Florida cruise ports compared

PortMiami calls itself the Cruise Capital of the World and the schedule backs it up: more ships turn around here than at any other port on earth. Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, MSC and Virgin all keep year-round hardware at the terminals on Dodge Island, alongside the small luxury ships — Explora, Silversea, Regent, Seabourn, Oceania — that use Miami as their winter Caribbean base. The mix is unusually wide: three-night Bahamas hops on ageing Carnival tonnage share a berth with Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built.

Port Canaveral is the Orlando cruise port in everything but name — about forty-five miles east of MCO down the Beachline, and the reason a great many people search for cruises from Orlando and end up here. It is Disney Cruise Line's home water, with three ships based at its own terminals, and Royal Caribbean's proving ground for the biggest new hardware. Carnival keeps a large fleet here on short Bahamas runs, and MSC, Norwegian and Celebrity each hold a berth. Short three- and four-night sailings dominate, which is what you would expect from a port that sits an hour from the theme parks.

Port Everglades sits roughly two miles from Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood airport, which is the shortest airport-to-ship transfer of any major cruise port in the world and most of the reason the port is where it is. The fleet skews longer and older-skewing than Miami's: Princess and Holland America both base multiple ships here for ten- and fourteen-night Caribbean and Panama Canal runs, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean hold year-round berths, and Disney added a second Florida base here. If you are looking for a Panama Canal transit or a two-week Southern Caribbean loop leaving Florida, this is the port that runs them.

Tampa is Florida's Gulf-coast cruise port and the only one of the five that is genuinely small. Every ship leaving has to pass under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which caps air draft at roughly 180 feet and rules out the newest and largest classes — so Tampa is a mid-size-ship port by physics, not by choice. What that buys you is a port handling one or two ships a day rather than six, with garages directly across from the terminals and a fifteen-minute run from the airport. Sitting on the Gulf also puts it closer to Mexico and the Western Caribbean than any east-coast Florida port.

Jacksonville is the smallest cruise port in Florida and the one most people forget exists. A single terminal on the St Johns River handles one ship at a time: Carnival keeps a vessel here year-round on short Bahamas runs, and Norwegian brings a ship in for the winter season. Ships have to clear the Dames Point Bridge, so the same air-draft limit that shapes Tampa applies here too. For north Florida and south Georgia it is by some distance the easiest port to drive to, and the queues are nothing like Miami's.