Flight

[beeandkmon]

Arriving in Vancouver at 8:00 am- what is the earliest flight time you all would recommend? Any transportation suggestions to the airport? 

[Crew News]

44 minutes ago, beeandkmon said:

Arriving in Vancouver at 8:00 am- what is the earliest flight time you all would recommend? Any transportation suggestions to the airport? 

 

My experience is departure from the ship 30 minutes after arrival time if you carry all of your luggage, the ride to the airport is around 35 minutes, airline check-in 15 minutes, Security at least 30 minutes,  US immigration five minutes, and boarding 30 minutes before flight departure.  Based on the aforementioned, an 11:00 AM flight is doable if no glitches.  Flights after noon would be safer choices.

[Ashland]

Take a taxi and get in line early...it's crowded. At Canada Place you might also consider walking across the underground parking lot take the elevator up into the hotel lobby (Pan Pacific) and take a taxi from there also. We haven't done this but have heard that many cruiser's have and it's worked out for them.

 

Try for a 12:00pm-1:00pm flight...YVR in our opinion can be slow going..it has been on occasion for us. 

Edited March 26, 2019 by Ashland

[fishywood]

If you can manage your luggage yourself the entire way there is the Skytrain. After going through Canadian Customs/Immigration just say to one of the baggage hall staff you want to walk out on your own and they will let you take the elevator directly up to street level outside the Pan Pacific bypassing all the crowds waiting for taxis/transfers/tour buses. Its about a half mile walk to the Skytrain entrance that has an elevator down (Cordova Street entrance to Waterfront station). Figure about 90 minutes from when you walk off the ship (or find your luggage in the claim area) to reaching YVR, then I would allow another two hours to be safe; check in lines for cattle class may be a good bit longer than 15 minutes, especially on a weekend (but otherwise the times estimated above are a good average).

 

So if you expect to be off by 8:30 you can book noon or a bit before; if you would rather go the taxi route as previously suggested you may get there a lot earlier. Or be stuck in a queue at Canada Place for the better part of an hour. To me there's just too many variables (again, especially on a weekend with all four berths occupied) to risk earlier than 12:30-ish. Just depends on how lucky, and able to hustle, you feel you will be.

[martincath]

Personally I always recommend an overnight stay (or three, or twelve) - there's more to see and do here than in all the AK ports combined, so you really should logically spend a couple of days longer in Vancouver than the number of days of your cruise;-)

 

Flights eastward tend to be clustered very early or very late in the day; midday flights being either less direct or a lot more expensive. It can be cheaper to stay in a hotel then get a flight first thing next morning as well as leading to much less stress at the airport as ANY flight before 9am is 100% safe from those annoying cruisers who start flooding into YVR and clogging up all the lines the day they disembark...;-)

 

But if you absolutely have to be back at work next morning so disembarkation day flight is your only option, the info above is pretty sensible except for the SkyTrain info - it's less than 400 yards to the Cordova main doors into Waterfront, and the trip takes 26mins end to end, and frequency in the mornings is rarely worse than 7mins. Even if you literally just miss a train you will never need to spend more than ~45mins total from Canada Place to YVR. SkyTrain is only slower than a cab if there is basically no wait at the cab line - there's never any traffic to worry about!

 

All this means if you self-disembark and know how to get to SkyTrain, you can safely book a flight as early as 11am - since you'll beat your fellow pax off the ship there won't be much of a queue for check-in, security or immigration. Don't self-disembark? you definitely want to push that until noon or later. Have Global Entry or NEXUS? these expedite both Security and Immigration so lop another half-hour off those times.