June 2nd, 2014

Chapter 55
You Know, Spinal Column?

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We woke up just early enough on our last morning to see the Vancouver skyline from our verandah.

It was actually the only sunrise we’d seen at sea, and the light was beautiful.

I had read a trip report before our cruise about how the ship passes under this bridge in Vancouver as you pull in, so we made sure to keep an eye out for that.

We hadn’t really gotten the chance to see the nicer sides of Vancouver during our 12-ish hours in the city before the cruise, but seeing it from this angle made it look really welcoming.

Unfortunately, we’d be getting right off the ship and on to a bus, so we wouldn’t be experiencing any more of B.C.’s largest city.

After having to depart from Balantyne Pier, we were arriving at the main Canada Place terminal.

The fact that we were this close to land meant we needed to get our butts in gear a bit. So we started to make our way down toward breakfast in Animator’s Palate.

It was one last chance to see John, Candida, Putu, and Cindy before departing. Tracy was excited to order Mickey waffles, but they let us know that it wasn’t an option this morning. They must have a set of food pre-selected for this final breakfast, so they aren’t able to accommodate any special requests. A little bummed, we still ate our share—knowing it would be the last time we could pig out without worrying about footing the bill.

Then we bade farewell to our tablemates and our servers. If you’re doing Express Walk-Off like we were, you’re technically supposed to bring your bags with you to breakfast and totally vacate your stateroom. That’s just such a pain, though, so we got all packed up and ready to just grab our bags quickly after we were done eating. I’m sure there was still plenty of time to turn over the room without those extra 30 minutes…

 Speaking of Express Walk-Off, here’s the “Personal Navigator” we got the previous evening. It was much less exciting than the usual handouts.

Honestly, this whole part of the process was super easy. By the time we had grabbed our bags and left the stateroom, they were already announcing that Express Walk-Off was cleared.

We were probably among the first ones off the ship—which was sad, but convenient. It’s not as if you can really do anything if you remain on the ship on debarkation day anyway. They just have you sit around in one of the bars or clubs until your baggage group is called.

It was bittersweet to get off the ship and officially leave it behind us.

Since our bus was specifically reserved for people coming off the ship, we didn’t need to go through Canadian customs. Instead, we just followed the signage toward bus transportation and found someone from Quick Shuttle to talk to. We explained to them that we were technically booked for a later bus because Disney says not to book ground transportation before a certain time in case the ship has a delay going through processing. Rather than waiting around for the extra hour, however, we asked if we could get on the earlier bus. They said it was no problem and that they wished Disney would stop telling people not to book the first one (they would hold the shuttle if the ship were really delayed).

We were able to get going fairly quickly, therefore, and made it to the border very quickly. It was funny because we did have to go through customs to get back into the U.S. even though we had technically never entered Canada. Luckily, that all went very smoothly too. We did have one of the people on our bus detained while we left her behind, because she somehow got onto our bus even though she hadn’t been on our ship (which was supposed to be impossible). The driver said the next bus would pick her up once border control was done with her.

Even though we had a couple stops before getting to SeaTac Airport, we arrived way before we needed to get there for our flight. Like several hours early. So Tracy and I went to the JetBlue counter and inquired about getting on standby for an earlier flight. There must not have been too many people going from Seattle to Long Beach that day, because we had no issues at all.

Going through security was a little more eventful than usual. We put our bag of souvenirs through the scanner, and it got pulled for extra screening. The TSA lady took us aside and asked, “You got vertebrae in there?” Seeing our blank looks of confusion, she tried to clarify, “You know, spinal column?”

We were so confused what on earth she could be talking about—shockingly, we had not, in fact, packed any vertebrae in our carry-on luggage. When she unpacked it, she pointed at the contents that had made the scanner go off. It was our totem souvenir from the ship, still packed in its box. I guess the x-ray had made it look like a spinal column, and you are apparently required to declare any medical supplies like that if you are transporting them. She zipped up our bag and sent us on our way, but we had a big laugh over the mixup.

The rest of the trip home was totally normal. I think we probably slept for most of the flight after getting up early this morning. And we took a taxi home from the Long Beach Airport.

We didn’t actually have any possessions to speak of back in Orange because we were getting ready to move across the country just a couple days later and had already sent our stuff, but we were still glad to see the end of a really long travel day.

And with that, our Alaska Cruise adventure was over. I’ll do a recap of some of our thoughts (news flash: they’re almost all positive) in the Epilogue.

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