Vancouver Post Cruise

[ssbeagle]

Looking for a hotel for two nights post cruise before flying home from Vancouver for first-time visitors.  I can’t walk much but want to be able to arrange a tour while there.  What suggestions do you have?

[CruiserBruce]

A quick search finds:

 

and dozens more...

[martincath]

Bruce certainly ain't wrong - there are dozens of other posts asking the same question, and correspondingly many answers. Very few hotels have opened in the last couple of years, just as few have closed, so there really hasn't been much in the way of significant changes to impact any prior answers. I'd have no problem assuming that any Q&A from the last two seasons remain 99% the same as they were at the time posted.

 

That said OP, if you browse the links above/do your own search and can't find anything that fits just what you need, by all means come back with some more detail (budget primarily) as right now the answer to your question as written is 'literally ANY hotel in the downtown core will do' thanks to our compact downtown. TripAdvisor ratings are a good resource to compare relative quality of the experience (us downtown-living locals rarely need to actually stay in a hotel; personally I have well-grounded opinions of most of the good hotel restaurants but in terms of rooms it's more like three first-hand!)

[ceilidh1]

When I have guests in town they always stay at Blue Horizon on Robson Street. GREAT rooms, GREAT views, and convenient to shopping, food, (and me -lol!). They used to offer GREAT pricing, but sadly the secret is now out about this gem and the pricing is more inline with other hotels in Downtown. There are many nice places to stay, but as MartinCath pointed out you would have to give an idea of budget. If money is no problem, then look at either Pan Pacific or Fairmont Waterfront - both wonderful hotels right at the pier. They're not cheap, though!

[ssbeagle]

 

2 hours ago, ceilidh1 said:

When I have guests in town they always stay at Blue Horizon on Robson Street. GREAT rooms, GREAT views, and convenient to shopping, food, (and me -lol!). They used to offer GREAT pricing, but sadly the secret is now out about this gem and the pricing is more inline with other hotels in Downtown. There are many nice places to stay, but as MartinCath pointed out you would have to give an idea of budget. If money is no problem, then look at either Pan Pacific or Fairmont Waterfront - both wonderful hotels right at the pier. They're not cheap, though!

 

Do you know anything about the Granville Suites?

Edited January 12, 2019 by ssbeagle

[Tranquility Base]

This is not a hotel question, but rather a ship to ship transfer question at Vancouver.

 

We arrive from Alaska on one ship, and depart that same evening on another ship to the USA (same cruise line)

 

Our plan would be:

 

 disembark as late as possible,

collect our bags,

drop off the check in  bags at the next ship, 

find out what the timings are for the new embarkation,

head out for the day and come back for a later embarkation.

 

Any advise on that plan please ?

[martincath]

21 hours ago, ssbeagle said:

Do you know anything about the Granville Suites?

They used to be the Best Western Plus Downtown, were bought by an education company to be turned into student accommodation, there was some problem with paperwork so they were turned partly back into a 'regular' hotel but with about 30 fewer rooms which were turned into long-term student residences. Significant renos happend on those floor, adding new shared kitchens and the like but shrinking rooms further. So basically you have an older hotel that's only run as a hotel because the company was forced to retain it as such and has no experience in actual hotel operations... which does not bode well for quality of customer service!

 

Plus, since it's right on Granville Street it can be noisy at night (ask for a room facing the back or at least Drake rather than Granville) and you have a bunch of students as your fellow residents. Speaking as an ex-student who knows many current ones in this city, the degree of partying that Canadians get up to pales in comparison to the debauchery of my days in the UK, but still you're looking at a high proportion of young, single, boozers as your neighbours;-)

3 hours ago, Tranquility Base said:

This is not a hotel question, but rather a ship to ship transfer question at Vancouver.

We arrive from Alaska on one ship, and depart that same evening on another ship to the USA (same cruise line)

Our plan would be:

disembark as late as possible,

collect our bags,

drop off the check in  bags at the next ship, 

find out what the timings are for the new embarkation,

head out for the day and come back for a later embarkation.

 

Any advise on that plan please ?

If you take the last 'take my bags off for me' disembarkation slot you'll have minimal wait time. Since you didn't give your date I can't check the schedule, so go here and do so for yourself. If it's a one or two ship day then bag drop should be open by 9:30am or not much later - but if it's a three or gods-forbid a four-shipper, you may have to hang around until after 10am to be able to drop your bags off.

 

Unless it's a weird oddity for the second leg - which you'll see on the port schedule, e.g. the Bliss comes and goes at about 3am so it can make it under the bridge - embarkation runs pretty much exactly the same for everyone every day. I'm guessing that the fact you are swapping between two vessels of the same line means it's extremely likely you are cruising either HAL or Princess, and I don't think either of those have any weird schedules this year, just the typical 7am-ish to between 4 and 5pm. Check-in desks will let you in earlier (then make you sit around until CBP/CBSA have zeroed out the passenger count and port operations are ready to start letting new folks on rather than dealing with the disembarking pax) so you'll be held in a big hall until around 11am on quieter days, as late as noon on busy ones, at which point the first folks can get moving through Security and CBP - those first people will flow through fast, 20mins or less in total. If you join the queues outside the first stage as soon as you drop your bags you'll be among them. Start queuing bat noonish and expect to wait the longest total time to board (hundreds of cruisers come by Amtrak, which rolls in at 11:45am if on time so those folks start to hit the pier at a little after noon, and most same-day flights tend to be scheduled before 1pm too).

 

But unless you have visited Vancouver a ton of prior times, you'd be frankly insane to give up on the chance of doing some sightseeing! So it's good you already plan to get out and about;-) Personally what I'd suggest is get off EARLY and burn a few bucks to store your bags (Pan Pacific Hotel right above the pier charges $5 per bag, this is the cheapest deal) and go haring around as much as possible in the city. An extra 2 hours is a huge proportionate gain on a short day like this! Come back as late as you possibly can - the hard cutoff is 90mins before your ship departs, which is also on the port schedule linked above, and if you roll back in as tight as possible to that deadline you will find your total queue time will be basically zero - you'll just walk right up to check-in desks, security scans, and CBP agents/kiosks and spend maybe 20mins total curb to cabin.

 

If your second leg is going to Victoria or another Canadian port after Vancouver - fairly common on Pacific Coastal repos down to San Francisco/LA - you'll skip the CBP step here and instead do immigration at your first US port, which does make boarding quicker but can really throw a spanner in works if you want to do an excursion in that port (e.g. SF is notorious for taking hours to clear a big ship, don't schedule anything requiring payment for at least 3 hours after scheduled arrival time).

[Tranquility Base]

51 minutes ago, martincath said:

 

Wow martincath, thanks very much for your extensive reply.

 

3 ship day....total pax load of about 5,500 over the 3 ships.

Yes, the departure is one of your oddities....11pm as first stop is indeed Victoria.

Yes, because of that am already planning only a very flexible walk around day for San Francisco.

Am familiar with Vancouver, so a 5-6 hour DIY day is all we are after.

 

Thanks again.

 

[martincath]

15 minutes ago, Tranquility Base said:

Wow martincath, thanks very much for your extensive reply.

No worries - I'm guessing it's the Golden Princess, Sep 25th for you?

 

Keep your eyes peeled for outside-the-norm embarkation times - given an 11pm departure, and no need for CBP staff, there's a chance that you'd be allowed to return to the ship much later than normal. That said, since the ship does arrive at the usual morning time it's also quite possible Princess will cheap out and not pay shoreside check-in staff much if at all longer than normal though, so you might need to get checked in by a more typical 5pm-ish. Even if that's the case you might be able to wander on and off the ship (as long as you're there for Muster Drill, whenever they schedule that) after you've checked-in.

Edited January 13, 2019 by martincath

[ceilidh1]

6 hours ago, Tranquility Base said:

This is not a hotel question, but rather a ship to ship transfer question at Vancouver.

 

We arrive from Alaska on one ship, and depart that same evening on another ship to the USA (same cruise line)

 

Our plan would be:

 

 disembark as late as possible,

collect our bags,

drop off the check in  bags at the next ship, 

find out what the timings are for the new embarkation,

head out for the day and come back for a later embarkation.

 

Any advise on that plan please ?

Is the first cruise originating in Whittier? If so, you might want to double check that your plan is, indeed doable and not breaking the Passenger Vessel Services Act (can't begin and end in different US ports). Princess have cancelled people's cruises in situations such as this....If it's a roundtrip Vancouver/Vancouver then you will be fine.

[martincath]

18 hours ago, ceilidh1 said:

Is the first cruise originating in Whittier? If so, you might want to double check that your plan is, indeed doable and not breaking the Passenger Vessel Services Act (can't begin and end in different US ports). Princess have cancelled people's cruises in situations such as this....If it's a roundtrip Vancouver/Vancouver then you will be fine.

PVSA only impacts B2B on the same vessel, and this poster already clarified that they are changing ships for the second leg. Swapping ships, even same day, is established case law as a legitimate 'break' making it two separate journeys.