We have thoroughly enjoyed our time in Vancouver and will carry wonderful memories of our visit for the rest of our lives. We will remember the beauty of the places we visited including Stanley Park, Granville Island, Gastown, and the surrounding areas, the wonderful people, dining, and the hotel. We wanted to give a shout-out to the Pan Pacific Hotel. You can't beat its location. We enjoyed being at Canada Place to watch cruise ships arrive and leave and its proximity to so many different sites and restaurants. We found all areas of the hotel to be clean from the public areas to the individual rooms. While we have stayed at many luxurious hotels, some more luxurious than Pan Pacific taking in the collective hotel staff we haven't stayed at a hotel with better service. Prior to our arrival we found service to be very courteous, prompt and thorough from the reservation agent to the hotel concierges. Members of the Club Floor Lounge concierge team made several restaurant reservations for us. They were all taken care of correctly the very first time. One time Keith wrote to them at 5:00 AM their time. He received a response at 6:30 AM the same morning from the concierge noting that he had received the request and as soon as the restaurant opened at 11:30 AM that they would make the reservation and confirm it back to Keith. Sure enough by 11:45 AM, Keith received the confirming e-mail. Should you need various services once at the hotel, you could just push the Service One button on the telephone. The phone was quickly answered and most importantly each request was handled professionally, efficiently and accurately. We would request early make- up of our room, early turndown service, and other requests such as asking for more coffee and creamer. Each item was taken care of correctly the first time. Everyone from the hotel staff was very knowledgeable and very friendly. It must be Saturday because before our final breakfast at the Club Lounge, we saw the arrival of Crystal Serenity from the lobby level of our hotel. Embarking the cruise ship was made easy by the hotel staff. We arranged to have the three pieces of luggage we planned check-in at Canada Place Pier picked up by the hotel staff for them to bring over to the pier. We had inquired about this the other day at the bell stand after the Club Floor Concierge told us about this service, and the provided us with a business card with the details about this service. We were asked to call them between 7:00 AM and 11:00 AM and within minutes of calling them the manager of the bellmen department arrived to our room to pick up our luggage. As was the case with all of the hotel personnel he was thorough and courteous. Phil carefully checked each piece of luggage to ensure that the Cruise Line luggage tags were on correctly, that all of the zippers were closed and that our luggage locks were securely placed. He walked through the process of embarking the ship and he knew that in our case that the registration is done on board Serenity. He asked us to verify that we had our passports in hand an not in our luggage. It doesn't get better than this. He noted that unlike the other two cruise ships that are in port, our luggage would not be placed outside. Rather because of the smaller size of our ship, the luggage would stay inside the hotel at all times as it makes its way over to Serenity. As many times as we have cruised, we always are excited the day we board as if it is the first time we have ever cruised and today was no exception. We took the elevator from our floor to the ground level of the hotel and then transferred to an adjacent elevator to go to the lower level garage for a one-minute walk over to the entrance of the cruise ship terminal. We went through security, through United States immigration/customs and then waited until we could board Serenity. Once on-board we ran into many familiar faces of the wonderful Crystal Serenity crew and this continued throughout the day seeing crew members who we have come to know so well and fellow friends who are on this and/or the Northwest Passage sailing. This included Hotel Director Hubert, Bar Manager Ross, Food & Beverage Manager Walter, Assistant and Swing Shore Excursion Manager Joyce, Cruise Director Gary Hunter (in the photo below) who goes home today, and many others. For those of you who follow our travels, we normally have Rao as our butler. Rao is home on a very well deserved Holiday. Butler JiJo will be taking great care of us. JiJjo was our Senior Waiter on two previous Crystal World Cruises in the Crystal Dining Room and has been a butler for three or so years. Also stopping by our room was Sneha who was promoted to a supervisor this year. She had been our stewardess on various voyages. We enjoyed our traditional embarkation lunch in the Crystal Dining Room of Cobb Salad. We also toasted to the start of our voyage and for our love of each other with a flute of champagne. We ran into several guests who we know as well as members of the Dining Room team such as Head Waiters Augusto, Carmello and Ivon. We are going to conclude today's post now and will post about dinner tomorrow. We are so very excited to be on-board Crystal Serenity and to be sailing such an exciting journey.
Keith & Anne Marie Comments are closed.
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