Part of living in BC
In my life, I’ve spent over 800 hours on the ferry. That’s an entire month, just floating around on a big boat. This is calculated from taking a 15-20 minute ride two ways on every school day for four and a half years, traveling to visit family in Vancouver, going to church, going to movies, going shopping, and more recently traveling to Victoria to visit my girlfriend.
All of these activities involved taking the ferry. I grew up on Quadra island, off the coast of Vancouver island, off the coast of the mainland, BC. The ferry to Vancouver island takes about an hour and a half, and they are much bigger than the one that goes to Quadra, which is sort of cute by comparrison. All the ferries have names like “Queen of Vancouver” or “Queen of Prince Rupert”. You can see a cool size comparison and fleet info here. At one point or another I’ve probably been on most of those boats.
There’s a lot of good memories of the ferry. Friendships are formed, whales are seen, storms are endured, and ferry food is also endured. I even knew someone who was born on the ferry. The company has had it’s share of problems. Heavy subsidization by the government and crashes (scroll down for a neat picture), some of the ships were built in the 60’s and are still in service. Things are starting to shape up though. It seems like someone who actually knows what they’re doing is now in charge, and is modernizing both the ferries themselves and the terminals, both of which were ailing in recent years.
Now you can get White Spot at the cafeteria, there’s more, much nicer seating, and less of the old look which was painted steel and visible grey insulation in the ceiling (this is still the case on the Quadra ferry though, if you touch it it falls away in chunks). Here’s to many more years riding BC Ferries.
CONCEPT: 4/5 – The ships are a necessary part of life. It’s sometimes frustrating to rely on them so heavily, and the seas are fickle. But I’m glad they’re there to allow for our way of life.
INNOVATION: 3/5 – The ships are getting a lot better. They even accept Debit at the ferry terminal now, and you have buy your tickets from a kiosk like at the movies. However, this doesn’t yet make up for years of not accepting Debit, not having a kitchen equipped to meet demand, and poorly thought out seating areas.
SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Getting better, but still not there yet. Anyone standing and waiting to walk off the ferry will tell you some thing’s not quite right about the experience.
EXECUTION: 4/5 – They sure carry you to an island! Pretty much all you can really expect.
FUN FACTOR: 3/5 – The ferry can be fun, if you make it fun. There’s an arcade, but I rarely play. If they just lowered the price of every game to $0.25, I think they’d make more money on average than charging $0.50 to $1.
OVERALL: 6/10 – Long, but necessary, bordering on pleasant.
