martincath

As expat Brits it took a bit of getting used to the rules - but since you sound familiar with the USA, then do exactly the same here as you would there. Expect to be handed a terminal at your table in all non-counter-service restos, and that the preselected tip %s 'for your convenience' to be frequently at total bullcrap levels! It's very usual now in Vancouver to see 20,22,25% as the tappable options - do not have any hesitation about dropping that number, especially if they're weaseling by using the total not the Pretax cost of the meal to calculate the tip (unless you're seriously math-phobic, always figure out 10% of the pretax and double it - then look at the value the 20% prompt lists; if it's higher on the terminal, they're cheating - Quebec literally just passed a law to forbid this, it has ALWAYS been the custom to use Pretax as tax levels vary by location). Cost of living is an issue for everyone working to serve you in Canadian restos, except maybe in small towns - I don't begrudge the New Normal of 18% for dinner, and I've always tipped 20%+ for diner breakfasts and the like where the check values are much lower. It's obviously a ridiculous system when identical effort from servers nets them a completely different income based on how expensive the food was, but it's the one we're living with - if you don't want to be thought of as cheap, it's absolute minimum 15% in restos, but as a tourist unless you're repeatedly dining in the same place for a few days there's no real social pressure on you! As far as I'm aware, all hotel based tipping except in the restos remains 'handful of bucks' regardless of room price though in both US and Canada!

Another 'heck no!' to the woolies and winter outfits, multiple footwear choices etc. Even if it's comparatively cold for the season, and you are what we in the auld country would call a 'cauld tattie', a heavy coat is a monotasker - while a light waterproof shell and a light fleece can be worn together to provide the same effect, AND separately if it's wet & warm or dry and a little chilly. If you run cold, a puffer coat that flattens for packing and then 'reinflates' when shaken are a far better idea than a wool coat. Chances are that however hot or cold you run, you already own the right stuff as New York also has pretty variable weather throughout the year. Check your ports historic temperature ranges in August, compare them to your home town stats (not sure if your handle means NYC or the State - pretty different temps in e.g. Finger Lakes than on the coast!), figure out what you tend to wear in that month, and then make sure you also factor in that a fast-moving ship could double wind chill easily, so throw in an extra layer. Cheap 'one size fits none' fleece gloves, short scarves, and toques from a Dollar Store are likely enough on their own, but if it's really windy/unseasonally cold just improvise mittens from a pair of socks rather than pack big ski gloves or similar silliness! Even if you do get wet on a port day, you have a nice warm, dry, ship to retreat to - extra socks are more useful than extra shoes. Longjohns do pack small, so if you already have them (light ones - maybe breathable Merino, but I'd take plain cotton myself) they're worth tossing in the suitcase - if you have Scotchguarded khakis with those under you'll be just as warm as if you add rain pants on top, but you won't make annoying ssshhh-ssshhh noises as you walk! I'd regard these as an Either/Or situation. If you go on a genuinely cold excursion - zodiac boat whalewatching, glacier walk etc. - they will fit you for proper gear like polarbear suits, big boots etc. as needed. Also check your electronics - anything with a surge protector, leave at home unless it is SPECIFICALLY listed as cruise vessel compatible (different circuit layout on ships, regular surge devices not compatible and are usually removed by Security after scanning the suitcases for just such things!) If you don't already have a simple '1 plug into several without Surge protection' powerbar, that might be worth buying unless you seriously cut back on the electronic doodads! We've rarely found a fan is needed for cooling - cabins have AC - and there are plenty of free white noise apps on phones/tablets of every OS (I even have one on my kindle). Lastly, remember that all your ports you are still in your home country with cash and credit cards... and with this being a Vancouver RT, hitting up our dollar stores precruise (or even Costco - there's one right downtown!) could save you a packet on many items by buying in CAD. It's always better to pack on the lighter side, then if you need an extra layer buy a long-sleeve Tee or fleece in a port; bingo, an extra layer plus a souvenir, and probably plenty room in your suitcases to fit them in for the trip home! NB: I assume you mistyped 15th Aug instead of 17th for the cruise? Or did you mean 15th is your arrival date in Vancouver? If you'd like more info on Vancouver, like where to find our Dollar Stores/Costco/Walmarts/Drug stores in relation to your accommodation, fun places to netertain the kiddos in different weather etc. feel free to ask that too - ideally on a separate question over on the West Coast Departures board, as more folks read that board than this one, but I'll answer here too if you find a single thread helps keep your planning simpler!

Eh, sorry for the delay @zwallace - I try to let East Coasters have a chance to answer first as they'll be more up to date, but since nobody else has bit... Only Bar Harbour is a good spot to whalewatch with near-certainty of sightings, unless you missed a comma between Sydney and Cape Breton (there's also great whalewatching on the INSIDE coast of Cape Breton, out of Cheticamp) because only Bar Harbour trips can get close to the Bay of Fundy which is a huge feeding ground (those big tides mean lots of churn at the sea floor, so more baleen-whale-food in the water). Chances are a three hour trip from there can get close to Grand Manan Island, in the mouth of the Bay, with enough time on the clock to do a little watching before returning. It's not as good as the other side of the island, but we're talking maybe 90% vs. 99%? Halifax and Sydney are on the Atlantic side - are there whales around? Yes - but they're much harder to find, there's no equivalent spot close to shore like Stellwagen Bank off of Boston so it's a crapshoot whether there's going to be whales around. St Margaret's Bay by Peggy's Cove, and the others bays toward Lunenberg have a decent chance of whales but that's a long way to trek from Halifax on the water - unless you're in a Zodiac or similarly-speedy craft very limited options. Good rule of thumb - if local smallboat companies offer a guarantee of sighting whales, it's a reliable port. If they call it a whalewatch but have no guarantee, it's probable. If they call it a Nature Cruise, any whale is a huge bonus - expect bucketloads of pinnipeds, porpoises, maybe some dolphins. Your cruise ship is definitely not going into the Bay of Fundy unless it stops at Saint John. The best whalewatching port in the region is St Andrews By The Sea on the north side of the bay, about an hours drive from Saint John - so many whalewatch companies based there and for good reason! But unless I miss my guess, this is probably an RT Boston cruise with those ports? So unless you have zero time both Pre and Post, you can easily take a big cat trip out of Boston harbour with virtually 100% Humpie sightings at Stellwagen... My experiential knowledge of these ports is between 10 and 20 years ago - but I still have friends in that neck of the woods, who take all the visiting family out to see whales so I'm pretty confident in my general assertions above!

I'd say this is VERY date-and-time specific! If you're cruising next year, June/July, with sunset ~9pm or even later then even a typical crappy PVSA compliance visit from 6pm to midnight has potential for an enjoyable whalewatch (the Pros being Sunset will happen while you're out, and a couple of hours with low-angle but still bright sunlight means potential for dramatic photos especially if, say, an Orca fin, anything breaching, or even a humpie tail is in frame; the Cons being that a three hour trip that starts at 7pm you're going to have serious difficulty seeing whales after Sunset - twilight lasts a good long while but photos become nigh impossible without serious gear or post-processing, and dark water, grey sky, dark whales, grey blows... if you're into writing poetry evoking chiaroscuro, or painting monochrome watercolour works, you might get a lot of good experiences to try and capture but your actual whalewatching will be rather crimped!) If this is a trip this season though, unless it's in the next couple of weeks check sunset times (choose Victoria on the drop-down menu) carefully as sunset drops back before 9pm before August rolls in and then each day accelerates the time change further so you have fewer minutes of viable spotting every single day. Aside from definitely seeing sunset, the only good thing about a September 'sunset whalewatch' is going to be how pretty the lit-up buildings around the Inner Harbour are as you approach dock in the dark! Lastly, if you're talking about a ship-sponsored tour there's one other very strong indicator to check - see if any of the companies offer a tour at the same time. If you can't book it independently, then you can guarantee that the odds of seeing whales are low - because all local companies offer a 'ride free until you see a whale' guarantee, but ship-specific tours don't. In other words, a trip with low odds of success hits the locals right in the pocket, so they don't run them - but your 'pay in USD at an inflated rate' ship tour is a chartered boat with zero guarantees, no risk at all! And if you can book one independently - do that to get the guarantee! Even if it's years before you return to Canada, as long as the company is in business they'll honour the free ride - and Prince of Whales, who operate in multiple locations, even honour free rides from any site at any other (e.g. if you're in Vancouver, but had a No Whales Seen trip from Victoria, you can cash it in as it's the same company and booking engine).

I can't guarantee it's available fresh every day of the year, but traditionally April-May are our 'glut' months when the prices are lowest (my first crab feast was <CAD$15 a pound for the basic 3-course combo and ended up at 48pp, including 2 beers, the add-on Squab, tax and tip when split between 8 at the table; but the glory days of <$20 crab are long gone!); there's another availability peak around November-December (when things like the AYCE Crab deal at Neptune was on last, I think they were trying to entice people to go Xmas shopping at the malls and then gorge on crab as a treat!), and there are certainly live crabs in the tanks of the restos that stock them all through summer in my experience... if you see them in the live tank of one of our big Chinese seafood restos, then you can always order a Feast (but 'market price' off-peak can easily more than double). But if you only see legs on a menu, like in a steakhouse or on a cold seafood platter, odds are high that even if it's peak season those are frozen legs like anywhere else - only places that can make use of the whole crab find it worthwhile to stock them. Frankly Dungies taste better, are more easily handled, safer to catch and more sustainable, have a higher meat %, and at a couple of pounds each just simply more practical as you don't have to get a big group together to eat one! All-around they are by far the superior crab - but just like how lobsters used to be 'prison food' and don't taste any better now, their scarcity is all that makes them a valuable product, the very fact that AKC is harder to find and more expensive means more people want it even though it ain't as good...

A little late to the party - but since OP @rdg2052 says they're on a one-way, then there is the option of getting a few folks together and eating fresh King Crab here in Vancouver, served multiple different ways (at least three, depends on resto which other methods are available and extra charges apply). The downside is you have to buy the whole crab (usually 10+lbs), and since there's soup, rice, veggies etc. all included as part of the package even a basic three-ways package you really need half-a-dozen big eaters. Fancy adding on some extra courses and it's better to have 8 or 10 folks per crab. Personally I like Sun Sui Wah - they were the first folks to do this, and while others have innovated new recipes over the years, nobody does Squab as well as SSW. Not sure what the total price runs this year, as it all comes down to the availability of crabs and the AK catchment areas have had very tight limits the last few years, some completely closed, but if something in the region of a thousand CAD divvied up ten ways works for your group, should be doable! More recently though, the Neptune's Palace chain have been trying to set themselves up as the crabbiest place to go - various specials over the last couple of years like All You Can Eat King Crab for $200pp, and the last tidbit I heard was that they now sell enough they'll take the risk of letting you buy AKC per-person combos, assuming that they'll be able to use the whole crab up for other diners! So if you want fresh Kings, but can't find a big group to join you, try contacting them (the Vancouver branch is way out near the airport, if you have a Richmond post-cruise hotel it may be reasonably convenient, but from downtown the Brentwood branch is easier to get to as it's basically right next to Brentwood Town Centre SkyTrain station)

Basically, if the Allen Marine boats are running in Juneau then everyone will see whales regardless of who you go with (unless they've abandoned their guarantee of 'hand you a crisp new hundo as you disembark if no whales were seen'!), you just won't see as many. After early Sep, with kids back in school so tourist numbers down as well as sunsets getting earlier, here in Vancouver the twice-daily sailings of summer are down to once per day per boat by October - some companies stagger their boats a little, others just send two or three out at the same time, but generally any time in Oct you'll be looking at a departure time between 11am and 1pm, with on-the-water time of up to 5 hours if they haven't found a whale in three for you. Several choices of boat type, from open zodiacs where you'll be equipped with a 'polar bear suit' to covered monohulls to Prince of Whales' fancy custom Cats. Prince of Whales and Wild Whales have the most convenient location for the pier as they are based on Granville Island not down in Steveston - so every tour includes a 'free' city and UBC tour! - but Vancouver Whale Watch and Seabreeze will add on a downtown or Richmond coach pickup to get you to their piers and back, so afterward you could get dropped at a hotel close to the airport like River Rock (right on SkyTrain line). The additional time for the long, very slow drive to YVR means I don't think you can get dropped at the airport itself though. As long as you pick a flight after 8pm you could take any of the noon trips even if they run as long as possible, and still have two hours to get to bag drop in time.

More time on the water is always better than less - especially since many whales will already have left by October. Even if the small boats are running, and know where to go, responsible operators don't hassle the whales too much... so your boat's time with the remaining whales within range will be an equitable fraction based on how many other boats are out, so everybody gets happy tourists. Whether you are leaving from Seattle on Bliss/Encore, or Vancouver on Jade/Sun, you would spend much less money if you go whalewatching pre-cruise! We've got more options here in Vancouver, as the WA state boats are mostly out of the smaller towns around the Juan de Fuca strait so they come watch the same whales as Vic/Van boats do - but even Seattle proper does have whalewatch trips on the Clipper March-Oct. Thanks to whales which leave AK waters heading south to Mexico passing by everywhere down the Left Coast has better late-season watches than AK, and October is still deemed 'peak season' by local operators (i.e. you get their Guarantee of 'see a whale or free rides for life until you do' - sounds like you come back every October so you could make use of that!) so being charged fewer dollars per person, further discounted for being in CAD (though not in Seattle obviously!), and then you can prioritise the glacier in Juneau and probably pay for your passage to Mendenhall with the savings! It really feels like this is a no-brainer, better-all-around option... ... unless you're flying in same day to get on your ship, in which case, read my first sentence again!

It does! Just follow the signs on the patform walls - if you board at the back of the train (where the track ends at YVR) you'll get off at the right end of the platform to save walking; the advantage to getting out at Granville & Hastings is that the walk down Howe to the PP is downhill instead of up (it's not exactly a steep slope either way, but with luggage why not save a little effort!?) But distance-wise it's basically the same as walking up Cordova from the main station building, and both are much less hassle than figuring out the rabbit warren of interior level changes to move between Canada Line and Expo Line platforms, especially with big bags.

Cunard does use Smith Cove; personally I'd have things shipped to my hotel if I were doing this, minimise the time spent finding potentially-out-of-the-way-offices and queuing up to retrieve a parcel! But if you're flying in same day, then the safest option is likely also the cheapest - use the good old USPS 'General Delivery' service to the Midtown PO, as they'll hold packages for up to 30 days so you can ship it well in advance on the lowest possible insurable parcel rate, instead of risking a much tighter hold-time window or storage fees with UPS etc. Since there's no highway to the pier, you'll have to pass through downtown anyway - while an indy shuttle or cruise-transfer won't let you stop somewhere on the way, two separate cab (or rideshare etc.) trips should have minimal extra expense as the PO is only a couple of blocks out of the way compared to driving the fastest route straight to the pier.

Compared to the last Viking-in-Vancouver post I read - the ship being parked in the harbour waiting for someone else to leave before they can dock - your belief in their 'show up at 11am' advice was indeed lucky, and very different from that passengers experience (sitting in a hotel function room until nearly 5pm before actually getting to board!) But less-facetiously, Summit is small for modern cruiseships; that and Orion combined load fewer pax total than on many single-ship days; so while I expect the same general bell curve of 'busy times' was at play, your barely-three-thousand people day would have been more efficient - at any given time - than a more normal day. On a more typical day you'd have likely arrived to rows of hundreds of people sitting around even if the flow of pax to Security had begun; but 11am is often still too early to have 'zeroed out' all the incoming pax and let the first folks embark, which can easily take until 11:30 on busier days - and even if there's only one ship, it literally takes just one incoming B2B passenger hanging around onboard 'because I'm just heading straight back to Alaska again, if I don't get off the ship why does Canada even care!?' instead of reporting to CBSA for everything to stall until they're hunted down and processed! But in general I think it's fair to say us locals are preemptively defensive about complaints of how inefficient Vancouver is on busy days; nobody complains when they experience a fast boarding like you did so the vast majority of mentions are always 'bla-bla the worst, bla-bla so much longer than <insert US port that has no Immigration involved for boarding even though that choice is 100% on the US not us> bla-bla I'll never sail from there again!" so I'll continue to warn folks at every opportunity to dial in their expectations accordingly... and at least then the only surprises will be pleasant ones where everything goes more smoothly than they were warned to expect! You can check the cruise schedule for your date here. If you're lucky and it's a light day then you can be more flexible when you show up - but even if it was just one tiny Viking vessel I always recommend late boarding anyway: you effectively gain an extra port day - at least as much time in Vancouver as a typical Victoria stop lasts on a Seattle RT! Even if you only visit ticketed attractions so you can't get in anywhere until 9am, you can have 5 hours of port time if you leave the sites next to the pier until last and head straight to check-in at 2pm (few ships leave before 4pm - most are in the 4:30-5:30 bracket, so 3pm or even 3:30 become viable if you don't mind lunching ashore). Do unticketed things like parks and wandering the Seawall and you could be watching sunrise and enjoying lovely views, for free, for another 3+ hours depending which month! The only issue you'll have is with bags - a Richmond hotel isn't practical to leave them in while sightseeing then go back to retrieve them before boarding. But you can drop your bags at the pier and just walk away - you don't have to continue the check-in process even if it's one of the days when bag drop is right next to check-in. The earlier you arrive at the pier, the more likely you'll need to venture down into the parking levels for early bag drop - but there should be someone there to accept them as early as 9am. Once your bags are in the system (NB: keep your cruise docs, medications etc. with you of course!) you're free to wander downtown - a very safe last thing to enjoy is FlyOver Canada, right on the pier or the Harbour Centre viewing floor just 10mins walk away. This removes any risk of getting delayed due to traffic, so you can time it very tightly to the Departure-2hrs timing safely!

It's after check-in, but before you are allowed to board, so if you're booking transport from hotel to pier there's no need to factor in any delays at all. That said, because of the additional border controls boarding at Vancouver can run very long and there are definitely worse and better times to show up! Generally speaking, ignore anything your cruiseline suggests as a boarding time - they have zero control over any of the important steps, with both security and immigration run as a single step for pax from every vessel in port that day. So any priority you might have with your line has very little relevance - perhaps a shorter queue to check-in, and if you arrive very early you might be one of the first folks on your line allowed to leave the holding room and head to security; but if you show up any time after maybe 10:30am you're just one of the horde like anyone else, and even if you're the very first e.g. Princess person released there could be a bunch of folks on HAL, Celebrity, RCCL etc. etc. ahead of you or simultaneously released. Honestly, the most efficient thing to do is show up as late as you possibly can - 2 hours before sailing safely meets CBPs rules on having checked-in pax names made available - at which point the queues are all at their lowest ebb. But if you've visited Vancouver a bunch of times before and would rather be onboard ASAP no matter how much time you waste sitting on a folding chair instead of out Doing and Seeing Things for an extra 6 hours in one of the worlds' best cities, turn up at 10am - that should get you into the first chunk of folks, you'll probably sit around for an hour, but then security and CBP should be pretty fast and you'll likely be aboard by noon. Turn up after 11am and queues start getting worse - depends how many ships and how big as to exactly how bad the queues are - with peak congestion noon though 1ish, then dying down. You may actually spend less time from curb to cabin if you arrive 11-1, but it's all standing time! Depending on your hotel you may not need transportation at all though - we're not like most US ports with hotels miles away in a different part of town from the pier, it's slap bang in the heart of our downtown core which is also where over 95% of the hotels in Vancouver live! The Pan Pacific is literally on top of the pier, elevators will bring you down without ever going onto the street. Fairmonts Waterfront (across the street) and Pacific Rim (two blocks down the street) are also pointless for transfers - even if you're in a wheelchair or scooter it's quicker to roll than drive given how backed-up traffic gets! Almost all downtown hotels are less than a mile from the pier - there's only a handful scattered around the further-flung parts of the city...

Unsafe to dock is accepted as a valid excuse by CBP - so the fines are waived, but the line has to fil the paperwork to secure that waiver. There simply isn't an alternative port available for Vic - Van and Sea run very close to capacity all season, the schedules for longshoremen are set long in advance, and since whatever port was swapped, if Canadian, would be the Port of Entry for virtually every cruise a CBSA presence would be required to allow anyone off... even if the line was not trying to maximise profits there simply would not be a practical swap at short notice (and CBP demand that all reasonable efforts are made to dock, so unless it's a days-long storm they're at least approaching harbour). For at least 95% of cruise visits to Vic though, PVSA compliance is the only reason they stop at all and that stop is kept as short as CBP will allow. In the past all sorts of shenanigans have been tried like 'arriving' in the harbour but never tying up, or docking but leaving again without disembarking pax - and CBP pushed back, enforcing that only a stop of four+ hours where passengers are able to disembark for most of that time counts as a visit! Any vessel getting more than about 5 hours in port is unusual, and it's most often an evening stop where literally nothing ticketed is open by the time the ship arrives! Your long, daytime stop is unusual, and tends only to happen with longer-than-seven-day RT cruises - the one way trips have no legal requirement to force a stop so they simply don't, and almost all 14 day cruises are just two 7-days sold that way so they turn into a de facto Vancouver or Whittier/Seward RT, with the latter having a turnaround day in Van that satisfies PVSA rules. Although Cunard did try letting folks embark in Vic a few years back as an experiment to assess demand - unsurprisingly everyone on the Island loved it, but Mainlanders and every single person flying from anywhere finds Vancouver infinitely more efficient so it happened for one season only!

Not often - but the times when it does get missed tend to be the back end of September. I couldn't even begin to put a % to it, even on a day when one ship misses port another might safely dock just a few hours earlier. But since it definitely does happen just wanted to warn you about the potential losses if an indy tour wouldn't refund you. As a ballpark, the local ferry system uses both a significantly more sheltered port on the eastern side of the Island and has ships that handle rough conditions a lot better than a floating hotel does - but there's usually at least couple of days a year in Spring & Fall when BC Ferries stop sailing entirely. What they do if they miss the port is exactly what they always do anyway as SOP - sail around between Vic & Sea, because they'd have to run an engine anyway to power hotel operations! The only difference would be exactly where they do it - if the weather's rough they'll try to avoid the worst of it rather than just pootling around in circles, but they absolutely won't dock early unless dock is the only safe space! If you're ever awake during the wee small hours after leaving Vic, it's interesting to try and spot the same lighthouses passing by over and over to figure out where you're idly circling 😉 Sail time Vic to Sea is maybe four hours - the Clipper does it in three, but rarely gets even close to top speed as there are many congested bits of water, whale warnings etc. that require low speeds - it's cheaper to sail around than to pay for more dock time!!!

I too would say give it at least an hour from your anticipated docking time - even if you're good to enter Canada, if there's someone naughty aboard CBSA might want to get on and have a chat with them before they release anyone to disembark, just in case they sneak off! And in September, be aware that weather - especially wind - can mean Victoria being skipped, so ensure your guide is willing to refund you if the ship's a no-show (or you're all OK with eating the financial loss/have good travel insurance with a low enough Deductible to be worth making a claim...)

In this case that's a Very Good Thing (especially compared to when the Royals, Blisses etc. end up sailing after sunset!) as you'll have an hour more daylight to see some of the Southern coastline of Vancouver Island before ditching the pilot and then sailing so far out you'll see no land whatsoever until popping back into Alaskan Inside Passage waters! Being forced to board by 5pm like normal, but then banned from leaving the ship because CBP went home, and just sitting in the harbour until you can fit under the bridge is pretty common for Royal class - especially early season, with King tides, when the available time to pass can be about 20 minutes at the very lowest of the low tide... Ironically the much-larger Sphere class might be a better vessel for Vancouver-visiting; azipods mean there's a very good chance they will be allowed to sail east of the Island, although if Princess remain dickish about not sharing their in-house data on shiphandling it won't be allowed until after our Coastal pilots have actually had a chance to handle her in various conditions to fairly assess her capabilities; although I haven't seen Princess openly announce the ship's air draft it can't be more than about a metre more than Royal Class or else Star couldn't visit Vancouver at all... unless they've invested in foldable funnels/radio mast like Celebrity put on the (IIRC) Solstice so it could fit under Lions Gate!

Sorry, I usually manage to write out the name in full first, then use the initials later so they're in obvious context - glad the pooch-fan stepped in to help avoid confusion!

Agree - if you're not mobility-challenged definitely take SkyTrain. If you are, but still want to Do Touristy Stuff during the day, store bags downtown instead of going to the hotel - the cost of being driven to the hotel and back downtown for touring will likely run a lot more than bag storage fees! Even if you are moble and want to use SkyTrain you should consider storing bags anyway, and only heading out to the hotel on the evening when you're done with touring and dinner downtown! Depending on your personal relative valuation of your time vs. your money - it's still well over 30mins each way (~10mins walk to Waterfront, up to 7 mins wait for train, ~23mins ride to Bridgeport, 5 mins walk into the hotel, then the same back again) so if you stash bags at the PP for $10 a pop you save 80-90mins... enough time to potentially fit in an additional small site, or just spend longer at the places you do visit!

It isn't: BC pilots have NEVER allowed any Royal Class vessel to sail east of Vancouver Island. Not size, despite the AI link significantly larger ships regularly cruise Inside, but 100% down to the inadequate steering for the currents in the congested, narrow space. Alaskan port pilots have refused them entry in high winds, but down here it's all about the currents in Seymour Narrows - even now, after we blew up Ripple Rock in the largest deliberate non-nuclear explosion on earth, the Reynolds Number (no relation to Ryan - it's a fluid dynamics measure for turbulence in liquid!) in the Narrows is higher than any other navigable water that has been measured anywhere else. We had this conversation regularly for at least two years after Royal's launch, before Princess finally changed their maps to the one shown above with the special 'Royal goes this way' dotted line added... but they're still prone to forget about tide times for entering and leaving the harbour, as Royals can only get under Lions Gate at low tide, and given this is a one-off route it's very possible some flunky in their graphics department has also stuck the wrong map into their brochure materials... unless Royal has had an entirely new steering system installed, it will always have to go the long and boring way!

I also immediately thought back to Egypt, where locals paid about 5-10% of the tourist prices when we were last there - I still think this is very fair, and should be normal, for countries where the average income/standard of living is much lower than places where most tourists arrive from. Not a perfect system - some tourists might think Egypt is wealthy, and Japan certainly has a strong economy! - but even if it's not purely financial affordability 'balancing', keeping locals happy about tourism seems generally wise. I still recall the day when the custodian of our local castle retired and a new Incomer (from outside the parish) took up the job - while official visitor numbers remained static, he couldn't understand why the tearoom and giftshop were now hemorrhaging funds instead of running a respectable profit, and until he established his bona fides at the local pub by buying a few rounds nobody told him why! Very simply, nobody in the parish had ever been charged for entry before - the previous couple were locals who knew all the rest of us on sight. Everyone local went frequently because it was the only cafe within 10 miles - but as soon as he started actually charging for entry, the reasonably-priced comestibles became far too pricey as the castle itself was basically worthless given we'd all grown up playing in it as kids... even at a quid per head it was cheaper to pay for the petrol to town and back instead of the castle tearoom. If you already have a bunch of fixed costs to have a site open, staffed, maintained, heated/cooled etc. etc., then unless every visitor actually causes measurable wear & tear on the premises even a zero-cost for locals option can make money - plus locals naturally gravitate toward less-busy times of year because then "Those f'in' tourists urnae cloggin' up the place!" so they often enable sites to remain open off-season. Now if only they'd put on a locals-only Fringe week, requiring proof of residency to score tickets, I'm sure most of Edinburgh would be much happier 😉

If you don't demand to see bears in the wild, our local rescue Grizzlies have been awake for two months already, so should be nice and plump again for viewing - likely closer up and for MUCH less than any excursion in an AK port!

Keep it simple @JessInNY - leave all your bags with the Pan Pacific hotel bell staff upstairs. There are some slightly-cheaper options but you have to prebook online - Bounce, Luggage Hero and the likes - and the official pier storage is utterly worthless to you, as they close by 5pm so you'd be stuck returning far too early. Save yourselves a few bucks and ensure you have Canadian currency - $10 per bag - as while the PP will take USD, they take it at par with no change given! Even a crappy exchange rate on the ship is therefore worthwhile... What to do with one day? Far too many options to give you an informed choice I'm afraid - unless we shared the exact same tastes my great day might suck for you. The only useful advice, unless you give some details about ALL of your party members tastes in sights, eats, mobility, willingness to spend a ltitle or a lot, is to hit up a broad-brush guide sight like Tripadvisor! What I always suggest to groups - unless you have kids, wheelchair users who need pushed manually etc. - is to treat this the same as any port stop, and split up so that each subgroup can do the things THEY think sound best to them, then meet up for lunch, dinner, or both. Even without a good foreign phone plan, you can keep in touch and use active mapping for free on any WiFi enabled device... a free city-run network, #VanWiFi, broadcasts over a huge chunk of town as well as various smaller free networks on Transit vehicles, at Canada Place, coffee shops etc. So tell everyone to do their own homework - just reading the first page of TripAdvisors's 'stuff to do in Vancouver' should cover all you need unless your tastes are very different than Joe Q Public! Best is if everyone does it separately, then has a group chat revealing their personal Top Three things say - then it's easy to figure out that if Cousins Bob, Sally and Jim all want to do the same things as Auntie Mo, that four goes and does those things! Even with Preclearance at YVR, it's basically pointless arriving before 9pm for your flight - bag drop MUST be done an hour early, and for those redeyes an hour is plenty to get through security and CBP too, so even nervous flyers can rest assured you've got a very-well-padded safety margin if you leave downtown by 8:30pm. Cab, Uber, SkyTrain - that late they'll take ~30mins, so have a nice dinner downtown with much better options that the airport to eat, go collect your bags from the PP around 8:15pm, then walk to SkyTrain (barely more than US$2pp), fire up your rideshare app, or get the hotel to call you as many cabs as are needed.

You've already done the hard work @Oyarsa! While you might get some pushback at check-in, because exactly how well-trained and experienced a given person is varies so calling for a supervisor may be needed, both CBSA and CBP will be fully-versed in the WHTI-compliant docs - so at the border and at the pier, the government agents of both countries will know that your EDL proves BOTH citizenship and identity and let you in regardless of it being a Closed Loop or a One-Way cruise.* The only way you would need a passport specifically to board is if your cruiseline has a rule requiring it... they are private companies after all, welcome to add any additional requirements they wish to the small print of their Conditions of Carriage, and some of the fancier lines do demand a passport - but I don't think Celebrity is one of them and your screengrab seems to confirm that! *Provided of course that by EDL you actually mean an EDL, from one of the five states/four provinces that issue them, and you're a US or Canadian citizen since your profile doesn't indicate where you live - if you, like waaaaaaaay too many people every cruise season have confused a 'Real ID' DL with an actual EDL, you're hooped! Or the usual other issues that prevent you crossing the border like if you've been naughty in the past, forget to remove your arsenal from the vehicle, have narcotics/marijuana products, etc. etc. But assuming you've driven over with that ID before, and don't do anything silly, it should be fine this time too.

The only dress code - basically anywhere in Vancouver except the handful of private clubs - is what the health code demands! That means shoes and some form of naughty-bits covering garment - restos can also demand a shirt, and some do - but there's zero requirement as to type of shirt though. It's been a while since I was in Miku - well pre-Star so maybe folks are on average a bit more gussied up these days - but it was like every other Vancouver higher end resto in terms of what folks were wearing: lots of suits, lots of open-necked collared shirts & slacks, a few more casual folks in good weather but during ski season folks come straight from the slopes in things worn for comfort not appearance with varying-degrees-of-damp-and-sweaty technical layers! Personally I would not be taking a sushi novice to Miku though - it's far too pricey unless you actually want what it does that non-Starred places don't - and despite many folks talking up the fact it has a view, there are few seats that actually get a clean sightline out of the windows over the water (and many of those mostly look at cranes - the type that unloading containers from ships, not the big birds!) If DH is already broadly familiar with sushi, and specifically wants to try Aburi style, then go wild - but you can spend way less and get a less-niche, more-normally-representative-of-sushi menu, plus a less-formal experience in a raft of other places. If you can live without a view, literally every person I know here who enjoys sushi disagrees on which is the best but without exception we do agree when asked to name somewhere consistently good across the full spectrum of actually-raw sashimi dishes, rice rolls and the like, cooked 'fish' (like BBQ eel, octopus); unfussy; minimal wait to get a seat without a reso; and great value: Kaide is the place to go. OTOH if there's anyone who's less keen on 'raw fish' dining as well as the keener in your dining group, hit up one of our many Izakayas - you'll get a decent variety of sushi plus lots of cooked meaty noodley ricey things (ramen bowls, yakitori, tempura) as well as dishes that might have a 'foreign name' but are basically good old-fashioned pub grub suitable for even the most 'meat and potatoes' diner like pork chops and chicken wings. Kingyo gets much love locally, but Guu is also consistently tasty and has 5 locations, so there's almost always one nearby wherever you are downtown.

If proximity is a factor, you could do a lot worse than dine in your hotel! Diva at the Met has always been pitched at the affordable end, not quite fine dining but close, Bistro/Brasserie more than Epicurean; basically a comparable level to Cactus Club without every staff member being hired more for their low BMI than competence. If your precruise night is a weekday there's likely a solid special offer on too, like half-price wine, all-day Happy Hour, or discounted 'burger and beer' combos. If a good, low key, fun, time with zero views but good value pub grub, and quirky in both menu and interior works for you, Moose's Down Under is very walkable - it's the local Aussie Bar, and while the original owners sold up a year or so back it seems like a lot of staff, the menu, and the overall vibe remain much of a muchnesss! With four of you splitting the Cabuber, heading over to Salmon & Bannock for dinner certainly checks off the 'unique' ask - indigenous cuisine, flavour combos you simply won't find anywhere else, and while it isn't cheap it is among the best value in town for the premium ingredients like bison and sablefish. Stick to salad and bannock-based mains and the pricepoint drops significantly compared to the filets and roasts - and unless you've got vegantarians among you I'd heartily recommend both of the sharing platters to begin with. Sans booze, you can come away decently fed for <CAD$50pp and that's about tuppence ha'penny in USD these days 😉 Edit - whoops, already replied above and mentioned S&B already...