The city's 25 millionth cruise ship passenger passed through the Port of Vancouver Wednesday morning.

With more than 40 years of ships docking at the downtown port, the milestone was reached in what is expected to be a banner year for cruise traffic.

Lucky number 25 million was Cheryl Spangler, who was welcomed to Canada Place with a brass band and rows of cupcakes. She said she was given a heads-up, but didn't expect that much fanfare.

"They called to say I was the 25 millionth passenger to go through the Port of Vancouver… It's hard to register. That's such a big number."

Spangler, her husband and their family are headed to Alaska, and the trip marked their first time in Vancouver.

"It's gorgeous. Beautiful, beautiful city," she said.

Alaskan cruises first started leaving from Vancouver more than four decades ago.

"If you lined up the cruise ships of 25 million passengers end to end, you'd need 12,000 of them, and they'd stretch 3,400 kilometres – from here to Juneau and back again, end to end," said Robin Sylvester, president of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.

While the influx of tourist traffic brought in by docked ships can be inconvenient for locals, the port says the industry generates $1.6 billion in economic impact, amounting to nearly 7,000 jobs across Canada.

Each vessel that stops in Vancouver brings in an average of $2.8 million for the local economy.

Another milestone for the port is scheduled to set sail in September. The mammoth 20-deck, 4,000 passenger Norwegian Bliss will dock in the city, the largest ship to ever stop at Canada Place.

"We actually have sensors on each of the major bridges broadcasting in real time the tidal heights to the ship navigation systems," Sylvester said.

Giant ships are the future of the cruise industry, so the port is looking at the possibility of building another terminal outside of the Burrard Inlet to avoid the confines of bridges.

It's a possibility that is decades away, and no timeline for the proposed project was available. For now, the port says its focus is Canada Place where it may get crowded but three vessels can still dock at a time.

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Nafeesa Karim