as you enter/exit stations with the correct amounts being billed by the system so no need to fiddle with exact change on buses; it's actually more convenient to just tap your cards than to find a machine or shop to sell you a day pass! Note that while the Seabus over to the North Shore is part of Translink, the wee boats on False Creek are private so they do need paid for separately. Total distance looping from the PP all the way back to it is definitely more than you'll want to walk in total, but it's in very manageable chunks - since you'll actually only be sitting down in a couple of the many dining spots listed it's quite doable as a single day wander, especially if you hop in a cab or bus for the uphill on Main and the GI back the PP stretch. If you visit the Sun Yat-Sen garden, maybe after a shortish downtown attraction like FlyOverCanada at the pier or the Harbour Centre viewing floor first, the timing should be pretty good for lunching in Chinatown; pootling around the Village and Mount Pleasants public art, a coffee or beer stop, then along the Seawall or wee ferry to Granville Island (False Creek Ferries also go all the way out to the Maritime Museum, which is almost next-door to the Museum of Vancouver and Space Center, if the weather's sucky and you want to do more indoor stuff) fills your afternoon before you head for dinner wherever entices you the most - if you're up for a multi-location, multi-course meal then the Main Street spots I listed could be turned into a very nice combo as you order a dish and a drink in each and move on to the next (I'd start at the top of the hill and work down myself!) Apologies for the ridiculous length of the post!!!

Totally possible - but only if you do it yourself or hire a guide-with-a-vehicle at very much ka-ching pricing. 1) Ferry & rent a car - undoubtedly the most flexible, but still involves a fair whack of time as the trip realistically takes an absolute minimum of 2.5 hours each way by the time you factor in drive time from downtown to ferry, then ferry to Butchart (return trip too!), the requirement to be early for ferry resos, so still a ballpark 8-10 hour day. 2) Fly and rent a car on the island - pricier, but much quicker, and depending where you're staying may involve literally just a short walk between your hotel and the floatplanes or choppers. 3) Hire a guide with a vehicle for either 4 hours (collect you in Victoria if you fly, or Schwartz Bay if you ferry, and take you to Butchart, wait for you or even show you around the gardens, back to transpo) or ~10 hours (collect you at Vancouver hotel, drive you around all day) 4) Just use taxis instead of a guide if you just want transpo on the Island to/from Butchart 5) Charter a floatplane, land right at the dock in Butchart, fly home from there when done (absolutely hands down the fastest possible method, hella pricey but perhaps less than a guide in their car for 10 hours from Van!) Even this is going to work out to ~2 hours + time at Butchart - about half the time of doing a drive by ferry both ways! 6) Want it cheap? Public Transit plus Ferry - there's a bus that connects with the ferry timings and goes to Butchart! Less flexible than a car, as it's a once per hour service even in Summer, but at $5pp for a Day Pass on the island, on top of max $11 for a Day Pass here in Vancouver plus ferry at $18pp (plus a currently 4% Fuel charge, Seniors and kids pay less, all prices CAD) you can't beat the price... and it's actually fairly efficient in timing as walk-on pax don't need resos for the ferries so the timings of the buses on this end usually mean you're on a ship that leaves within ~30mins. So quicker than the bus tours, with more time at the gardnes, but still a 9-11 hour ballpark. Honestly, unless you have Butchart on your literal bucket list it's not worth ANY of these options... and if you do have it as a Must Do Before I Die, then the most sensible option is to extend your trip either before or after the cruise with a night or two in Victoria, fly into or out of YYJ, save the time of repeating the same trip twice in one day. And there's plenty in just Victoria to justify a couple of days, let alone other parts of the Island...

I think you got almost all the pertinent info, but just to fill in a couple of blanks about the very specific details: ignore the first, really obvious, SkyTrain entrance just outside the pier (it goes to the wrong platform, for an entirely different route out to the eastern 'burbs - and while you *can* make your way around the station internally to the correct one, it's much more hassle with up and down levels required so better to just stay on the sidewalk...) and turn left on Cordova. The main station building is impossible to miss - huge, on your left, big pillars outside, lots of doors - and while the ticket vending machines are also easily spotted inside, they don't save you any money if you are all adults but not Seniors. If everyone in your party has a credit card with a tappable chip (or Apple/Samsung/Google Pay enabled on their phones) don't even bother buying a ticket! Instead, open the fare gates by tapping them with your card or phone. Do the same to exit and you'll be charged the correct number of Zones for the time of day, at inter-bank rates of currency conversion from $CAD. If someone doesn't have a way to tap, or really wants to save the extra buck for being a Senior, the TVMs are fairly simple - all you need to know is that you need a 2 Zone Fare to YVR on a weekday morning. When you are on the correct platform (Canada Line, right underneath the main concourse when you first enter, there are stairs and escalators and an elevator if bags are heavy) there will be alternating trains to the airport (just says YVR) and to Richmond-Brighouse - all the signage and the front of the train clearly say which way the next train is going. If you still somehow manage to get on the wrong one, there is more signage and verbal announcements - get off at any station, get on the next train, no need to change platforms or tap gates. If you self-disembark in the first group, I'd guess that you will be arriving at YVR approx. 8:15am - before any other cruise pax, but after local same-day business flyers and the first tranche of early Eastbound flights, so all queues should be pretty quiet. The kiosks for US CBP are quick & easy, Security is slightly less annoying than in the US, so the only oddity is how checked bags work - because of CBP Prescreening you do not just hand them over to the check-in staff and watch them zip away on a conveyor belt. Instead there's a designated bag drop after check-in - signed, and generally if you follow anyone with a big bag that's where they're going too! Even if this was a 3 ship day I wouldn't be worried about a US-bound flight at 1:20pm; with just 2 ships your biggest issue is likely to be that you get to YVR so early that you will not be allowed to check your bag! They often enforce their 'no more than 4 hours before your flight' policy - but if it's quiet enough you might be allowed to drop your bag a bit early though. Worst case, check out some of our awesome public art, go watch planes land and take off in the viewing lounge, grab a coffee etc. until you're able to get your bag dropped. There's more nice art & stuff past Security too, but I'd still bring a good book as I reckon you will have at least 3 hours to kill at YVR before you get to board a 1:20pm flight!

No way I'd head all the way to Richmond on such a short stop OP - but that's very unusual timing for Vancouver, as CBP will have stopped work before your ship arrives and won't be back until 7am next day... so unless it's bracketed by both a previous Canadian stop and another afterward it doesn't seem possible without throwing a lot of money at them for overtime especially for your vessel. Any chance you're misreading the schedule and it's 7AM to midnight? Or maybe even that you mean Victoria rather than Vancouver, which certainly does frequently have 4-6 hour stops on RT cruises out of Seattle, SF, LA? If this is your Sep 9 Royal Princess cruise, then you're definitely visiting Victoria not Vancouver - unless you join enough B2Bs together to be sailing in to Vancouver on Sep 25th at 00:45am, with and 8:45pm departure scheduled...

Many posts over many years have confirmed that as long as you tell the bellhops when you check in that you would like this done the day you check out, they'll make it happen! Someone even posted a pic of a card they had been handed with the 'suggested tip' for the service, so it seems to be an official unofficial policy 😉

Nice! And that $500 saving will pay for a very, very swanky dinner - even more if it's USD! Get it all in Loonies, pour them in the bath, and treat yourself to a Scrooge McDuck session before spending it 😉

1 - can't help here, never cruised into Tdot! 2 - unfortunately for the short-term, great for the long-, there's some MAJOR construction happening at Union Station. Any info about which doors and ramps are best to get straight to X part of the station could be rather variable, so I'll point you to the official construction page - if you check that near your date, hopefully there will be a relevant map of the station as it is at that time. 3 - the same tech that scans your credit card should be available to anyone checking for payments on board, they'll just bloop your CC and check it is in the system. 4 - are you sure you don't want to hang out in the city/see some stuff? There are some top-notch sights!

Thanks for the confirmation Dennis - I was 90% sure that was the situation, but thought better safe than sorry to warn folks to ensure they searched for only the YWCA just in case they got a very big surprise on arrival!!!

If the ship is only offering short tours like the Summit rail, a valid concern... but if the ship is offering a tour to the same place, book Chilkoot instead - there's literally one road and one railway, if something goes pear-shaped it impacts everyone on that mode of transport and all the local providers pitch in to help out Last time we were there the train literally burst into flames en route - while we couldn't help those folks stranded on the railway, all the folks who had done 'bus first' and were waiting for the train to arrive to take them back down the hill we could help... our driver waited almost an hour before sat phone confirmation came through about the train being kaput, then loaded up every seat with pax who had booked the train and brought them all down the Skagway by road, as did several other buses. You have no extra risk whatsoever here with a ship vs. indy tour - the exact same guarantee is offered by the good local providers like Chilkoot (get you to next port). No ship tour anywhere ever guarantees the ship will wait for you, only to get you to where you need to be by whatever means - the same as the good indy companies...

The ship will want you long gone before 10am! Names will probably start being called by 9:30am at the latest, politely demanding that you get the heck off so CBP can confrim the ship is 'zeroed out.' While I'd definitely be inclined to hit the dining room for brekky rather than hustling to be the very first folks off, since your bags will be dealt with you should be able to Self Disembark easily with whatever handluggage you are keeping for the day. Seattle's a pretty good town for pootling around downtown, easy to fill a lot of hours, so the earlier you get going, the better! Otherwise your plans sound sensible - late in the day the market should be less packed than if you went in the morning (a lot of folks visit before they embark, so unless you can get there really early it seems to be very busy from as early as 9am right through until the end of lunchtime, after which it's quieter again). The whole 'campus' around the Needle has a lot of things to see, you could fill your whole time in the various museums & science centre. Depending on your group, Bill Spiedels Underground tour might be of interest - with the right expectations it's informative and interesting (but NB: that it is not all underground, nor are the underground spots connected, so it's more of a 'walk around, popping into various basements and sub-basements, then back up and a short walk to the next building' affair). If you are going to be down in Pioneer Square, then also consider heading up top in Smith Tower rather than (or as well as!) the Space Needle - personally I feel that the Seattle Skyline needs the Needle to feel like you are seeing it correctly... so viewing from the needle is just somehow wrong... Seattle free walking tours are great value - a few different routes, and hand over a tip that reflects how much you enjoyed the tour at the end. SAM - the art museum - is another downtown site we've visited several times.

Regardless of where the stops are, it's godawful value (a quick skim of HAL website shows prices FROM $140pp? Kids price I guess without the booze option so cheaper?). Similar local tours run significantly less, are priced in CAD, and unless it's a specifically-dessert-focused tour tend to run a much more balanced menu. Personally I find even the well-reviewed local food tours bad value because I'm both a foodie and an amateur history buff, so it's rare I learn anything about the city or the food items - I only book them if there's a hefty Groupon or similar discount as you could literally buy a full-size serving of everything you eat for half the price these local tours run. But if you're new to Victoria, I think that a couple of hours of informed chat with an array of samples is pretty fairly-priced at the CAD$80pp mark of the linked tour above... well under half what the ship tour costs by the time you convert from USD!!!

YWCA (an actual hotel - there is also a YMCA but that's a whole 'nother ballgame) is by far the best combo of location, quality and price - since Covid it's actually climbed up the overall rankings of Tripadvisor, Expedia etc. significantly (the new tower is very shiny; the original one is also being renovated now so will also be shiny by the start of cruise season) to within the top 10 of all hotels regardless of price! It was consistently top 20 since forever. Every other hotel downtown that is comparable in price, or even sometimes cheaper, is a Ye Olde Building conversion, no elevator, mostly paper-thin walls, etc. etc. If it's available, book it right now (it always sells out the regular rooms on precruise nights). Some airport hotels might be similar in price, but they're rarely cheaper - and anything convenient for SkyTrain is almost certainly the same price or higher than the Y, with only the older, more Motel style properties by the highways likely to beat the price by more than a handful of dollars - but if you're actually willing to book a 'shared bath down the hall' room at the Y you'll save even more (and if you're two couples, the perfect setup is the 'Jack & Jill' paired rooms which share a single bathroom between them - no randos, just your travel buddies to fight for shower time with)

While there's a ton of seafood in Vancouver, straight-up 'seafood primary' menus with a more casual, chillaxed vibe are hard to find - swanky places easy, and cheap almost-all-fried spots likewise, but in-between is much trickier. If the vibe is most important I'd choose a more general resto, or even better a pub if you only need a few fishy items to be happy - Tap & Barrel have a pretty reliable kitchen and as long as you order a drink now & again no hassle to vacate the inside tables at least. Rogue in Waterfront Station has some lovely nooks here and there, so you can find some really quiet areas - and they've got a very broad menu. But if the seafood focus is the important thing, the closest likely match for your requested menu and vibe I can think of downtown near Canada Place is Chewie's Steam & Oyster Bar - great happy hour, a nice high ceiling so while it is a bit noisy it stays more 'background buzz' than 'shout across the table' levels, and while it's in the name they do have plenty other items than oysters. I've never been a huge oyster fan personally, but if you are then either of the Rodney's branches are reliable for the food and definitely casual - but the vibe runs more toward frenetic than relaxed. Oyster Express in Chinatown isn't on tourist radar, or even most locals', so it tends to run a lot quieter than Rodneys - a very tight menu (grilled cheese, wings, otherwise it's pretty much all shellfish) though, so unless you're pretty much all about the oysters... Blue Water Cafe remains about the best in town for cooked seafood and probably the best Western spot for their raw selections; but it's far from cheap, and while the service is excellent the general vibe runs a bit snooty - more the other patrons than the staff, there's no actual dress code but most folks dress up. If you don't mind getting out of the core, The Fish Counter in Mount Pleasant might be just the place - it's very much a local crowd rather than packed with tourists so it's not hard to get a table even in summer; definitely casual and relaxed - they're more of a fishmonger that cooks than a resto in philosophy. Menu is never wide, very seasonal, but they know their fish right from who hooked it all the way down the chain to your plate - if you want to chat about seafood this is where I'd send you before anywhere else in the city. Lastly, and indirectly, reviews from folks I know well enough to trust their tastes align closely enough with my own, Hook Seabar might work for you - a bit of a hike from Canada Place, but there's lots of reasons to be down in English Bay anyway.

Good for your daughter! Does her school have an Indigenous resource person on staff? I've been lucky enough to meet a few of those volunteering in Vancouver schools, always love picking their brains for new info. On your port list, I recall that the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan was obviously packed with totem-focused indigenous info and well worth a visit; but Sitka is an absolute goldmine of info (mostly Tlingit, but others too). As well as the totem park be sure to get into the Sheldon Jackson museum which has permanent exhibits of not just the local Tlingit but also some arctic peoples, IIRC Inuit and Aleut, and others - I found some of the exhibits here were better than at MOA in Vancouver which is really saying something. The fact that there were actual battles between Tlingit and Russian forces - naval vessels and modern (for the time, first decade of 1800s) firearms, hundreds of fighters on both sides, forts constructed etc. - was brand new info for me my first visit to Sitka; depending how dark you want to go, there is also the Sheldon Jackson residential school - I have no doubt your daughter has been hearing something about the tragedies of our own Canadian system, at 8yo I'd be inclined to avoid getting into that material though unless your daughter specifically asks (volunteering here with a lot of kids, including First Nations, in the 5-11 range I've learned to be guided by them - sometimes the more factual info they get the better they can handle the scary stuff, as their own imaginations can make it even worse than reality if left vague...) Some of the Russian sites have good Indigenous peoples info, from another perspective - the particular (arch)Bishop most associated with the eponymous house, Ivan Popov/Saint Innocent, did a lot of linguistic work to document and learn native languages (if you can talk to the locals it's much easier to persuade them to join your church!) so there's a fair whack of 'look how smart and how nice to the natives he was!' exhibits within. As with many North American oral cultures, there really wasn't a native alphabet used so along with the likes of James Evans in Canada Popov was one of the first to create a detailed system of writing - which was primarily used to translate Bible passages by both men as part of their missionary work, but does still get referenced by linguists today (since books from the 1800s are well out of copyright, you can find legal PDF and ebook versions in e.g. the Internet Archive - the basic 'Grammars' were designed to teach people how to read & write so your DD might be capable of reading some of them herself, but modern online resources like Digitalsqewlets and First Voices make nailing pronunciations so much easier!) I absolutely loved Sitka for this unique mix of Russian/American/Indigenous cultures - some of it might skew a bit intellectual for a youngster but if she's keen you couldn't have picked a better port stop. I even found all the churchy stuff fascinating despite being an atheist - but, again, not knowing yourself or your DD I'll leave ponderings on religion for you to assess!

Gave some suggestions already for further-away-but-still-in-Vancouver Chinese dining on your more general thread. Depending how far you're happy to walk from the PP there's a branch of Peaceful a little under a half-mile away on Dunsmuir; Asian Heritage Eatery is a bit closer - I can't speak to the downtown branch directly, but I've enjoyed delivery food from their Broadway location several times since Covid started; ChongQing has been a reliable Szechuan spot for many years, although downtown branch did get a bit wobbly on consistency during Covid times I'd still risk a visit; Dinesty on Robson is just over a mile, but if you're a fan of sitting down to a huge array of dumplings well worth the walk. Kirin has a downtown branch on Alberni, 3/4 mile, that's your best bet for a fancy dim sum meal walking from the PP.