early flight

[greener]

ship arrives canada place vancouver at 12:30 am.  i booked flight to toronto at 11:05am from YVR.  domestic flight so should be at airport by 9am.  seems doable to me but princess site says no flights should be booked earlier than 12pm.  any insight or experience with this situation?

[Fouremco]

Your ship's arrival time really doesn't matter, it's the time when they start allowing passengers to disembark. Still, assuming they start around 7:00 am, you shouldn't have a trouble getting to the airport by 9:00 am.

[gnome12]

3 hours ago, greener said:

ship arrives canada place vancouver at 12:30 am.  i booked flight to toronto at 11:05am from YVR.  domestic flight so should be at airport by 9am.  seems doable to me but princess site says no flights should be booked earlier than 12pm.  any insight or experience with this situation?

People flying to the US take longer because they have to go through US customs and immigration in Vancouver, which can take longer. As a domestic flight you have a simpler departure.

[martincath]

A domestic flight? With no Covid testing or Preclearance needed as you're not headed to the US, the only potential problems are if you are docking on a 3 or 4 ship day the cab queue at the pier can become ridiculous, over an hour wait easily, and then Security at YVR also gets mad busy as thousands of pax start rolling in within a narrow timeframe. Things are less efficient at YVR than in TheBeforeTimes as of course your vaxx status does need checked for inter-provincial travel, and staffing issues crop up more often, so aiming for 2 hours early is wise.

 

Fouremco's correct that just because your ship arrives at a weird hour you might not be able to get off - CBSA and the Longshoremen do not staff Canada Place 24/7, so unless your cruiseline is going to pay for a lot of overtime neither bags nor people will be disembarked until regular shift start time. You might be allowed off earlier than most, and there's a good chance your ship will be the first to start disembarkation as they'll have had lots of time to ensure all the paperwork is done - but multiple-ship days could still screw with your plans...

 

If the ship entered Canada at Victoria first, you should be OK for immigration purposes so you could probably walk off whenever you like - but you'll have to move your own bags unless the longshoremen are having cash thrown at them;-) That's something you'll have to ask your cruiseline!

 

As long as you can self-disembark with your bags you will be among the first pax off your vessel even if you wait until 'normal' disembarkation time, and you will beat all the folks on cruise transfers. If you can physically move your bags from cabin to pier, you can also take them to SkyTrain - which avoids the issues with cab queues too.

 

Walk off by 7:30am and you could easily be through security and at your gate before 9am even on a day with lots of ships - if the cab queue is short join it (metered, ballpark a little under $40 as fares just went up a smidge recently) if you don't want to schlep your bags, otherwise just follow the sidewalk left (ignore the first entrance you see on Howe, it goes to the wrong platform) until you hit Cordova St, turn left onto that and Waterfront Station is a couple of blocks and easily spotted.

 

If you can't cope with moving all your own bags then things will get a lot tighter as you'll definitely have to wait for longshoremen, and then be disembarking after all those who are able to self-disembark which could be literally thousands on a busy day - so the cab queue could already be long and Security at YVR could already be clogged...

 

Long story short - unless you can schlep our own bags, check how many other ships are docking the same day... if it's 3 or 4 you should seriously consider a later flight, even on a domestic itinerary.

 

 

[em-sk]

10 hours ago, greener said:

ship arrives canada place vancouver at 12:30 am.  i booked flight to toronto at 11:05am from YVR.  domestic flight so should be at airport by 9am.  seems doable to me but princess site says no flights should be booked earlier than 12pm.  any insight or experience with this situation?

 

Is Toronto your final destination?  If it is you have lots of choices.  Air Canada and WestJet are running almost hourly flights between Vancouver and Toronto.  

 

If your doing the discount route with someone like Flair less choice but still some.