Key takeaways
- You return to Vancouver the same day, but not the same way. The flight is one direction only and the return is coach, ferry and coach.
- The included airfare covers the outward leg. There is no return seat on the aircraft in this booking, and that is the design rather than an omission.
- Harbour Air sells return seats, and you would book that separately. It is faster and it removes the best part of the afternoon.
- The coach finishes at Pacific Central Station rather than at the seaplane terminal, which is worth knowing before rather than after.
What kind of round trip this is
It is a round trip in the sense that you leave Vancouver in the morning and are back in Vancouver in the evening. It is not a round trip in the sense of doing the same journey twice, and the difference is the entire product.
The outward leg is a thirty-five minute seaplane from the downtown harbour. The return is the BC Ferries Connector: coach, ferry, coach. Both are included in one booking, and neither is a substitute for the other.
So if you are searching for a seaplane round trip and find this, understand what you are looking at. The aircraft appears once. The rest of the day belongs to the water at sea level.
Why fly out rather than back
Time in Victoria. Flying out puts you on the island in the middle of the morning with the whole useful part of the day ahead. Taking the ferry out would consume the morning and land you there in the early afternoon with much less to work with.
The evening is the least valuable part of the day to spend travelling. Nothing is happening in Victoria at seven in the evening that you are missing by being on a ship, and the ferry through the Gulf Islands in low summer light is better than the same crossing at nine in the morning.
It also front-loads the weather risk to the leg that has an alternative. If the flight cannot operate, surface routes exist. If a ferry cannot sail, you were going to be on a boat anyway.
The aircraft at the Inner Harbour dock, its work for the day done
What flying both ways would give you
Speed, and about three hours of your evening back. A return seat on the aircraft turns a full-day commitment into something you could do in a long morning and afternoon, which genuinely suits some people, particularly anybody with plans in Vancouver that night.
What it takes away is the crossing. The Gulf Islands from the deck of a ferry at sea level is a different and arguably better experience than the same islands from a few thousand feet, and doing both in one day is the reason this arrangement exists.
Harbour Air sells return seats and you would book that yourself rather than through this trip. It is a perfectly good way to see Victoria; it is just not this one.
Doing it in reverse
Ferry out and fly back has its advocates. Arriving in Victoria gradually across the water has a charm that arriving suddenly by air does not, and ending a day by climbing away from the Inner Harbour into the evening is a memorable way to finish.
It also gives you fewer hours on the island, because the outward ferry takes most of a morning. Whether that matters depends on whether you came for Victoria or for the journey.
This booking is sold one way round only, so the reverse means assembling it: a Connector ticket in one direction and a seaplane seat in the other, bought separately and timed to fit.
Staying overnight instead
Victoria rewards more than a day, and if you have the time, staying is the better plan. The Inner Harbour in the evening after the day visitors have gone is a quieter and more convincing version of the city.
That is a different booking. A day trip with a fixed return coach is precisely the wrong shape for staying on, and neither leg can be discarded or moved once bought.
For an overnight, buy a one-way seaplane seat out and a one-way Connector ticket back on whichever day suits you. Every component of this trip is sold separately by somebody, which is what makes assembling your own version straightforward.
Cruise passengers and tight schedules
Vancouver is a major cruise turnaround port and Canada Place, where the seaplane leaves from, is the cruise terminal itself. That makes the outward leg unusually convenient for anybody with a ship in port.
The return is where the caution belongs. This is a full-day arrangement ending at Pacific Central Station on the far side of downtown, dependent on a ferry sailing on time, and an independent excursion carries no guarantee that a ship will wait.
Anybody with an all-aboard time should compare it honestly against the scheduled return, and add the margin they would want at six in the evening on a ferry rather than the one that looks fine on a booking page.
The one detail people miss
You do not finish where you started. The morning begins at 1055 Canada Place on the downtown waterfront and the evening ends at Pacific Central Station near Chinatown, which is a different part of the city entirely.
It is a short SkyTrain ride or a ten minute taxi between them, so it is a detail rather than a problem. It becomes a problem only for the person who left a bag with a hotel concierge beside the flight centre and assumed the day would return them to the door.
Check where you are sleeping against where the coach drops you, once, before you book. That is genuinely the whole of the planning this trip requires, and everything else is handled for you.
