Pre-Cruise Day 1 Trip Report: Vancouver (June 18, 2023)

7-Night Alaskan Cruise from Vancouver

Our travel day began with an early morning drive to the airport. I am the type of person who likes to arrive way early and Alyssa would be content arriving as they are closing the doors. But since the flight was international and we were flying Air Canada for the first time, we arrived nice and early and had no issues getting to the gate in time or with boarding.

Quick side note – I ALWAYS recommend flying in for your cruise at least a day early. I feel like flight delays and cancellations are so common right now, so give yourself some peace of mind and fly in early. It’s worth the extra cost of the hotel room.

The flight was uneventful and Air Canada had a nice selection of movies and other programming to watch.

We landed in Vancouver around 11:00AM local time and immediately upon exiting the plane I could already tell that I was going to like this city. The airport was clean, not busy, and had an awesome “Pacific Northwest” feel to it.

(One more quick side note: as a newbie to the blogging community, I have not yet learned how to take pictures more suitable for a blog post than social media. You will notice that many of my photos are vertical orientation as opposed to horizontal. Oops.)

Since we flew in a day early, I had arranged for a driver from Excel Limousine to pick us up and bring us to the Pan Pacific Hotel. I would highly recommend this service – the driver was waiting for us outside of baggage claim and had a sign with our names on it. The kids thought that was pretty cool.

It was about a 25-minute ride to the Pan Pacific Hotel. Again, showing my inexperience as a blogger, I did not get a picture of the hotel itself. Instead, I only took a picture of the view from our room:

We reserved a harbor view room, which was a bit more expensive than the standard room type, but totally worth it. Later on, you’ll see that we got to watch the Wonder’s arrival into Vancouver, which was awesome. This hotel is also extremely convenient for cruise guests. You can take an elevator directly from the hotel lobby down to the cruise terminal and bell services will pick your luggage up in your room and it will arrive in your stateroom if you’ve tagged them with your cruise line luggage tags.

Here’s a pro tip: be sure to BRING YOUR LUGGAGE TAGS that the cruise line sends to you with you on your trip. We left ours at home and had to get generic ones from the luggage porters the next morning. I swear I’ve cruised with DCL before…

We had specific plans for our post-cruise day in Vancouver, so we just spent the day walking around Canada Place and exploring the shops and restaurants. We had lunch at the Cactus Club Cafe, which we enjoyed, but we noticed a common theme with many of the restaurants – most did not offer kids menus. With very picky eaters, we tried our best, but they just picked at the meals they ordered.

After lunch, the kids wanted to test out the pool. It was a little chilly, but they had stuck their hand in the water earlier and decided it was warm enough to give it a go.

Our family is big on spending time at the pool wherever we go. It’s one of the reasons we like to build in a resort day when we visit WDW, much to the disgust of my friends at Rope Drop Radio. Let me tell you, the pool at the Pan Pacific did not disappoint. It is amazing! The views are stunning, the hot tub was HOT, and it wasn’t crowded. We spent about an hour there before heading off to our next activity.

Right around the hotel, there are lots of kiosks advertising tours and things to do in the area. One that caught our eye was FlyOver Canada, which is an exact replica of Soarin’ at Epcot. It was quite expensive and a total tourist trap, but the kids wanted to do it and it sounded like fun. It was only about a 15 minute flight, but it was well-done and gave us serious Epcot vibes.

After that, it was gelato for dinner and an early bedtime because we were all exhausted. Tomorrow is embarkation day!

Thanks for reading!

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