Hop On Hop Off bus yes or no?

[wilderness1]

I'm usually a fan of hop on hop off busses, but I'm not finding the reviews in Vancouver to be very good.  Has anyone used a Hop On Hop Off bus and can you recommend it?

[realnice46]

We used HOHO bus in Vancouver in 2019. It was great then. We we planning to use it again this year but no so sure this because of reviews and also there seems to be less stops than before. Hopefully you hear from someone with more recent experience.

[ROCruiser]

We did, but it was in 2015, after we got off the cruise at Canada Place. Here is my report for that experience. 

[Cali Viajera]

We did the HOHO in Vancouver  last month. We only had two days there, so this was a great option when we disembarked. You get a great overview the city highlights and get a good idea of where you would like to get off at or return to later. Our trip ended in Gastown and we wandered around there and had a delicious lunch at the Blarney pub. 

[em-sk]

On 8/2/2022 at 3:28 PM, ROCruiser said:

We did, but it was in 2015, after we got off the cruise at Canada Place. Here is my report for that experience. 

 

Great blog. If your ever at the Library in Vancouver again you will want to take the elevator up to the roof top garden.

[ROCruiser]

18 hours ago, em-sk said:

 

Great blog. If your ever at the Library in Vancouver again you will want to take the elevator up to the roof top garden.

Great! Good to know. Maybe I'll try when we are there this September. Thanks!

[marco2111]

WE also planned to use the hop on/off bus to fill the day after we get off the ship. We have until 11pm to wait for our plane! The recent reviews sound horrible.

I found a day trip up to Whistler  but haven't found any other trips that we can take our luggage and get dropped at the airport. Any suggestions?

 

 

 

[martincath]

34 minutes ago, marco2111 said:

WE also planned to use the hop on/off bus to fill the day after we get off the ship. We have until 11pm to wait for our plane! The recent reviews sound horrible.

I found a day trip up to Whistler  but haven't found any other trips that we can take our luggage and get dropped at the airport. Any suggestions?

With that much time, any of the longer post-cruise tours are definitely safe to take - North Shore attractions like Capilano & Grouse do suck up a fair bit of drive time, but still tend to be too short a time on site to fully experience things. Local providers are Land Sea and West Coast, both of whom offer 6-7 hour tours.

 

Personally with that much time to play with though I'd buy a transit Day Pass, store suitcases downtown, do a bunch of stuff all day, have dinner, collect bags, head to YVR for 9pm* on SkyTrain if mobile enough, or just spend the extra ~US$28 on a cab if you really cannot manage to roll your bags at all... if you need a porter at the airport and pier then you need a cab, but if you can walk from curb to check-in unassisted, SkyTrain to the airport is easily done with luggage.

 

*Evenings are less of a hassle, and flights this late have no Preclearance, so even two hours beforehand will likely turn into 'wait over an hour at the gate' but better safe than sorry in these days of extra-stress air travel.

 

 

[2Long2NxtCrz]

We did the hop-on, hop-off bus post cruise this past May. Because our ship arrived so early and our AirBnb didn't have a place to store our luggage, we used the storage at the port and the lady there was wonderful and suggested the hop-on, hop-off bus.

 

It was pouring down rain and we had to stand in a barely sheltered area in a line waiting for the next bus to show. When it did, it already had a fair number of passengers on and they weren't sure we'd get on. We did. But. It was an old school bus which had a clear vinyl covering to "protect" us from the rain. It did an awful job of that. The vinyl directed the water straight onto me! That was okay. I was wearing appropriate gear, but I had expected something more like the double-decker buses in Barcelona, London and other places. Their buses need to be updated, imho.

 

We stayed on the bus until Granville Island. Had a good lunch and shopped, then caught the hop-on, hop-off back (barely, it was also full). This is where things go from meh to bad.

 

This bus had a green liquid covering the floor on our side of the bus. It smelled like anti-freeze (and looked it), but no clue how it was. The driver got paper towels and cleaned it up (took two rolls, that's how large the spill was), but the smell was still really strong.

 

Then our driver stopped in Gastown to allow passengers on and off. But he grabs his bag and leaves, saying he'll be back in 5 minutes. After 15, we asked the young woman at the stop what was going on. She had no idea. She called the dispatcher who said there was a bus behind us, but who knew how much longer it would be and how full it would be? Ultimately, we walked back to Canada Place. It wasn't a bad walk, but it was the principle of it.

 

To be fair to the company, they had 3 drivers out with COVID, so were short drivers and buses, and the rain didn't help since people mostly stayed on the buses instead of getting off. We called and told them about our experience and they extended our tickets to the following day, so they treated us right.

 

If I hadn't lost my favorite bracelet, I probably wouldn't knock it all. And that's not their fault.

 

Bottom line, I'd say it's a good thing to do if the weather is good and they have a full complement of buses/drivers.

 

 

[Urban trekker]

Because of the trolley wires on many of the streets in the downtown core the use of double decker buses is problematic. That is why our transit authority only uses them out in the suburbs where they have high enough clearance.

 

[squadron]

On 8/12/2022 at 5:34 PM, marco2111 said:

WE also planned to use the hop on/off bus to fill the day after we get off the ship. We have until 11pm to wait for our plane! The recent reviews sound horrible.

I found a day trip up to Whistler  but haven't found any other trips that we can take our luggage and get dropped at the airport. Any suggestions?

 

 

 

I usually look for a ship tour for that last day and then drops at airport.