Vancouver Post Cruise-Hotel & Transportation ?

[melindda]

Hi, we will be getting off our ship early am and have an 8:45am flight the following morning.  Here are my questions:

 

Stay near the port (downtown) area and drop off our luggage at the hotel -  Spend the day sightseeing etc, have dinner downtown area and figure out the best way to the airport in the morning?

Other option - drop off our luggage at a storage place - pick it up after a day of sightseeing and maybe dinner and reserve a hotel near the airport?

 

Would appreciate any thoughts or helpful hints.

[Heidi13]

You didn't mention whether flying domestic, US or International, so assuming you probably want to be at the airport between 06:00 and 06:30, I would probably opt for an airport hotel that provides an airport shuttle.

 

Luggage storage is available at Canada Place - CDS Baggage, who provide similar services at YVR. The hotel at Canada Place - Pan Pacific has accepted luggage for storage from non-guests. Believe they charge $5 per bag. After dinner you can taxi to an airport hotel, or take Skytrain out to the airport, then an airport shuttle to your hotel.

 

If you opt to stay downtown, they have all the usual large chains within a short walk of the cruise terminal. However, rates are high. The most reasonable priced hotel downtown is probably the YWCA, on Beatty Street, which is about 1 mile from the cruise terminal.

[martincath]

Hmmm - luggage storage facility at the pier closes at 4:30pm, so that leaves 2 viable options before heading to an airport hotel after a full day downtown: either stash them at the Pan Pacific or ship your bags to YVR from the pier ($40 gets your first 4 bags sent ahead of you by CDS, the pier storage folks; their YVR offices are open until at least 11:30pm so it's easy to spend all day downtown, have dinner downtown, even take in a show/post dinner drinkies then head to airport unencumbered to collect your bags and shuttle to an airport hotel).

 

Still, I'd be inclined to price up the YWCA Hotel compared to an airport hotel + bag storage costs (and I'd be shocked if you did not find it to be cheaper, as well as better-reviewed than any but the fanciest of airport hotels). Getting to YVR for an 8:45am flight is honestly about as fast from downtown as it is from most airport hotels - there's only one shuttle per hotel so unless you get lucky and check out right as it is about to leave, you have anything from 20-60 minutes before it circles back to the hotel to start the next trip (some 'airport' hotels are actually further from the airport than downtown hotels). A cab from any downtown hotel, at 6am any day, will take no more than 35mins - even on weekdays you are going against commuter flow. Some of the more distant 'airport' hotels though, you are stuck going with commuters in the same direction so it could easily be a longer drive than that!

 

The important thing is that you are guaranteed to beat ALL cruisers who arrive on their ship the day you fly out. Whether it's a US-bound flight, Int'l or Domestic the biggest delays are when thousands of pax are all heading to YVR within a couple of hours to clog up all the queues. 2 hours early is more than enough even for US flights (where Preclearance adds extra time to the process) as long as you arrive at YVR by 8am - the earliest possible cruisers will just about find it possible to get there by 8:15am, with queues really starting to build from ~9:30am when the first bus transfers start rolling in.

Edited April 27, 2019 by martincath

[melindda]

Okay, thanks!  So what I gather from your info is to stay in the downtown area - see the sights, have dinner and deal with the airport (international) in the morning.

 

So some quick help with hotel - easy location - something nice - it will kind of be a drop and run, sleep and go- LOL!  One that I am considering is Hotel Blu Vancouver.  Pricing on some of the others are quite high as we are looking for 1 nite in early July.

[martincath]

Blu is a solid location - right around the corner from the Y, a touch under a mile from the pier so a very short cab ride but also walkable even with luggage. Both HOHOs stop close by too if you were considering that for your day of sightseeing.

[hallux]

On 4/27/2019 at 3:40 PM, Heidi13 said:

Luggage storage is available at Canada Place - CDS Baggage

 

According to someone I spoke to in the terminal after debarking the NCL Bliss on Saturday this is no longer an option starting this year.  The Pan Pacific Hotel next door stored my bag for $5 CAD, without having a reservation to stay the night (I had an 11 PM flight).  The CDS site has either not been updated or the employee in the terminal was wrong as the site does say they provide this service at the cruise terminal seasonally from May to September.  No worries, the $35 CAD savings was worth the small hassle to drag my bag down to the rail station.