Victoria in one day from Vancouver

I will be staying in downtown Vancouver for two nights/days following a cruise and would like to spend a day in Victoria.

What is the best way to visit Victoria, possibly including Butchart Gardens, in one day? It seems that the ferry is quite a distance from downtown Vancouver. Is it best to arrange a tour using coach/ferry transport, or is there an efficient way to get from Vancouver to Victoria independently?

Personally I'm of the view that a day around Victoria compared to a day in Vancouver is a very poor choice - you give up many local sights that can be easily reached and spend many hours traveling. But maybe you've got Butchart on your bucket list so for you the hassle is worth it so I'll throw out your options:

The best way to see the Island is to give it more than one day. Since YYJ (Victoria) is an international airport, you can change your flights home to YYJ and may end up being just as efficient as flying out of YVR (Vancouver) - since many US-bound flights involve at least 1 transfer from YVR anyway. If you can swing this, you immediately save one of the mainland to Island travel legs (anything from 45mins to 4 hours depending on what your mode of transport was).

Next best (or 'least bad') is to just do a day trip, but to fly both ways - you can take Helijet or Harbour Air from downtown Vancouver right into downtown Victoria. It's less than 40mins - my wife allocates a total of 1 hour each way including walk or taxi to and from the 'airports' and required check-in process. This immediately saves you 5+ hours over the packaged bus/ferry day trips - but it ain't cheap! Depending on the day and time of the flight, you should be able to find a total price for both legs somewhere south of $400 return, maybe even under $300 with a bit of luck.

Another potentially viable option, if you planned to do a whalewatch while in Victoria, is to take a one-way whalewatch cruise from Vancouver to Victoria then fly back. This keeps the first leg of travel time at about the 3.5 hour mark, but you're actively looking for whales en route so it's not just a slow ride through the islands. I think that's pretty much exactly $300pp, plus the flight back at around $150+, so it's about the same price as just flying both ways and paying for a whalewatch tour when you get to Victoria - but the timing is more efficient done this way.

To see Butchart from Victoria, take a CVS shuttle bus - includes stop at the Butterfly Gardens and Butchart, hourly trips for most of the day, approx $80pp.

You could take V2V 'luxury ferry' but frankly it's a ridiculous price - even the cheapest ticket isn't much of a deal, despite being a high speed cat it doesn't sail fast, and the required check-in time is 4x more than at the airport! It's simply a horribly inefficient service, with extremely limited times on top of that.

Independent use of the regular BC Ferries can be done dirt-cheap - take public transit on both sides. There's actually a bus from the ferry terminal that meets the incoming ferries and goes over to Butchart; another to downtown; and a day pass is only $5pp. On this side a day pass is pricier at $10pp but you get to use both SkyTrain and buses seamlessly - and you need both to get to either ferry terminal. Ferry itself is about $20 for a walkon passenger - and since you never need to book a departure time, it's actually quicker to walk on than to drive on. Not much money, but LOTS of time spent - I'd estimate 8 hours of your day on buses, SkyTrain & boats in total, which isn't actually much less than the coach/ferry tours!

Car rental for the day really helps cut travel time down on the Island - and gives you options about routes, so you can avoid repeating the exact same trip twice in one day. It does add approx $110 for the return car fare to the ferry rides, but it enables you to use the Tsawwasen route one way and Horseshoe Bay the other which gets you a little bit of driving on the Sea to Sky highway over here and a wee trip up to Nanaimo on the Island. Your own car also opens up some really good stuff on the Island that you simply cannot see on a day trip - especially if combined with an overnight. Cathedral Grove is, to me, the single best thing about the Island; there's a tremendous air museum; many wee villages and beautiful bits of coastline; goats roaming around on roofs; cheese & winemakers and other artisans to shop with.

We took an organized tour that took us by Ferry over to Victoria and then over to Butchart Gardens on our first visit and also allows time for touring the downtown area of Victoria. I believe it was on Grey lines.

Keith