This guest trip report is from Rachel, whose sailed on a 5 night Pacific Coast sailing from San Diego to Vancouver on the Disney Wonder in April 2022. You can start this trip report from the beginning here.
Guest Trip Report: April 21, 2022 5 Night Pacific Coast on the Disney Wonder
Day 5: Victoria, BC
I had not been to Victoria, BC since I was a very little girl, so I was ready to be there and look around on our final port day of the cruise. But we were not scheduled to be there until 11am. That made for a nice, slow morning, which was nice. We had a couple of early breakfast bites as well as some coffee and tea in the concierge lounge as we approached.
Then we went down to Triton’s for a proper breakfast since we would not be eating anything until later that afternoon.
During this sailing, it was still required for us to have a negative COVID test in order to fly back to the US, so we also took the opportunity of a late docking to get our tests out of the way. As soon as we were close enough to get a good signal, we did our online proctored tests and had the (thankfully negative) test results emailed immediately. It felt good to have that out of the way before we even got off the ship in Victoria.
After getting off the ship, we used the Yellow Cab of Victoria app to call a cab at the port that took us to Butchart Gardens. He was a very friendly cab driver and offered to pick us up and bring us back downtown later on.
I had been to the gardens, apparently, when I was too young to remember. But this time I will remember them – they were stunning! It was a nice, overcast day and only drizzled for a few minutes, so we really enjoyed our walk around the gardens.
We had almost scheduled afternoon tea at Butchart Gardens as well, but I really wanted to have tea at the Empress Hotel. We figured we could fit both in one day and we were right. And with our nice cab driver, our transportation was very easy. He dropped us off right at the Empress.
Our tea service was accompanied by a glass of champagne and live piano music. It was all so lovely and we had the best time.
We each chose different teas so we could try two flavors. I love a good tea, and both were excellent. The treats were excellent too – we ate pretty much all of them!
We looked around just outside the hotel for a little while and then caught the downtown shuttle that would take us back to the ship.
Chip n’ Dale were hanging out in the atrium right when we got back on board.
We had pre-arranged with our servers to do the late seating this evening since we had just filled up on our delicious afternoon tea spread. They were gracious enough (along with the head server) to work that out for us. So, we were at the first theatre show that evening, Disney Dreams, which is a favorite of mine.
We were able to take in the sunset on our verandah and then head to dinner in Tiana’s Palace again.
I cannot resist the shrimp and grits, wedge salad, or beignets.
It was also Mardi Gras night, with the fun show and music.
And our last towel animal was a bunny, I think.
The next morning we watched as we did a 360 degree turn to dock in beautiful Vancouver. We’ve been to Vancouver before, so we opted to just fly home after debarking.
This itinerary is quite possibly my new favorite. I am so glad we finally got to experience it after postponing three times due to COVID. The whole cruise was really fantastic!
Thank you Rachel for sharing your cruise with us! You can read more guest trip reports here:
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