Vancouver: Rental Car RETURN

[TMLAalum]

We hopefully will be boarding the Celebrity Millennium on Sept. 9 2021! Prior to the cruise we plan on a week in the Canadian Rockies renting a car out of the Calgary airport and returning it the day prior to the cruise in Vancouver.

 

Ideally we can drop it at the Pan Pacific or Sandman @ 4:30 on 9/8, but currently the rental car offices in those hotels are closed, and even if open, it seems their hours are limited to mornings. Can anyone provide more info about these locations for rental car return? What other locations relatively close to Canada Place could work?

 

 

[Philob]

If your staying at the Pan Pacific or nearby you can check in first and then drive out (30 minutes?) to Vancouver (YVR) Airport and drop the car off there.  Take the Skytrain to Waterfront Station.  The station is next door to the Pan Pacific. 

[martincath]

With a Calgary-Vancouver one-way I think that you may well find it cheaper to book airport to airport even with the extra padding of airport car rental tax that applies at YYC, as it does here at YVR - so do compare pricing of airport as well as downtown rental offices (Costco if you are a member is near-impossible to beat on rental prices, even before the free second driver on all bookings is factored in; both it an Kayak enable easy comparison across a few different locations at a time).

 

If you're mad keen to drop the car at 4:30am you'll have to use an airport location anyway - none of our downtown rental offices open that early, Vancouver is not a morning city when it comes to work (any time before 9am is for doing yoga on top of mountains - you can't even find a good breakfast resto open until 8am or later!) - and if you meant 4:30pm the risk is that if you are delayed by even 30mins you may find some downtown offices closed too (few open beyond 6pm outside peak tourist season, and you are after Labour Day which means Canadian Summer is officially over).

 

If you do find that downtown offices are the same price (or even a little more expensive - as getting back from the airport will cost a few bucks even if just one driver heads out to return the car then takes SkyTrain back downtown) then literally any downtown office will work, so just go with the cheapest. The difference in cab fare, even if you look at outside-the-core places like the railway station or south Granville St, will be maybe $15 - and you can even get a cab credit from some offices to knock $5 or $10 off the cost. Enterprise I believe still do their standard pickup/dropoff of renters too, so any of their locations will cost you only time waiting rather than $.

 

All the offices are easily found on Google maps, and it's trivial to enter directions between them and your possible hotels. We have had folks on bikes and even walking with the Google Cams strapped to them, so you should be able to use Streetview to see the entire route to and from any points in and around downtown - there are vanishingly-few errors on Googles maps these days, they even have better coverage of transit schedules than Translink's own route planner as their walking time between stops data is much more accurate.

Edited July 18, 2020 by martincath

[TMLAalum]

@Philob & @martincath

Thanks to both of you for your replies. We are Costco members and will likely book thru them with their requirement of either pickup or return to an airport location, it would be easier to pick up at YYC but we could return to YVR if needed. Our return time is not 0430 but 1630 since we will likely drive in one day from Jasper.

 

As of now our dates are not loaded into either Enterprise or Costco.

 

What a tragedy over the weekend in the Columbia Icefield.

[martincath]

2 hours ago, TMLAalum said:

@Philob & @martincath

Thanks to both of you for your replies. We are Costco members and will likely book thru them with their requirement of either pickup or return to an airport location, it would be easier to pick up at YYC but we could return to YVR if needed. Our return time is not 0430 but 1630 since we will likely drive in one day from Jasper.

 

As of now our dates are not loaded into either Enterprise or Costco.

 

What a tragedy over the weekend in the Columbia Icefield.

You're welcome.

 

Yes, tragic - my wife just managed to speak to one of her colleagues this morning who we were worried about as they were touring there and knew this was an activity they planned to do. Fortunately they did it a couple of days earlier.

 

I'd reconsider a one-day drive from Jasper to Vancouver - or at least go with a much later ETA and return to airport accordingly. In theory it's less than 8.5 hours, but given how much of the drive is on roads with single lanes, limited overtaking potential, and heavy tourist traffic - especially RV renters who don't know the road or their vehicles well and are thus the bane of all other traffic - the realistic drive time will be more like 10-12 hours (even if you just do gas & food stops and avoid any scenic viewpoints or attractions, expect at least one set of roadworks due to how often rockfalls happen - heck, you might even have to deal with snow!)

[TMLAalum]

@martincathI appreciate your insights into the drive from Jasper to Vancouver! There are actually 10 of us traveling together in 2 vehicles so we could spell drivers if we decide to make the trip in one long haul. Our other option would be to spend the night enroute and arrive in Vancouver the morning of the cruise. Merritt has decent hotel options but still leaves a 270 kilometer drive. Hope is closer but the accommodations seem iffy.

 

As of now our pre-cruise plans are flexible but the thinking is 3 nights in the Banff region and 3 in the Jasper area with just the overnight in Vancouver, since most of us have visited there before. We will encompass the Labour Day weekend which means a minimum 3 nights stay in the majority of lodgings. But it might make more sense to plan a couple of nights in Vancouver.....

[martincath]

5 hours ago, TMLAalum said:

@martincathI appreciate your insights into the drive from Jasper to Vancouver! There are actually 10 of us traveling together in 2 vehicles so we could spell drivers if we decide to make the trip in one long haul. Our other option would be to spend the night enroute and arrive in Vancouver the morning of the cruise. Merritt has decent hotel options but still leaves a 270 kilometer drive. Hope is closer but the accommodations seem iffy.

 

As of now our pre-cruise plans are flexible but the thinking is 3 nights in the Banff region and 3 in the Jasper area with just the overnight in Vancouver, since most of us have visited there before. We will encompass the Labour Day weekend which means a minimum 3 nights stay in the majority of lodgings. But it might make more sense to plan a couple of nights in Vancouver.....

I'd keep it simple and split the drive closer to half & half, stopping in Kamloops. Decent resto options, choice of hotels, nice mountain views all around (though pretty much anywhere before Hope gives you those) and while it would still be more likely a 4-4.5 hour drive than the theoretical <4hrs, you'd be able to have a nice leisurely breakfast but easily reach a downtown rental office before they close.

 

Or if folks in your group enjoy wine tasting, taking the longer route via the Okanagan would be a worthy detour - there are some quality wines produced, lots of tasting rooms, some top-notch restos, and a ton of hotels & guesthouses around the lakes especially in Kelowna. Next day would be a ~4hr drive on paper, so allow 5hrs and still easy to get into Vancouver mid-afternoon before rush hour.

 

If you've all done Vancouver before then why not focus on parts you have not visited - although unless you are hikers I think 3 days each is overkill for Jasper & Banff. If your group just wants to see, rather than do, nature then an overnight in each would be enough to drive around and look at the views; 2 nights would give at least one full day for tours like the glacier bus (which I am sure will end up safer than ever after the results of the investigation are out) - if you can find hotels of course, you are correct that Labour Day usually means minimum length bookings in the park areas. This is where booking a package tour might be of benefit - there are lots of 'car rental plus prebooked nights in hotels' tours available, and they can get around minimum stay lengths much better than indy bookings.

[TMLAalum]

2 hours ago, martincath said:

If you've all done Vancouver before then why not focus on parts you have not visited - although unless you are hikers I think 3 days each is overkill for Jasper & Banff. If your group just wants to see, rather than do, nature then an overnight in each would be enough to drive around and look at the views; 2 nights would give at least one full day for tours like the glacier bus (which I am sure will end up safer than ever after the results of the investigation are out) - if you can find hotels of course, you are correct that Labour Day usually means minimum length bookings in the park areas. This is where booking a package tour might be of benefit - there are lots of 'car rental plus prebooked nights in hotels' tours available, and they can get around minimum stay lengths much better than indy bookings.

 

We are hikers and nature lovers. At least one of the guys wants to horseback ride and some of us gals might play 9 holes of golf one day. We are looking at a 5 bedroom 4.5 bath rental townhouse in Canmore for the Banff portion of our trip. Figure we'll land in Calgary in the early afternoon so that is our 1st night, then the 2nd & 3rd nights gives us two full days to explore- I want to see Yoho too maybe. Day 4 we drive the Icefields Pkwy to Jasper, where we are thinking of staying at Becker's, Bear Hill, Patricia Lake for example. In Jasper we want to be at the same resort, but separate accommodations. Day 7 we start our journey to Vancouver. Our group prefers staying in one spot for awhile to avoid unpacking/packing- one of the big reasons we all love cruising- one and done from embarkation to disembarkation!!

 

We certainly could add/subtract days as needed since we are all retired! I am co-planner-in-chief with a girlfriend. We will present  options to the rest of the group before we reserve lodging, which we hope to do next month.

[martincath]

3 minutes ago, TMLAalum said:

We are hikers and nature lovers. ...

 

We certainly could add/subtract days as needed since we are all retired! I am co-planner-in-chief with a girlfriend. We will present  options to the rest of the group before we reserve lodging, which we hope to do next month.

3 nights apiece sounds like you might not have enough time now - maybe consider skipping the cruise and just spending the full fortnight in  the mountains? ;-)

[TMLAalum]

17 hours ago, martincath said:

3 nights apiece sounds like you might not have enough time now - maybe consider skipping the cruise and just spending the full fortnight in  the mountains? 😉

 

First, Canada has to let us in! And if cruising doesn't resume by September 2021, we will take your suggestion!

[cruiseryyc]

I would add at least three days to the Calgary-Vancouver portion of your trip.  That way you can leisurely drive to Vancouver.  Also you really should drive the Icefields Parkway in both directions, so leave Jasper and drive to Revelstoke, then onto Kelowna for a night before heading to Vancouver.  You do need to be in Vancouver the night before your cruise so no worries about highway closures due to accidents or construction.

 

Three nights each in Banff and Jasper is great.