Can you cruise to Hawaii or Europe from Florida?

A lot of people search for cruises from Florida to places you cannot sensibly reach from Florida. The results they get are usually evasive, because “no” is a bad answer for a booking site. So here is the direct version, destination by destination.

Hawaii from Florida

Does it exist? Technically yes, a couple of times a year. Practically, this is not the trip you are imagining.

To get from Florida to Hawaii by sea you transit the Panama Canal and then cross most of the Pacific. That is roughly 30 nights one way, and the ship does not come back — you fly home from Honolulu. These are repositioning voyages, scheduled when a line moves a ship from the Caribbean season to the Alaska season, which means they run in spring, in one direction only, and sell out to people who specifically want a month at sea.

What most people actually want is a Hawaii cruise, which means flying to Honolulu and sailing a 7-night inter-island loop, or sailing round-trip from the US West Coast. Neither leaves from Florida.

If a month at sea appeals, look for spring repositioning sailings from Fort Lauderdale. They are genuinely wonderful and completely unlike a Caribbean week.

Europe from Florida

Does it exist? Yes, properly — this one is real.

Transatlantic crossings run between Florida and Europe twice a year as ships change seasons: eastbound in April and May, when ships move to the Mediterranean for the summer, and westbound in October and November, when they come back for the Caribbean winter.

A crossing is typically 13 to 16 nights, usually Fort Lauderdale or Miami to Barcelona, Civitavecchia, Southampton or Lisbon, often with a stop in the Azores, Madeira or the Canaries. There are a lot of sea days — five or six consecutive ones is normal.

They are also, per night, among the cheapest cruises you can buy, because the line has to move the ship anyway and a one-way sailing is a harder sell. If you want two weeks at sea and a flight home from Europe, this is excellent value.

The catch is the one-way airfare, and that you need to genuinely enjoy sea days. If the itinerary is the point of a holiday for you, a crossing will be dull.

We list what we have on the transatlantic page.

Alaska from Florida

No. There is no sailing from Florida to Alaska. The route would mean a Panama Canal transit and the entire Pacific coast — the few ships that do it are repositioning to Vancouver or Seattle, and they sell it as a Panama Canal cruise ending in California, not as an Alaska cruise.

Alaska cruises leave from Seattle, Vancouver and Seward. Fly there.

California from Florida

Occasionally, as a Panama Canal repositioning — Fort Lauderdale to San Diego or Los Angeles, around 15 to 17 nights, in spring and autumn. Again, one-way and seasonal.

If you want the Panama Canal specifically, that is a genuinely good reason to sail from Fort Lauderdale, and you can see the Panama Canal sailings we track.

What Florida is actually good for

Florida’s geography makes it the best cruise departure region in the world for a short list of places, and a poor one for everything else:

• The Bahamas — 2 to 5 nights, cheap, constant. Nowhere does this better.
• The Caribbean — Eastern, Western and Southern, 6 to 14 nights. The core of the whole market.
• Mexico — especially from Tampa, which sits on the right coast for it.
• The Panama Canal — Fort Lauderdale is the main US gateway.
• Transatlantic crossings — twice a year, genuinely good value.

Anything beyond that list either does not exist or is a repositioning voyage of two weeks or more.

The rule of thumb

If a destination is in the Caribbean basin, Florida is probably the best place in the world to sail to it from. If it is in the Pacific, it is not reachable from Florida on any sensible timescale, and you should fly to a port closer to it.

The exception, and it is worth knowing about, is that repositioning voyages are the best value in cruising. If you have the time and you like sea days, a one-way crossing or canal transit out of Fort Lauderdale costs less per night than almost anything else on the water.

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To see what genuinely sails from Florida, start with the five ports or browse by destination.