What, no bears? - Canadian Rockies Road Trip Aug/Sept 2019 - Introduction

[pinkrose]

Index is here

Introduction

I didn’t write a pre-trippie as I wasn’t sure I would actually write a trip report before I went away. I’ve never actually done one before but I was spurred on by how helpful I found it reading Gunna and Jocat’s trip reports before I went on this trip so hope my own might help someone else. Apologies if it is a bit lengthy.

Usually there are four of us travelling. However, this trip was intended to mark our 30th Wedding Anniversary so for this holiday it would just be DH and myself.

The idea for the holiday started taking shape around the time of our 29th anniversary last year. We really fancied going somewhere different. So I asked two couples who travel often if they could recommend one place out of all of the places they had visited and they both said their most memorable holiday had been their trip to the Canadian Rockies.

In October of last year I went into a local travel agent to get some ideas about itineraries and quotes. This was the agent’s suggested itinerary:

Fly into Calgary, overnight stay at an airport hotel then shuttle bus back to the airport to collect a hire car before driving to Banff (2 nights), Jasper (2 nights), Clearwater (1 night), Whistler (2 nights), take the ferry to Vancouver Island then Parksville (1 night), Victoria (2 nights), drop hire car at Vancouver airport then take the train into Vancouver (3 nights) then fly home. She also suggested renting a small SUV rather than a car. I initially thought we would travel out on Saturday 25 May so the agent got two companies, First Class Holidays and Travel2, to provide quotes.

I started doing some research on our proposed itinerary and the time of year we would be travelling. In particular I had been looking at the length of time in each town and weather at that time of year. I decided to reverse the route so that we would travel into Vancouver and return from Calgary. By doing so I was hoping we would get better weather as we would now be travelling to the Rockies in June and this might mean access to the lakes wouldn’t be an issue due to snow/roads still being closed.

By dropping the overnight hotel at Parksville and the overnight hotel at Calgary I now had an itinerary of Vancouver (3 nights), Vancouver Island (3 nights), Whistler (2 nights), Clearwater (1 night), Jasper (2 nights) and Banff (3 nights).

So, by late October, I had a rough idea of an itinerary and decided to put a post on TripAdvisor (sorry Dibbers) asking for advice on whether this was a reasonable itinerary, doable in the time allotted etc. The responses that came back questioned what we intended to do on Vancouver Island and in Whistler but they also pointed out that driving from Clearwater to Jasper was not considered the “gold standard” route to the Rockies and it was also recommended that, for the best experience, you drive the Icefields Parkway in both directions which would mean approaching the Parkway via Revelstoke. Everyone who commented also felt three nights was not enough time to explore Vancouver Island so suggested I should consider compromising and drop Vancouver Island in favour of more time in the Rockies. This might give us a reason to go back again another time!

So I went back to do more research and then proposed a new itinerary on TripAdvisor as follows:

Flight from London to Vancouver, 4 nights in Vancouver, pick up hire car, 1 night in Kamloops, 1 night in Revelstoke, 3 nights in Jasper, 1 night in Lake Louise, 3 nights in Banff, flight from Calgary to London. I also had the option of an extra 1 (or possibly 2) night/s which could be added to Jasper and Banff (1 each) or an overnight in Calgary before the flight home.

This met with more approval from those on TripAdvisor with the exception that it was suggested we slightly change the route by stopping at Lake Louise after Revelstoke and before Jasper. Some contributors also gave suggestions of places to visit on the way. By now I had also tried searching “Canadian Rockies” on thedibb and came across Gunna and Jocat’s trip reports. After reading those and asking Jocat a few questions I came to my final itinerary of:

Flight - London Heathrow – Vancouver
Hotel – Rosedale on Robson - Vancouver - 4 nights
Pick up full size hire car
Hotel – Fairfield Inn and Suites - Kamloops - 1 night
Hotel - Revelstoke - 1 night
Hotel – Lake Louise Inn - Lake Louise - 2 nights
Hotel – Chateau Jasper - 4 nights
Hotel – Solara Resort and Spa - Canmore - 4 nights
Flight - Calgary - London Heathrow

I knew from previous posts on thedibb that BA have a sale around Christmas. I also knew BA did hotel bookings and found that I could book the same hotels as one of the travel companies on BA’s website (apart from the fact that BA had no hotels in Revelstoke) so all l had to do now was wait patiently for the BA sale to start.

The sale started on 20 December 2018 but we were busy with Christmas. On 29 December I started putting together quotes using the “customise your trip” option on the BA website. Sadly I haven’t kept a record of the figures but I know the quotes were definitely lower than all of the travel agents.

The reason I didn’t keep the quotes was because on 30 December we decided to completely change our travel dates so that we would actually be away on our Anniversary. So now I was getting quotes for 24 August to 9 September 2019. We were well under budget (although I still needed to add the cost of a hotel in Revelstoke) so I decided to try again but this time choosing World Traveller plus (premium economy) seats for the flights – well it was our 30th Wedding Anniversary after all. This took the cost to a little bit more than my initial budget but we were now travelling in August and in World Traveller plus so I booked the flights, car and hotels with BA there and then and then found the Coast Hillcrest Revelstoke via the internet and booked that directly with the hotel. The cost of this would be payable at the hotel on check out.

Then I had one final thing to do which was buy the travel insurance and we were all set.

So now I had eight months to do more in-depth planning instead of five (and an additional three months to save some extra spending money for the holiday).

In early January I decided to pre-book our seats on both flights due to the fact that the World Traveller plus cabin on the return flight only had 25 seats and I wanted a pair of seats together by the windows. I used Avios points and money and, following advice on seatguru.com, chose 63J and 63K on the outbound and 11J and 11K on the return.

DD offered to pay for us to access one of the lounges at Heathrow as an Anniversary gift. I still have Virgin Flying Club membership so chose No1 Lounge as I could get this at a discounted rate so in February I booked No1 Lounge. I also decided that I didn’t want the hassle of driving to Heathrow on bank holiday Saturday so booked an overnight stay for the Friday night at the Travelodge Heathrow Terminal 5 with the idea that we would drive down on the Friday evening and then have a leisurely breakfast there before heading into the airport.

On 1 March we had our first spot of good luck. When I had made the original booking with BA online I was only given the option to collect our hire car from Vancouver airport. By now, having read Jocat’s trip report and done some more research on Vancouver and our hotel, I was aware there was an Avis depot on Hornby Street three streets along from where our hotel is situated. So DH called BA to see if we could alter our booking to pick up at Hornby Street. We knew we might have to pay an admin fee but we felt the time it would save us by simply walking there rather than travelling back out to the airport was worth the cost.

Initially the call handler said there would be an admin fee of £25 plus any difference in hire cost but then, after putting us on hold, he came back and told us the fee would be £5. We knew the cheapest way back to the airport was on the skytrain but the cost of the two tickets would be about the same as the £5 admin fee so we told him to go ahead and make the change. We were then back on hold again for what seemed like an age when, finally, he came back to us and said not only had he altered the booking but this had resulted in a decrease to our holiday cost so he had adjusted our final balance accordingly. He said he had run it through the system three times as he had never known it result in a reduction in the cost. The cost of the holiday had now reduced by £384. We were delighted.

My research was now well under way and I started to put together a rough plan of what we would do while in Canada and then, to spread the cost, started purchasing tickets for various attractions.

In March it was tickets for Capilano Suspension bridge (total cost $98.60 CAD).

In early May it was the Maligne Lake and Spirit Island cruise (total cost $149.32 CAD) followed by the Ultimate Explorer combo (Banff gondola, Ice Explorer and skywalk) and Lake Minniwanka cruise (total cost $403.20 CAD). I spread the cost of these over two Credit card bills.

At the end of May I also purchased the Discovery Pass from Parks Canada due to the 6 – 20 business days for shipping outside of Canada. The total cost was $135.40 CAD. In the end they only took about a week to arrive.

I also decided to apply for our ETA in case they took a while to approve but they were done instantly (total cost was $14 CAD).
At the beginning of June I purchased Vancouver lookout tickets (total cost $37.91 CAD).

We were then going to purchase Jasper skytram tickets in July but for some reason decided to wait and purchase them when we were there. In the end we didn’t bother with it.

By now things were ticking along nicely.

On 20 July I paid the holiday balance and we were on countdown to OLCI opening. It was around this time that the dispute between BA and their pilots was starting to hit the news. If you followed any of the coverage you’ll know that it was very much an on again/off again situation and even ended up in the courts. As it dragged on into August we were watching the news (and I was on thedibb) on a daily basis for any sign our outbound flight might be affected. By 10 August we were no longer worrying as we knew there was no possibility of a strike happening on 24 August due to the rule that the union had to give 14 days’ notice of any proposed strike dates.

On 26 July I made an on-line reservation for our Anniversary meal at Bistrot 101 in Vancouver and then on 9 August I made an on-line reservation for Sky 360 restaurant at Calgary Tower. Our flight home was scheduled for 10pm local time so we were going to spend our final day in Calgary, have lunch at the Tower then head to Crossiron Mills for some shopping and tea before heading to the airport.

On 20 August we had our second spot of good luck. A casual enquiry to BA via their website regarding what to do about wearing my hearing aids during security screening at the airport revealed that I was entitled to select my seats for free as part of BA’s disability assistance programme. This would be the first time that I had flown since have hearing aids fitted and I had not been aware of this at the time I had selected my seats but BA kindly refunded the cost and credited back the Avios points. The only downside, as you will see, if you read my trip report, is that it meant I couldn’t do OLCI and had to check in at the airport instead. See my Pre-travel day and travel day reports.

So now we were only four days away from the start of our holiday.

[kateh134]

Sounds fabulous! Looking forward to following your trip.

[pinkrose]

Thanks Kate

Just up to day 1 so far but it's taking some time to load it all in as I'm new to this process.

[jocat]

So glad that you’re doing a trip report and glad I could help along the way.

Looking forward to reading along.

[pinkrose]

Hi Jocat

It took me a while to write it all down which is why I've only just started putting it on today and I can see it will take some time to get it all on as I copy it from my Word doc and add in my photos but I was so grateful to both you and Gunna for your reports as they were really helpful when I was planning my trip last year that I wanted to do the same for someone else.