Wednesday, 8 August:

Departing from Vancouver

After arriving back in Vancouver we were dropped off at the Terminal where we said goodbye to a few of our group.  Some were boarding a Holland America ship for a 7 day cruise, disembarking back in Vancouver and flying home.

The rest of us were boarding the Island Princess for a 7 day Voyage of the Glaciers cruise disembarking in Whittier, where we would fly back to Vancouver and then home.

The Island Princess is the smallest ship we have been on, with a maximum capacity of 2390 passengers and 810 crew.  Very nice ship and we were looking forward to getting on board.

Lucky for us, most of the passengers were new to cruising, so our Elite level enabled us to have priority boarding which made the process of getting on board very quick indeed.  We had all been booked into rooms with balconies, which we were looking forward to, however a surprise awaited us – Princess had upgraded us to a mini suite!  It was lovely having the extra space – and the bathroom even had a bath!

Then we discovered that having the mini suite included “Club Class Dining” which entitled us to the use of a separate dining room –  or in this case, a separate entrance to the dining room for all meals and our own waiters for the entire cruise with no fixed dining times.

Normally, there wouldn’t be any delays for dining but being a smaller ship with fewer choices people were lining up, especially for dinner.  However, no queues for us – fantastic!