Zaandam at Canada Place

When cruising out of Vancouver BC, the train is an easy way to get there for people coming up from the south if they happen to live close enough to the Amtrak Cascades route from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver BC. The morning train north is supposed to arrive shortly after noon at 12:30 pm. Since cruise ships often don’t start boarding before noon it’s pretty convenient when the train arrives on time. The train station is not near Canada Place where most cruise ships dock, but the sky train is just across the street from the train station and the Waterfront Station skytrain stop is just 4 stops away. From there it’s a very short walk to the parking garage at Canada Place, which is where cruise passengers enter for boarding. People can also opt to take a taxi or uber from the train station to the ship. You do have to take the right exit from the underground skytrain stop to come out at Canada Place since the station does have more than one exit.

view of Vancouver between ships at Canada Place

Unfortunately the train doesn’t always arrive on time. When we took the train up to Vancouver for our cruise on Holland America Zaandam our train arrived at the station quite late. Once it stops you have to wait first for the luggage to be unloaded, then for the car you are in to be allowed to go. Ours happened to be the last car dismissed so we were at the very end of the customs line. It was about 2:30 by the time we left the station. Our all-aboard time was 3:30 so had we been boarding that day we still would have made it to the ship on time, but probably would have been pretty stressed with worry about not making it near the end of the train trip and while waiting to be allowed off. We went a day early just in case of the train getting there late. Our hotel was not that close to the sky train so we tried to take an uber. Some sort of traffic delay due to construction and a closed road was keeping all the ubers from getting to the train station, though there were taxis there. As our uber kept getting farther and farther away and the people next to us said their third uber had just cancelled on them we gave up, cancelled ours and took one of the waiting taxis as did the other people who couldn’t get an uber to arrive. We got to the hotel just before 3, but had we been going straight to the ship and taken the sky train we would have arrived sooner. Already being in town the next day we were of course able to board much earlier.

Canada Place

The weather was nice that day, but by the time we got checked into the hotel and all it was past 3 so kind of late for most tourist activities. We walked to Canada Place and around the waterfront area a bit before dinner, and made plans to go to Grouse Mountain on the day we got back. The downside of the train is that there is not a convenient southbound train for cruise ship travelers. The morning train south leaves Vancouver at 7am, which is about the time ships start disembarking. Ours wasn’t even scheduled to dock until 7am so we had no chance of catching that train since it takes awhile after the ship docks before they let anyone off, and customs for the train closes about 15 minutes before its scheduled departure. The afternoon train leaves at 4:45, so there’s a lot of time to fill between disembarking the ship and catching the train. You can take a bus, but none of them had times any more convenient than the train.

view of Canada Place from the Zaandam as it returns to the dock

Pan Pacific, the hotel at Canada Place, will let people check luggage for the day. At the time of our cruise it was $5 per bag if picking them up before 3pm or $10 if later. Previously when storing luggage there they had limited the amount they would take to the space in their closet by the desk at the entry, but this time when we got back to pick up ours they had rows of it strapped together outside of that closet so apparently you don’t need to rush off the ship to get your luggage there before space fills up anymore.

view of Vancouver from the Zaandam just before docking

The day our ship returned it was pouring down rain in Vancouver, unlike the day it left when it was nice and sunny. We’d already spent all of our port days on the cruise in the rain so we decided not to go to Grouse Mountain. The people at the visitor center said that was a good plan since it wouldn’t be a good place to go in the rain. Even though it doesn’t take up a lot of time we decided to do Fly Over Canada instead. You don’t actually fly over Canada, it’s a motion ride at Canada Place. It’s inside and dry, other than the ticket booth and entrance which are on the outside of the building. There is at least a roof over the area just in front of the ticket booth and entrance.

Canada Place

The ride didn’t open until 10am, which was also the opening time for the aquarium at Stanley Park where we might have gone instead if it opened sooner. There’s not a whole lot of places for just hanging out waiting for stuff at Canada Place or anywhere to sit that doesn’t belong to the hotel or a food spot. There’s a little café on the main level and another café up by the Fly Over. Underneath the main part of Canada Place there’s an entire food court, which is where you find the most seating. Since it’s all intended for eating it’s not the most comfortable furniture around, but seating there is plentiful. Entering from the ground level of Canada Place it seems like the food court is underground, but the other side of it opens up to the outside across the street where it has a below street level outdoor fountain you can look down to from the sidewalk.

flyover entrance where you wait to go in just before the ride starts

The visitor’s center inside of Canada Place sells discount tickets to attractions in Vancouver. You can get tickets for the flyover there cheaper than buying them directly from the flyover, but it’s just a voucher so you still have to go to the flyover booth to get a time stamp for a session with space available. The flyover entrance is up on the third level outside of their gift shop. Up there we found out that in addition to Flyover Canada they also had Flyover Iceland. The Canada one was by far more popular, but we decided to do the Iceland one since we have seen various parts of Canada, but never been to Iceland.

the first room

It starts in a room where you watch a screen on the wall that is initially stars, but once the video starts it has a computer-generated troll narrating a troll’s view of the early history of Iceland. There were only a couple other groups of people there, a mom with two young kids and another couple. One of the kids was scared and pretty whiny throughout the introductory movie. When that was over we lined up in a hallway waiting for a safety video before entering the main theater. The kid got really upset there screaming that she wanted to go home and eventually they left. I don’t know if that was by choice or not, but if the kid was carrying on like that on the ride besides ruining it for everyone else it wouldn’t have been safe for her if she squirmed out from under the seatbelt and fell off the ride so they may have told them to leave.

the screens on each side of the first room are a starry sky before the video starts

When you first walk into the ride it is seats with an aisle and a metal wall between the seats and a screen showing mountains in the background. There are nets under the seats to hold people’s belongings during the ride. Once everyone is seated and belted in the wall folds away and the seats rise up and out into the space in front of the screen. Everything goes dark so you don’t see exactly how it all happens. When there’s light enough to see again the row of seats is suspended in the air. While a movie of scenery plays the seats move as if you are actually flying over whatever is in view at the time. It flies over mountains and lakes, rivers and fields, wilderness, glaciers, and a city. Sometimes it’s just scenery, but sometimes there are boats or a small plane, animals, or people within view. In one river there’s a sinking kayak. Another scene has horses which initially looks like a herd of wild ones until you hear a dog barking and see that one of the horses has a person on it.

people on the flyover ride (internet photo)

In some places the ride seems to drop down to where you feel like you could just about dip your toes in the water. Other times it flies up the side of a mountain. Usually there’s nobody there, but on one mountaintop it almost seemed as if we were going to kick a climber right off the top until at the last minute the ride veered away. The motion effects are very real, not just visual. On some motion rides the effects are mainly visual so if you get queasy you can close your eyes, but on this one that doesn’t really help. The chairs have quite a bit of actual motion in them so if you start feeling nauseous closing your eyes removes the visuals, but it doesn’t stop the motion. It’s not a good ride for people who are prone to motion sickness, but for those who are not it’s a great one. The scenery is beautiful and ever-changing and it truly does feel as if you are actually flying over it. The whole experience takes just over half an hour, but the ride itself is only minutes. It feels much longer if the motion upsets your stomach.

They needed a place where people could sit and recover where the ride exits if they’re feeling a bit nauseous, but other than their café at the gift shop there is nowhere to sit anywhere in the vicinity. As with just about every attraction everywhere the ride exits into the gift shop, which has the café to one side of it. Our ride vouchers included a coupon for a free cookie or slushie there though if your stomach is barely holding things in when exiting the ride neither is appealing. I don’t know if everyone gets that voucher or just if you buy the ride at the visitor center. Unfortunately photography is not allowed during the ride so I don’t have any pictures from it.

Besides Amtrak, busses and Canadian trains stop at Pacific Central Station

If you’re taking the Amtrak after a cruise and killing time in Vancouver while you wait and run out of things to do or the weather is too horrible to go out and do anything, hanging around Canada Place through lunchtime is better than going to the train station before lunch because Canada Place has that entire food court while the train station just has a few places. When we were last there all that was available at the station was a coffee shop, a sushi place, and A&W hamburgers.

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