Time change - August 27, 2022 - Majesty - Alaska

[phabric]

Anybody on Majesty, Alaska, out of Vancouver (August 27) to Whittier (Sept 3) 

 

The departure time on August 27 out of Vancouver has changed to 11:30pm.

now - 

Ketchikan- 10:30-4:30

Juneau - 9-9:30

 

Princess has not changed Skagway 

Edited July 27, 2022 by phabric

[memoak]

19 minutes ago, phabric said:

Anybody on Majesty, Alaska, out of Vancouver (August 27) to Whittier (Sept 3) 

 

The departure time on August 27 out of Vancouver has changed to 11:30pm.

now - 

Ketchikan- 10:30-4:30

Juneau - 9-9:30

 

Princess has not changed Skagway 

Yet

[harryfat1]

We will be on the Majestic Princess next Saturday (sailing southbound) and we had our Juneau stop shorten by an hour and our Ketchikan stop departing 3 hours earlier than the original plan. 

 

The change just showed up on our itineracy couple weeks ago. Some people in our roll call received email from Princess on the change in time but others like myself never received any email.  So there could be some angry passengers when they board the ship next weekend only to find the port schedule changes and they were never informed of it.

 

Needless to say, that created a lot of turmoil for folks in the roll call as if you had a longer private excursion booked, that needs to be canceled and trying to book something last minute won't be easy.

 

As for Skagway, there is a different thread talking about the possibility of not able to visit that port rest of the season due to rockslide closing the RRF dock.  So you may want to explore a backup plan for your Skagway day.

[phabric]

Is Skagway still listed on your itinerary?

 

I have a Princess excursion for Ketchikan which they will have to change the time, if they can since it is the lumber jack show and crab feast.

 

I have a private whale watching tour for Juneau.  I have written to them asking to move to 1 hour later tour.

Edited July 27, 2022 by phabric

[harryfat1]

2 hours ago, phabric said:

Is Skagway still listed on your itinerary?

 

I have a Princess excursion for Ketchikan which they will have to change the time, if they can since it is the lumber jack show and crab feast.

 

I have a private whale watching tour for Juneau.  I have written to them asking to move to 1 hour later tour.

Yeap. Still there (see below). 

 

 

Officially Princess only canceled this week's stop at Skagway for Majestic/Royal/Discovery/Grand for this entire week as Skagway city folks moves everything away from the RRF dock in case there will be more rock slides.

 

There's speculation at the other threads that Princess will change ports for these ships the remainder of the Alaska season or this could be just a one week thing and everything goes back to normal.

 

Since your sailing is further away, you can wait and see.  For me, I need to look for backup options in case we do head for ISP instead of Skagway as we are leaving soon.

[cruisingrob21]

It could be tide related, I had heard it can sometimes be a tight squeeze under the lionsgate bridge for the royal class ships.

Edited July 27, 2022 by cruisingrob21

[martincath]

Folks on Majestic and Royal might get a heads-up earlier than Princess communications are by checking the cruise schedule for Vancouver... the most up-to-date version is always linked on this page, but for convenience the most recent file (28 June) is linked directly here.

 

The Port always knows about all of the weird & wonderful docking times of the big ships well in advance - they have to schedule the local Longshoremen, who have one of the strongest unions in the world and take no sh*t about scheduling!

And it's definitely about local tides - since both of these vessels go the extra-long way outside Vancouver Island tides in the Narrows are irrelevant,  it's all about getting under Lion's Gate bridge! You can track the shifting times if you scan through the document, with Majestic (and Royal) both arriving and departing earlier and earlier until they hit a point where they jump to a super-late departure (e.g. the Aug 27th cruise mentioned here) before the sequence repeats.

 

On the good news front, I read a recent trip report which mentioned docking at Railway and seeing that the rockslide had been tidied up - so Skagway issues related to the loss of that pier shouldn't be an issue at least.

[harryfat1]

37 minutes ago, martincath said:

Folks on Majestic and Royal might get a heads-up earlier than Princess communications are by checking the cruise schedule for Vancouver... the most up-to-date version is always linked on this page, but for convenience the most recent file (28 June) is linked directly here.

 

The Port always knows about all of the weird & wonderful docking times of the big ships well in advance - they have to schedule the local Longshoremen, who have one of the strongest unions in the world and take no sh*t about scheduling!

And it's definitely about local tides - since both of these vessels go the extra-long way outside Vancouver Island tides in the Narrows are irrelevant,  it's all about getting under Lion's Gate bridge! You can track the shifting times if you scan through the document, with Majestic (and Royal) both arriving and departing earlier and earlier until they hit a point where they jump to a super-late departure (e.g. the Aug 27th cruise mentioned here) before the sequence repeats.

 

On the good news front, I read a recent trip report which mentioned docking at Railway and seeing that the rockslide had been tidied up - so Skagway issues related to the loss of that pier shouldn't be an issue at least.

Thanks, Martin.  Always appreciate your insights at the Alaska boards.

 

So mystery solved.  I was confused on why we had to rush back to Vancouver on August 13 to arrive back at 3:30 AM when the "normal" schedule is 7:30 AM for all other sailings. In doing so, we lost some valuable port time. 

 

Just for curiosity sake, I looked into the Vancouver tidal chart and sure enough, on August 13, the high tide that morning is around 6:24, right before the ship would be closed to coming for the 7:30 docking.

 

By coming in 3 hours early, it would give them few more feet of clearance as it'll be closer to low tides. Wonder what is the magical number of tidal conditions that the ships feel safe to pass under the Lion's Gate?

 

 

 

[cruisingrob21]

17 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

By coming in 3 hours early, it would give them few more feet of clearance as it'll be closer to low tides. Wonder what is the magical number of tidal conditions that the ships feel safe to pass under the Lion's Gate?

I don't know if there is a magic number, maybe on a ship by ship basis as they can also sail lower in the water to provide more clearance, but only as deep as the channel will safely allow.

[martincath]

That's a lovely extra visual reference @harryfat1 - Royal & Majestic aren't quite as problematic as NCLs monster ships, which require a very tight adherence to low tide to get under the bridge so only every get deployed here on a Repo cruise, Spring and Fall, with some really odd arrival/departure times. Including a stop here enables legally selling cruises all the way to Seattle and away again at end of AK season without running foul of the PVSA.

 

If memory serves one of the Celebrity ships had their funnels modified so it can pass under all the time, but not all ships in the class so there is exactly the situation @cruisingrob21 mentions in their fleet, one particular ship is fine but it's near-identical siblings would struggle!

 

Personally I think that, now Cunard have started the ball rolling with Victoria as an actual terminus rather than just a port of call for a few cruises this year, we'll maybe see the monster ships of all lines using Victoria for their one-off PVSA-get-around repo cruises to get them based out of Seattle, and if that works well a few years later Victoria may start to get regular North and Southbound trips for those ships which cannot get under Lions Gate at all...

[cruisingrob21]

39 minutes ago, martincath said:

Personally I think that, now Cunard have started the ball rolling with Victoria as an actual terminus rather than just a port of call for a few cruises this year, we'll maybe see the monster ships of all lines using Victoria for their one-off PVSA-get-around repo cruises to get them based out of Seattle, and if that works well a few years later Victoria may start to get regular North and Southbound trips for those ships which cannot get under Lions Gate at all...

That may be, but I think the Port of Vancouver will get a new pier build outside of the Burrard Inlet before the big Alaska market players homeport out of Victoria.  I did a 1 night voyage out of Victoria on HAL back in 2014 that probably only allowed embarkation to allow a large amount of HAL HQ staff to join and the fact that the ship ended in Seattle the next day.  It was a nice voyage and since I lived in Seattle at that time it was convenient to take the Victoria Clipper jetboat.  Flying to Victoria is a bit more challenging .  While Victoria is a great port, I'm not sure it has the provisioning supply chains set up for the weekly calls of several large ships.  It also has very minimal airport connectivity to non Canadian airports and I can't imagine how YYJ would fit a few thousand passengers in the terminal on a turnaround day waiting for a flight.

 

Seattle was planning to build an additional berth near the stadiums, where their was actually ships berthing before Pier 91 was constructed.  Although that project is on hold, I imagine cruise lines will continue to tweak itinerary lengths to best utilize Seattle berths.  Vancouver is fortunate to have the Lionsgate bridge which may force cruise lines to bring their more reasonably sized vessels to Vancouver, and shooing the "condo barges" to Seattle.

[martincath]

5 minutes ago, cruisingrob21 said:

That may be, but I think the Port of Vancouver will get a new pier build outside of the Burrard Inlet before the big Alaska market players homeport out of Victoria. ...

There have been some very tentative plans floated for a cruise port somewhere near the Tswawwassen ferry, so it's certainly possible - but with current logistics as they are Victoria is heavily under-utilized, and has been actively pushing to expand cruise visits and specifically target larger vessels, i.e. they WANT the extra pax and they have ample port capacity for more and bigger ships.

 

The biggest factor in me (idly) speculating Vic expansion before a new port near Van is the lack of any local infrastructure requirements - plus, since that's where the seat of government is Victoria already has a ton of stuff that logic, finance, efficiency, ease of access etc. dictate would be somewhere in the Lower Mainland instead... but gubmint does love having cultural stuff nearby where they meet 😉

 

I agree with all of your thoughts on logistical hurdles; I wouldn't have thought about Vic as an embarkation port at all myself either, and thought Cunard had gone insane when they said they were going to try it - but the language around the announcements of Vic's summer of being an embarkation port really changed my thinking on the matter: happy politicians at municipal and provincial level, happy Unions, people running stores and restos and hotels in town excited about all the bonus bucks of Pre/Post-cruise stays compared to short port visits, nobody with a bad word to say about it!

 

Don't need to build stuff, locals and the folks who make policy onboard, means only logistics of getting pax and their supplies onto the ships need to be overcome - and while it's undoubtedly easier to get to Vancouver, the cost savings per pax running a megaship instead of a small ship might mean we end up with a better-for-everyone mix of small & medium ships in Vancouver (helping make boarding at Canada Place better too), One Way megaships out of Vic and RT megaships out of Seattle.

 

Shall we make a small wager? Beer's on me if they open a new Lower Mainland port before a megaship starts embarking regularly in Victoria - the Highland Stillhouse should be mutually convenient judging from your profile... 😉