martincath

I would say that as first-timers, Princess definitely brings some advantages - they have a more extensive and older presence here, so historically preferential deals with local providers, and their onboard exprience is genuinely different in AK than elsewhere, with sled dog puppies brought onto the ship perhaps enticing for the kids, talks from Iditarod champions quite fascinating, and not sure if it still happens now but you could even sign up for a free axe throwing contest onboard back in the day! Glacier Bay is also a really big draw, especially for your first trip - the only guaranteed glacier viewing basically, and I'm with Bruce that a second glacier day is also a very good thing! I also prefer May for cruising, so another point toward Princess... ISP is... tiny. Walking into Hoonah proper certainly gets away from 'typical cruise port shops and stuff' but there really isn't much too it. Unless you have a full day of activities in Juneau, so you can slide whale-watching to ISP, or you desperately want to ride the big zipline for buckets of cash, it's the most skippable port in AK if you ask me. Actually this isn't at all tricky from where I'm standing - Sapphire late May for the win, by a landslide! Note also that many of your activities are doable pre-cruise in Vancouver, in a weaker currency, with much more competition... whale-watching for example with 4 people you could save a couple of hundred bucks easily, for a longer trip with a much better chance of seeing Orcas (and the last few years, we have sooooo many humpies that hang around here instead of swimming all the way up to Alaska that the successful trip stats from May to September are running virtually 100% for every company - and you do get free rides for life until you see a whale!)

Masa's didn't open until 1983 - I recall reading just last year about the tragic still-unsolved murder of the man himself within a year of it opening, after seeing his episode of Great Chefs on a streaming site. He was in the US, cooking elsewhere in IIRC Napa by '81, but his eponymous place in SF was definitely '83. That's a long time ago though, understandable error - I've certainly fluffed dates by a year or three that long ago! My own dinner there took advantage of the shorter menu introduced in ~2010, in the Greg Short years, just three courses rather than the previous tasting extravaganzas - very good, but only a single Star then and I'm pretty sure that was actually all they ever had. Besides - unless both I and Michelin are forgetting something pretty important - the first US Guide wasn't published until 2005... and that only covered NYC, with the Bay Area only getting visited by inspectors the next year. That would make the first tranche of US 3-star restos Jean-George, Le Bernardin, and Per Se who all gained it in the first edition - nowhere in SF got three stars first time around, with Napa's French Laundry the first (and only for a couple of years) 3-star... Perhaps you're conflating a few different experiences given quite how many Michelin restos you've dined in? Masa, no relation but an easily-confused name, in NYC did get upgraded to three stars from two, one or two editions before I moved to the left coast so '09/10-ish. Regardless, I'm now thoroughly confused about the timeline and location of you having apparently been GM of 'the first' Michelin 3-star US resto - I had assumed you worked in one of the trio of Manhattan restos which can all claim to have been the first since they were announced simultaneously, but does this mean you actually worked at Masa's in SF? I do recall the sommelier then, conceivably 'nicknameable' into your handle, by any chance are you an Australian with a particular love of German wines? I won't name names so as not to doxx you just in case!

Thanks again @Heidi13 Andy, I might have missed this Q given the generic title. First Balsam, while I'm aware of canned regular drinking water (ideal for long-term storage, the kind of thing that many of us with an Earthquake kit acquire as it doesn't need swapped out at all often) it's generally very pricey - frankly I would guess that unless you literally only consume water, and therefore any of the Beverage Packages would be of no value to you at all, you'd find life easier and likely cheaper to just buy a package to get you all the bottled water you need. And given the listed volumes per cabin, you cannot possibly bring enough onboard to drink throughout a cruise instead of what's available onboard - it's less than 1L per day per cabin not remotely adequate for your only source of hydration! Secondly, even if we can figure out a reasonable location/pricepoint for you locally to buy a case, you really don't want to take it on board then get off again! Boarding in Vancouver almost always involves preclearing US CBP, leaving the ship again means going back through CBSA into Canada, and it's an unusual thing to do here because of this immigration issue so frankly you're a lot more likely to get follow-up questions and face even longer delays! Board once, stay on, is the only sensible use of time! If you are still keen to acquire canned water though, I got mine from Amazon - and a quick Googling indicates that's probably still by far the least pricey option... On the carton front I have no particular experience as expiration dates are nowhere near as good as canned - but it looks like 1L cartons of alkaline water are readily available (we have a lot of, let's say quirky dietary beliefs locally!) from both Amazon and in our more 'organic' supermarket chains like Whole Paycheck. If you order from Amazon and have it delivered to a close-to-the-pier Locker location (closest is I believe inside the Canada Post office at Granville & W. Pender) you have 3 days to collect packages, so depending on shipping you may find that buying Prime for one month to get a nice, tight delivery window is cheaper than paying extra for a 1-day shipping time! Caveat - if HAL allow 'water with stuff in it' to be brought onboard life becomes simpler! 12-packs of flavoured fizzy water (mostly in standard 355ml cans, so unfortunately not maxing out your allowance efficiently) cost about the same as pop and are available in all the drugstores, supermarkets etc. That angle you'll need to hope some recent HAL cruisers are able to confirm policy on though!

We have had similar concerns spread about Vancouver since the Pandemic began to be honest - and our 'bad parts' of town have always overlapped with the big tourist area of Gastown, and to a lesser extent Chinatown. Statistically Seattle is a little more dangerous than Vancouver but both of our cities relative to their country-wide baseline have similar crime patterns: it's casual thefts, breaking into cars, Taking Stuff From Places that are the real issue - mugging, assaults, robberies and the like, Hurting Or Taking Stuff From People is much lower. Nobody likes their stuff being stolen, but it's much less bad than being attacked! While I'm less familiar with Seattle as we tend to just blow right through on most trips, in general I find that the entire West Coast gets tarred unfairly with the 'danger' brush because of homelessness and drug use - unpleasantness isn't the same as danger, my wife walks around by herself almost every day downtown both here and Portland, we both walk at night to and from the vast majority of the many restaurants we visit and many of our favourites are right in the worst parts of both cities! Be sensible, don't wander through any 'tent cities' you do come across, and if you really want to go e.g. somewhere on our Michelin list that's on any street beginning with East downtown take a cab there and have the resto call you one when you're ready to leave - St Lawrence, Barbara, and Kissa Tanto among the star-winners, Chupito, Fiorino, and Phnom Penh among the Bibs (and pretty much any Gastown or Chinatown resto in general!) are in places that I know some folks do become uncomfortable in... but even at night, the 'dodgy' streets with restos on can often be very busy, lots of people coming and going, so may feel very safe to you.

Dang, between this and Andy's shout-out I'm really feeling the love! 🥰 First - good on your for specifying WHICH Pinnacle hotel, that's problem one sorted! If it's a mainstream cereal that you're just picky about branding on (my wife would straight-up cut a b*tch who poured her Rice Krispies or Cornflakes that were not Kelloggs - I still have flashbacks to from the time I tested her tastebuds with strategic re-filling of a Kelloggs box!!!) you'll very likely find it in the big drugstores as well as supermarkets, so if you're touring around just pop into whatever you see (heck, check the local flyers if you want to see who's doing a deal that week - cereal has gotten mad pricey since the Pandemic! - and you have walkable branches of London Drugs and Rexall, as well as Safeway, Meinhardt [a weird urban version of Save On Foods], FreshCo, Urban Fare, maybe even No Frills (v cheap!) and Choices if you get across to Davie St. If you just want 'shortest walk back to hotel carrying stuff but also likely to have it, price not really a factor' then Urban fare is your best bet - it's a full service supermarket that runs a wee bit on the pricey side, but not so much as Whole Paycheck. There's two these days, and Alberni is really not much further than Bute so whichever is closest to your dinner spot the night before etc. just hit that one up on the way back to the hotel. Costco downtown - they usually only have a handful in store (last week I was in, Multigrain and Honey-Nut Cheerios plus Raisin Bran, I think Vector, and possibly Chex were on the shelves) but will be hands down the cheapest if you eat a LOT of cereal! Boxes are 'double family size', about 1.2kg/2.5lb twinpacks(!)

Please re-read the rule you actually quoted, which is great as it saves me the trouble, but note my emphasis - your stuff merely needs to have the potential to obstruct etc., in the sole discretion of a Translink employee or transit cop... and there is literally nowhere on the Expo line trains that will fit a big bag without being in the aisle (trip hazard!), near the door (trip hazard!), etc. etc. Think about sudden braking, an unsteady elderly person, a teen with their face in a phone boarding etc. etc. falling over your baggage and ask yourself if your bag is truly somewhere that it cannot possibly cause a problem? Unless your bag is small enough to fit with you in your own seat area, it's a potential obstruction regardless of your opinion on the matter - and there's no appeal process even if you think they're being utterly unreasonable, it's either obey the instruction to leave or else the transit cops get involved, and a hefty fine might be levied on you too (IIRC it was up to about $190 after most recent inflationary increase). I've posted on this a few times in the past, listing various instances where I've seen these rules enforced. You are of course welcome to disagree with me, as a local my 'job' is just to pass along knowledge to visitors - I've given the relevant warning, it's up to the readers to decide what to do with the info, but this is a situation where the best possible case is saving ~$10 (Canadian!!!) for solo travelers and a typical cruising couple couldn't even treat themselves to a a decent coffee each compared to taking a cabuber from the station. Any risk whatsoever is too big a risk IMO!!! This isn't just an attempt to keep tourists off the Expo line so I have less competition to use it, I live just a block away from Main St station but I walk directly to Olympic Village (over a mile) if I'm heading to YVR with a bag I plan to check as that's on the Canada Line - I only take Expo and transfer if I'm going strictly carry-on, even at a quiet time of day, despite the zero extra cost and the several minutes/mile of walking saved with the transfer, because it removes even the tiny chance of ruining the start of my trip by having an altercation with some uniformed jobsworth!!!

Dang! Now THAT'S the way to do justice to Vancouver - you'll see more stuff than most of us who live here do in a year!!! On the early disembarkation front, there's no legal impediment to you getting off in Victoria (voyage starts in USA, ends in Canada, neither countries applicable Coastwise Trade laws are impacted) so if you just settle your bill and walk off the ship NCL can't really stop you... but unless you hold Canadian citizenship CBSA definitely can refuse you entry, and while they do expect to be on-site for port-stops they don't expect to see someone get off permanently unless advised in advance by the ship... so I could certainly see them being a bit annoyed! Given that there are even more options to get back to Vancouver from Seattle (Train again for me!), it's only about an hour or so longer, and this way you also get an extra dinner/shows/midnight buffet I don't think it's worth trying to force the issue with NCL 😉 In fact Seattle's a very nice city, and having spent three weeks in Vancouver I think you could definitely justify spending a day or two there! You may even find that rearranging your flight home to go from SEA instead of YVR might save money - I know that we have leveraged work trips to squeeze in extra time in our Portland place before and/or after conventions, and provided the flight cost is less than a simple round trip from Vancouver it's never been questioned as the company saves money too!

Easy yes, but every time you rode you broke the rules unless your bags were small enough to sit in your lap... The risks are very low (automated train = no driver or conductor to see you!) and the timing of Amtrak means no rush hour commuter traffic so it's very unlikely you'll be booted off unlike at say 8am when staff are actively patrolling, stopping people boarding with bikes for example - but unless you're a solo traveler it's also not much of a saving so why take any risk at all? A metered cab to the pier runs maybe $12, same as 4 SkyTrain adult tix, and even for a solo the savings would not buy you a single pint of beer in Vancouver! Especially given OP specifically mentioned having a pair of octogenarians and there's no elevator at the Howe St exit from that platform, I'd definitely be taking a cab/rideshare rather than roaming the rabbit warren of Waterfront to save a buck or two. Back to the crux of the matter for OP @dpelletier - the morning train is normally low risk as it sits in Seattle rather than coming up from Oregon like the evening train, so it generally leaves Seattle on time. The schedule was lengthened by almost half an hour years ago to account for the typical delays from freight prioritization and marine traffic bridge closures, so if you don't have to wait for freight or a bridge you'll actually arrive a bit early! Since personally I'm in the 'board as late as you can' camp, I wouldn't usually have an issue taking the train from Seattle Day Of, except for the fact that you're sailing on a Royal class ship! Majestic, like all of it's sister ships, is somewhat impractical for Vancouver departures - they cannot fit under the bridge except during a variable window around low tide, with the exact tide level making for as short a safe passage period as 30mins! This means that whatever the schedule says, it cannot be trusted: Princess could check tide timetables up to two years in advance, the Canadian government prints them into books and everything, but they do not. Every single year the same thing happens - a series of emails goes out to booked pax, hopefully at least a month in advance but not always, giving you the actual time of departure for your date if it varies by more than an hour or two from the theoretical. Until that email arrives you can't be sure when it will leave port - the good news is that if there's a significant change the time is always bumped later rather than earlier, often into the wee small hours of the next day, but the bad news is that if low tide is say ~3pm they may pull the departure a little earlier rather than sit in port paying for all the hookups for twelve hours extra! So your All Aboard time might end up shifting forward from the theoretical 2:30pm... and if your train is running late on a day like that, the risk of being too late to board increase! TL;DR - on your Majestic cruise I would not take Amtrak on Day Of until you get confirmation of actual departure time change... if it's leaving later than the theoretical 4:30pm and tickets are still available, Amtrak away! If not, then I'd try for a Princess transfer coach if one is available - that way if something goes wrong Princess are on the hook for getting you to the ship, including paying PVSA violations if applicable! Since it sounds like you are flying in to Seattle on Friday afternoon, I'd actually suggest looking at a rental car - by the time you fill the seats you may end up paying less in total than a bus transfer (cruiselines, and QuickShuttle with some bag fees, charge around $79pp - Greyhound/Flix you might pay half that if you get lucky) and while the train is only $34 for Adults if Saver tix are available, even less for Seniors, the limited departure times are frustrating - with a car though you can book it to drive up Friday, and as long as you still return it within the 24hrs if you are late off your plane no problem. Border in a car isn't quite as nice as the train, but is easier than a bus - even if sent to Secondary, CBSA don't need you to unload the bags just hand them the keys and sit around waiting for them to search it! Plus total flexibility in where you stop, which border crossing etc. A cheap suburban hotel either side of the border, an early drive to the pier to drop your elders and bags off, and even if you find the cheapest deals are airport-to-airport only the driver then needs to head out to YVR to drop the car, and SkyTrain on the Canada Line is <$10 and quick, especially if all the big bags have already been dropped at the pier!

Honestly, I wouldn't cruise Alaska in October at all - I can appreciate wanting to tie this in to a conference when your flights and some hotel nights are expense-able, we do the same at every opportunity, but I'd be inclined to just stick to land, especially since you've never been to Vancouver before... you could easily spend a week here and leave still not having seen everything! But in terms of the train - that southbound morning one is as good as it gets! The train sits overnight, there are no connecting services, the crew overnight here as well, there is virtually no chance of it being delayed leaving. While freight trains and a couple of bridges are random elements, the odds of it being more than an hour late are very slim indeed. Track improvements have cut the landslide issue down a lot, it's really only in spring after months of rain that problems arise these days - and unless it happens literally hours before your train, Amtrak are experienced at using 'bus bridges' to move pax between stations either side of a landslide so the already-padded-at-least-thirty-minutes schedule would probably only bump by another thirty. The only train-based problems that would prevent you getting there successfully are the kind of things that you just can't plan for sensibly - we once sat for several hours because a truck hit a bridge we were supposed to cross just before we got there, and it took a while for engineers to get there and assess whether it was structurally sound enough to take the train safely! That sort of thing you just have to accept as a risk - if you factored that level of concern into your travel, you would always be traveling three days or more ahead of when you need to be somewhere!!!! From King St station to Pier 66 is a pretty short drive, less than two miles - even if the train was two hours late you could walk there in time to board! So if cruising out of Seattle is what you really want to do, I'd definitely book the train in preference to even the earlier buses - it's by far the least hassle with immigration at the border. Speaking of - do be sure that you have all your paperwork in place! Any needed visa for Canada doesn't help with getting into the USA!!!

What's your poison @Gryff? A couple of 'loadsa restos' streets are very close by, Davie and Granville, with a plethora of ethnic flavours available generally weighted toward the value end of the spectrum rather than super-swanky. Depending where you live and what you have available, you may want to hit familiar flavours or try something new...? In the middle part of Davie near where you are, I tend to gravitate to Taki's Taverna (do yourself a favour and avoid Stepho's unless you like long queues and sub-par food - portion size, poor students, and people who have no idea what Greek food is meant to taste like keep Stepho's in business!), Banana Leaf (Malaysian, a local chain, good intro to the genre), and Gurkha (Himalayan - some of the closest local food to British curry, better at the 'meat in spicy gravy' game than any of the downtown Indian restos); Transylvanian Traditions bakery I still miss visiting regularly (diabetes and sweet, sweet cakes do not mix well!) and in my younger, boozier days Fritz' Euro Fry House would be a tempting post-pub stop for poutine (although visiting earlier in the day makes for a quieter crowd!) On the swanky front, both Le Crocodile and Bacchus are ideal spots for a quiet, romantic dinner - some of the very few Vancouver restos that have heavy fabric in the dining rooms compared to our 'exposed walls and bare tables' aesthetic that is almost universal. Notch 8 in the Fairmont Vancouver is also close and swank, not quite as cutting edge as sister resto Botanist in the Pacific Rim but still you may get the odd dish served in a fishbowl full of smoke! Don't mind more of a buzzy atmosphere and want to eat real well, Boulevard kitchen under Sutton Place hotel is superb; Hawksworth just the other side of the art gallery on Georgia; a few blocks straight down Helmcken brings you into Yaletown right past Blue Water Cafe, probably the best fish kitchen in the city. And all of our 'slightly upmarket dining chains' have a branch within an easy walk - Joeys, Earls, Cactus Club (the best of the bunch IMO, and no price bump in their 'view' restos on the Seawall both sides of the downtown core, although it's much easier to get a reso in the 'no view' Yaletown or Bentall branches!) In short - you'd need to be here for a month eating all your meals out to try everything within even a six block walk! So if I haven't randomly stumbled onto some restos that sound ideal, supply a bit more info on your preferred/detested cuisines and what sort of cash you're willing to part with to be fed and I'll happily curate a more targeted list for you!

Well that was bad timing on my front - I realized you gave me enough info and Edited by answer above, then saw this...

It differs cruise to cruise Dave - without your exact routes, explicitly where and when any other Canadian ports fall relative to the end of cruise 1/start of cruise 2 Vancouver visit, someone who did this last year could report 100% correctly what they experienced but you have a totally different one. Edit - dearie me, I'm not paying enough attention, you did mention your ship in the title and there's only one southbound repo this Fall!!!! So - since Volendam seems to be sea days after Vancouver, then San Francisco, the good news is you should be Precleared here as normal. However bad it gets at Canada Place, it's more efficient than Pier 27 by a huge margin! So in terms of the B2B experience, you can open it up to anyone who cruised HAL B2B on the regular loops, not just the repos, as you should have the same CBP experience as they did.

Appreciate the tap-in @Ferry_Watcher - my understanding backs up @Dbld777's interpretation, that only Air absolutely requires a passport for border-crossing, Land and Sea do not, BUT while this is fine and dandy from a governmental perspective unfortunately it isn't a government-run ferry service involved! Whether or not you will be allowed on the ship comes down to the cruise line - their conditions of carriage are what you need to be compliant with since as US citizens, with both parents present, CBP are not going to prevent you or your child returning to your home country (even CBSA crossing into Canada, with both parents there, shouldn't give you any grief although they may ask some follow-up questions about your trip when the kid has no passport just to make sure you didn't book a flight back unaware that you could not fly!) Princess' rules seem unfortunately very cut and dried - no cruise for you! Only Closed Loop cruises even mention the birth cert option for any age of traveler... so you definitely need to clear it with them, or you may end up unexpectedly vacationing in Vancouver and having to drive back over the border and fly domestic back home to Ohio! Escalate it as high as you can, as fast as you can, because call centre minions are going to toe the company line, their supervisors likewise, so you need someone on the compliance side of things to sign off on your kid cruising without a passport I would guess - the folks who get involved on all the unlawful cruise combos actually seem to understand the rudiments of WHTI and PVSA laws at least! Hopefully there's someone else who has done this, on Princess, and can walk you through their experience - and frankly I would love to be wrong here, for your sake! - but I think the odds are against you, this is definitely an uncommon situation. Just in case you do make it as far as the pier and then get rebuffed, what's your exact departure date? Late July I should be in town and I've helped out in more troublesome situations in the past - a couple of Francophone ladies I was guiding around town got trapped when the US border closed during Covid, so their Amtrak to Seattle then flying home plan fell apart... at least you guys speak the local lingo and the border's open, so helping you figure out accommodation/travel/stuff to do in the mean time would be a doddle in comparison! Drop me an email at cruisecriticmarty @ gmail dot com if you don't want to share info publicly.

Yes to all of the above warnings, plus it tends to be the really crappy cheap airlines that use YXX - the ones with very few planes, so if anything goes wrong your delay is going to be huge... a buddy from Toronto came to visit, and arrived two days after he was scheduled to with Flair, having been stuck in Edmonton while maintenance was done! If you're using a mainline Westjet flight, who I think are the only 'real' airline flying out of there, I'd be genuinely surprised if the savings were $600 unless you have like 12 people - we always run a comparison just in case and we've never seen better than $70-ish bucks per person compared to YVR, so as a couple not worth the hassle even though we could drive our own car and park for cheap. But if you are willing to risk it, try ebus - not a lot of departures, even fewer viable after a same-day disembarkation, but less than $50pp from the main bus station here in Vancouver (which is about a $12 cab ride from the pier) to YXX

I call total bullcrap on any 'kayaking with whales' - first, it's illegal even for a kayaker or swimmer to deliberately approach whales too closely (100 yards in Alaska) and harrassment of wildlife charges would almost certainly await you given these idiots are apparently advertising their efforts! Considering how low in the water you are, you'll see less than on a boat at the legal distance, so all in all it's just a truly stupid concept. It's dangerous! Feeding baleen whales, even if not doing group bubble-netting, are down below and surging upward - even if they aim to miss any poor schmuck in a kayak above them, the displaced water of a close call is going to cause problems for such a small craft. Check youtube videos of folks who have stumbled into whales, and then think about whether you could manage to control your kayak under those sort of circumstances... I've personally experience being lifted out of the water on the back of a whale - that was in a boat almost 30ft long and we almost capsized! Assuming you were not knocked unconscious while it happened (again, youtube vids!) and you were skilled, no problem in worst case rolling yourself back upright - but even the most skilled person will drown if they are unconscious inside a flipped over kayak unless someone else intervenes quickly! Best case - these guys are sane, just lying weasels with their marketing, and you stay at least the legal limit away from any whales. Worst case - they do take you in the middle of feeding whales and eventually somebody dies! Go kayaking in Alaska? Sure - if you enjoy that sort of thing it'll be a spectacular day on the water with mountains, eagles and the like definitely experienced, but don't pay a premium for a thing which can't legally be done and is hella dangerous!

The beauty of Vancouver is that the cruise port is IN the city centre! The SkyTrain mentioned above is 100% the best option for a solo traveler who can handle their own bags (cheapest, fastest, most consistent in timing, and with even US credit cards now normally having Chips, there's a very good chance you will never even need to visit a ticket machine - any Tappable Visa/MC, or even a smartphone with a credit card loaded to the onboard payment system, can simply be tapped on the fare gate to board, again to leave, and all the potential options for how many Zones depending on time and day of travel are done automatically... unless you are >65 and want to save a buck, as Concession tickets do need manually purchased from the machines). Depending which hotel you're pre-cruising in (don't fly in same day from the east coast!), it may be right next to a SkyTrain station downtown - just like the pier, we also stuck about 95% of our popular tourist sites and hotels in the downtown core! Very few hills, nice wide sidewalks, and a cab from one end of the core to the other is unlikely to break US$10 even with traffic if your downtown hotel is as far away from the pier and SkyTrain line as possible (less than 2 miles). YWCA Hotel is the best deal for just about any size of group, but for Solos unless you want a hostel with a bunkbed it's most definitely the one you want to look at; very few other hotels even have single rooms, let alone charge less for 'em! Nearest SkyTrain here is City Centre, a nice leg stretch of downhill less than a half mile to the hotel.

If you're on Waterfront Road, things have gone terribly wrong... this is a below-street-level access way for trucks etc. to get at the lowest level of the pier. I've had a poke around on foot, walking back from the Heliport, just to see if there is a convenient pedestrian way to get into Canada Place, and it really isn't to be recommended! Unfortunately Google did send their streetmap car along - there's another sublevel 'street' a bit further west for access to parking levels under some of the big towers too - so sometimes if you are clicking forward to 'walk' a route it leaps down to the sublevel! Stick to the Seawall or Canada Place though and the pedestrian ramp isn't hard to find - right where the cars enter. but with a curbed sidewalk and a nice solid looking railing to keep the people and vehicles separated until you get down to the actual taxi/bus drop/pickup spots. Once you enter a door, follow signage - do be sure to drop your bags with labels on at the right place! Print at home, bring them with you, attach in the hotel - a few folks reported that the queue for getting bag tags was the worse one they encountered! BH's downside is it's not very close to SkyTrain. You need to walk basically the same distance as to the pier (get on the back of the train, when you get off at Waterfront look for signs that say to Granville St, the elevator there brings you up at the corner of Hastings - which is uphill from the station building itself, so you avoid the one block with a bit of a hill if you exit there instead of inside the main building!) With the AddFare inbound, I would honestly recommend just taking a cab even with just two people unless you really want to stretch your legs - $34+tip door to door compared to ~$19 plus almost 20mins walking isn't enough of a saving to be worthwhile if it has been a long day of travel, although if you manage to get a nice non-stop flight from PHX and you're traveling anywhere around rush-hour then Skytrain+walk may be just as quick!

Don't do whale-watching in Sitka - while of course you might get lucky, Otters are the main local marine mammal to go looking for here, most of the good feeding grounds are inside the big islands but Sitka is on the outside coast. Do whales swim nearby? Of course - but Juneau and ISP are the 'absolutely definitely, no question about it, no matter who you go out with or how big the boat is you WILL see whales' ports as there are major feeding grounds within a short sail of both. There's also a whole bunch of land-based stuff in Sitka you cannot do anywhere else so unless you've been before, or are mad keen on otters, this is the port to do historic stuff (where else can you visit the site of a Russian vs. Amerindian battle!?) and see guaranteed raptors and bears (in captivity - but dirt cheap compared to the flightseeing options to see bears in the wild!)

Butchart fireworks have always been traditionally Saturday nights through the summer - this year they start July 1st but in prior years the exact dates have varied... they *might* therefore be available next June, but I wouldn't book until that's confirmed! Me, I'd hit the pubs! If you're used to cold & fizzy beer then choose based on the music - there are at least half a dozen bars you can walk between near the Inner Harbour, so if you like the 'craic' of a given one stay, and if you don't just mosey on to the next one. Or do a pub crawl, knocking back a pint in all of 'em!

Great advice... if we'd had a cellphone! We had just arrived 'fresh off the boat', and many wheels were in motion at the time, metaphorically and literally, but my research had confirmed that Canadian telecoms were the most over-priced in the world at that time (still among the worst today!) so finding the least evil cellphone provider took longer than our first shipment of goods. This why I also wrote down the details rather than following my own prior advice and just snapping a pic - all-in-all, within the spectrum of options available, negotiation seemed the wisest first course of action as I could always escalate from there if needed (we had just collected our shipped weapons so we were not particularly concerned about it turning into a worst-case 'cabbie tries to drive us somewhere off-grid to rob us' scenario!) and frankly given we'd taken a metered fare an hour earlier the negotiated amount was absolutely fair. It still illustrates the point that a very simple up-front action enables the problem to be successfully dealt with afterward, when one is no longer jet-lagged etc. Also that old-school pens & paper are still useful as cellphone batteries never die when you don't need to use the phone - we loaned a pen out to several people on every plane, train, and bus we've ever taken over a border pre-Pandemic.

You're right Dennis - the driver's ID, the 'hot line' number, and when at YVR the zone map should all be available and a 'good cabbie' will have them hanging in a plastic folder around the headrest of the passenger seat, visible to folks in back. But just like price and serving size lists in our bars and pubs, the de jure standard is 'as long as it is available' which is about as protective as a chocolate fireguard as folks ignorant of the requirement will not know to ask to see it if it's not on display! I actually had to make use of such a hotline very soon after moving to Canada - a van cab we used to collect our shipped goods from the bonded warehouse at YYZ stiffed us, wouldn't turn the meter on (this was a decade before the fixed zone fares began), and when I complained eventually agreed to a price that was equivalent to the cab fare we paid heading out there but demanded cash, obviously didn't intend to run it through the system. When we arrived and unloaded, he then literally just drove off with my money after saying he needed to get change from inside the van! IIRC it was something like $15 I wanted back from a $50 so my wife said just let it go - but I figured if he was that brazen to us, after I had called him on the No Meter issue he'd do the same or worse to others who could afford the loss less than we could. A three minute phone call, quoted the cab license, driver name and our details, job done - a couple of weeks later we got a registered letter with a $50 bill and a copy of the driver's disciplinary infraction letter indicating he needed to repeat his 'core customer service' class!

Very slightly downhill on average, sidewalks or even a pedestrian only block at times depending on streets chosen, very little difference in distance so if e.g. there is some building work blocking a chunk of sidewalk you can basically zigzag down any of Bute, Thurlow, Burrard, or Hornby from Robson (even Howe would only add a hundred yards or so overshoot). Google Maps has pretty much all the paths accurate around here - and free city WiFi network #VanWiFi enables live mapping even with phone data, but if in doubt if you can see mountains at the end of the street, you're heading towards the pier from your hotel ('Vancouver North', actually about NE in this part of downtown!) Light bags and ample time? Head all the way down to the Seawall on Bute through Harbour Green Park - bumps the distance up to a full mile, brings in a few stairs. From BH a cab would beat you walking, but only by a few minutes given the usual bottleneck for access to the pier itself.

Honestly, the best advice I can give you Don is to ask the kid! Whenever there's been a kid about that age visiting us, or sprung on me in a tour group I thought was all adults, the only thing that has always been of interest is local filming locations - whatever their tastes are there's a darn good chance at least one of the shows they love is filmed here in 'Hollywood North'! Niche things that might work but would be very much dependent on the kid: the Police Museum is in the old morgue, has an autopsy room left as it was back in the day and some pretty horrific 'cold case' info as well as the more usual younger kids fare of 'dress up in tactical gear and pretend to crack some skulls'; but be aware that the blocks around it are even skeevier than Gastown - perhaps an opportunity to show him how good he has it, getting to cruise on someone else's dime while folks live in squalor, or a place to avoid like the plague depending on how you both feel about such matters!; Space Centre if he's a space geek; Maritime Museum if he's a boat geek (ride there on False Creek Ferries for bonus small boat time); The Avengers Station if he's an MCU geek; Sports Hall of Fame if he's a sports geek; Do an art walk around our many public sculptures and murals, or visit VAG if he's an art geek (virtually no 'old masters' here, but a fair whack of modern art as well as Canadian artists); Playland if he's into fairgrounds/coasters (although note the famous wooden coaster seems to still be undergoing maintenance) and a similar note to the cop museum, buses along Hastings pass by some pretty gnarly sights on occasion; FlyOverCanada is well under an hour but often has 2 different rides and heavily discounted repeat rides so could be padded to 2+ (anyone who enjoys Soarin' at Disney will enjoy); While the timing might be too tight for Grouse Mountain's rope course, Capilano is easily doable in 3 hours from downtown for 'be high up on a moving or see-through thing' fun - Lynn Canyon would be tight if transited, but the cash for one ticket to Cap would probably pay for an Uber both ways if a more natural, way less touristy suspension bridge/woodland walk would entice; If you can squeeze some extra time, a whalewatching tour from Granville Island or Steveston would both be considerably cheaper than in Alaska, with a much better chance of seeing Orcas; heck, maybe he'd love to just shop for some Canadian candy then go see a movie?

Not to the pier - that's the price to the Downtown zone which lacks the bottleneck of limited access streets and extra driving that the pier area suffers from.

In my experience, there is a high chance that Repo cruises do NOT get precleared - Victoria is often the stop right after Vancouver on the one-ways trips down the coast, sometimes even odd ports like Nanaimo. Regardless, you'll still have CANADIAN customs and immigration after the first cruise (I assume that it leaves Canadian waters?) but then there may be no need to see CBP before embarking the second. Immigration is done remotely for cruises here - and the fact you start in Vancouver means you flew/bus/trained/drove here, crossing a border, so if you got in then it should be smooth when your name gets transmitted from ship to shore. Customs likewise - if you're not a resident, or gifting expensive things to Canadians, you'll just be taking it all out again on the next ship so CBSA really doesn't care, but you will have to fill out an oldschool paper form and either hand it in onboard or else hand it over to CBSA on arrival in Vancouver (depends on routing - Victoria stop right before Van usually means 'hand in form onboard') If you are visiting a Canadian port first on the second cruise, you will of course then have the joy of finding out how incredibly inefficient CBP are at ports without constant cruise arrivals! Whether it's Seattle, Astoria, or San Francisco prepare for an extended delay on arrival - don't book any tours, except through the ship!