Vancouver to Seattle?

[gwesq]

Haven't noticed anything too recent about disembarking in Vancouver & trying to get to Seattle.

 

I looked into renting a car - and searched on the Canada Place website for car rental agencies at the pier. It showed Avis, National & Alamo.  I went to all their website, and they are showing no cars available at that location.  I've gone to other car rental agencies as well, and all show no cars. We disembark on July 30. There is one other relatively smallish ship in port.

 

Haven't booked air back to NY yet, but hoping to catch a 1:30 flight from seattle - next choice is 3:30 from seattle.  But not looking good.

 

THe flights back to NY from Vancouver are awful - no directs in the afternoon, and we don't want to wait around until late at night. One member of our party wants to be back at work the next day. 

 

Although it appears to be a 3 hour drive, the bus is over 5 hours.

 

It Aint Easy!  

[1025cruise]

I would not book a flight same day from Seattle if you are getting off the ship in Vancouver. You're really asking for trouble.

I believe there is a bus service you can take that might make it in time.

[martincath]

Buses do vary somewhat - but even the fastest will 100% NOT get you to Seatac for a 1:30pm flight! QuickShuttle has an 'express' service with minimal stops at 9am, but even it only arrives at Seatac at 1:30pm if it's on schedule - and since the border only has ~30mins delay assumed, it's probably more likely to be late than early.

 

Renting a car even with an airport drop in Seattle is also too risky - the best time you can reasonably expect to make even if you hit no traffic woes would be 3-3.5 hours pier to airport. First off the ship, straight into a rental car ASAP you could be on the road by 8am if you get lucky, putting you at Seatac before noon with time to drop the car and get through security on a domestic flight at 1:30pm ... but only just. Even a long border delay could see you miss that flight, let alone any car trouble.

 

3:30pm is certainly doable by car (or even the first QS of the day with a bit more risk) , but frankly I'd look at your total time and cost spent traveling to SEA and see how it compares to your $ savings by flying out of SEA instead of YVR - unless you put no value whatsoever on your time, it's not actually much of a saving usually...

 

There are many, many flights between YVR and SEA so you could easily book a flight as late as 11am that actually connected with your desired 1:30pm SEA-NYC. Meeting the 3:30pm flight would be trivially easy with multiple flight options. Getting to YVR in time for even a 10am flight would be less risky than even the 3:30pm SEA drive - as long as you self-disembark you will almost certainly reach YVR by 8:30am, and despite tales of woe due to US CBP preclearance at that time of day you'll probably be at your gate within an hour even without any Trusted Traveler cards.

[gwesq]

I've been advised to Not book a flight from Vancouver before noon, and the flights in the afternoon are lousy.   I understand we have to go through US Customs in Vancouver at the cruise terminal, so that makes a for a delay for departure for the airport.  Or is customs done at YVR airport? I think I need to plan 3 1/2 hours from the time we leave the ship to catch a flight at YVR - and 7 hours to catch one out of Seattle?  It's not the cost - it is the timing & availability that is giving me trouble.  Don't want to spend the day in Vancouver & then take a redeye back.  

What surprises me is that all the car rental agencies I contacted say they have no available cars that day. Weird.

[CynCyn]

I booked a 12:45 flight from Vancouver to Seattle.  Then, I have 8 hours to kill in Seattle before taking a red-eye.  The flight was only $125, found it on Expedia.  I agree that the flights out of Vancouver in the afternoon are awful.  Last year, I had to kill all day in Vancouver and thought I would try something different this time.

[CruiserBruce]

16 minutes ago, gwesq said:

I've been advised to Not book a flight from Vancouver before noon, and the flights in the afternoon are lousy.   I understand we have to go through US Customs in Vancouver at the cruise terminal, so that makes a for a delay for departure for the airport.  Or is customs done at YVR airport? I think I need to plan 3 1/2 hours from the time we leave the ship to catch a flight at YVR - and 7 hours to catch one out of Seattle?  It's not the cost - it is the timing & availability that is giving me trouble.  Don't want to spend the day in Vancouver & then take a redeye back.  

What surprises me is that all the car rental agencies I contacted say they have no available cars that day. Weird.

You will do Canadian Immigration and Customs at the pier, and US Immigration and Customs at the Vancouver airport, if you fly from there. A noon flight is the correct recommendation.

[martincath]

25 minutes ago, gwesq said:

I've been advised to Not book a flight from Vancouver before noon, and the flights in the afternoon are lousy.   I understand we have to go through US Customs in Vancouver at the cruise terminal, so that makes a for a delay for departure for the airport.  Or is customs done at YVR airport? I think I need to plan 3 1/2 hours from the time we leave the ship to catch a flight at YVR - and 7 hours to catch one out of Seattle?  It's not the cost - it is the timing & availability that is giving me trouble.  Don't want to spend the day in Vancouver & then take a redeye back.  

What surprises me is that all the car rental agencies I contacted say they have no available cars that day. Weird.

Cruiselines recommend 12:30pm actually - but that's to cover their asses on 'worst case' days with 3 or 4 ships in port using their own inefficient transfers, when a high proportion of cruisers being American citizens heading home the same day can indeed lead to a mess at YVR. But even on those days, if you are the among the first people off you can get to your gate at YVR by 9am... and self-disembarking beats all of the 'need help with luggage' folks, who also have the delay of finding that luggage. The kiosks have made CBP a relative breeze - it's Security that is the busiest queue these days as long as you don't have stuff to declare and pay Duty on.

 

You can also fly via Toronto (or Montreal or Calgary) on a one-stop flight that offloads the US immigration part downstream to the second Canadian airport, giving you more padding to get to YVR and opening earlier departures. There are many daily flights to YYZ on both WestJet and Air Canada, and from there you have many flights to NYC airports.

 

e.g. a quick check on Kayak, restricting flights to departing after Noon on July 30th and arriving by Midnight immediately pops the 1:29pm UA1204 nonstop YVR-EWR as well as a whole bunch of other options via YYC, YYZ, DEN, ORD, SLC, SFO, even LAX that all leave noon-1:30pm and get you home to one of the three major NYC airports same day. If you push the first flight to 11am, domestic Canadian flights via Calgary and Toronto add another few options - and even the tightest connections give you more than enough time to do preclearance with 1hr 54min+ at YYZ or over an hour at YYC (a very small airport comparatively).

[Gardyloo]

The problem with east coast destinations from the west coast is that flights that leave after around noon arrive too late in the evening on the east coast for the planes to go anywhere after that, before morning.  The 3-hour time difference, coupled with a 5-6 hour flight and necessary ground time (typically at least an hour between flights) means that a noon departure from Seattle would arrive on the east coast between 8 and 9 PM, and the plane wouldn't be available for a connecting flight until 10 or later, by which time there's no demand for any profitable flights.  So instead the planes all leave in the morning, often the early morning, so that they'll have "turn-around" options on the east coast.  

 

So trying to get an afternoon departure to the east coast from Seattle or Vancouver is almost always likely to involve a long layover someplace - maybe Chicago or Dallas - followed by a red-eye connection to your destination.  That's just the way the clock works.

 

The solution is just to settle for a redeye or wait until the next morning for a daytime flight.  For what it's worth, I highly recommend the (redeye) Cathay Pacific nonstop from Vancouver to JFK - arguably the best transcon nonstop in North America in my book.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Gardyloo

[thinfool]

18 hours ago, gwesq said:

Although it appears to be a 3 hour drive, the bus is over 5 hours.

 

It Aint Easy!  

One in our party was on Quik Shuttle for a 4 hour transfer....but it turned out to be 8 hours due to a major traffic problem.  And, at times, the border crossing can be congested which can add to the problem.