Royal early into Vancouver

[cruisequeen4ever]

Does anyone know why the Royal sailed into Vancouver tonight instead of tomorrow morning?

[SCX22]

The Royal Princess arrived as planned.  On it's itinerary it's scheduled to arrive 5/17 at 23:00.  Passengers will be allowed to disembark on 5/18.  Presumably, she required an odd arrival time in Vancouver due to the timing of the tides and this was the time that would allow her to shimmy under the Lion's Gate Bridge.

[cruisequeen4ever]

Oh interesting. I’m familiar with the tides being an issue in Vancouver, but in all my Alaska cruises, we’ve never arrived the night before into Vancouver. 

[Yehootu]

On the Majestic we arrived at 3am for the tides.

[startedwithamouse]

Tides for the Royal class ships is the reason. We arrived into Vancouver 11pm on Discovery Princess last year and ended up with some incredible photos of sail in.

[Barry H]

Royal class ships require low tide to sail under the Lions Gate Bridge. An early arrival time is required for the ship to be docked for morning disembarkation. This sometimes results in an early departure from the last Alaskan port.

Same does not apply to the Caribbean and Grand class ships.

[cruisequeen4ever]

Thank you all; I have been on an Alaska cruise on the Royal, and we arrived in at the expected time, so this was surprising to me. 

[cruisequeen4ever]

I just checked the Royal’s scheduled arrivals times into Vancouver for the summer, and it’s interesting how much they fluctuate. It used to be that they’d be consistent, but this season, she’s arriving in at 9:30 AM on Saturday, 6:30 AM another, etc.