You may have never heard of any cruises from Port Everglades, but you probably have heard of cruises from Fort Lauderdale. In fact, they are one and the same, as Port Everglades is simply the the name of the port in Fort Lauderdale (which is also called, as one might imagine, the Port of Fort Lauderdale). Thus, cruises from Port Everglades are cruises from Fort Lauderdale, and if you’re familiar with the latter you are familiar with the former. Below we supply some basic information about the cruises form Port Everglades, which is one of the top three cruise ports in the world.
Since Port Everglades is one of the top three cruise ports in the world, it obviously has an enormous amount of cruise traffic. Eight major cruise lines operate 42 ships out of Port Everglades, which is extraordinary amount of action for a port when you consider both the size of cruise ships and the frequency with which they come and go; enormous flouting cities come one day only to be gone the next. And we are only talking about cruise ships. Port Everglades is a major hub for cargo ships, and ferries operate out of the port as well, like the one offered by Balearia Bahamas Express. But we are concerned with the offerings of cruise lines, to which we now turn our attention.
Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean International, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Celebrity Cruise Line, Cunard Line, Seabourn, and Silversea Cruises all operate cruises from Port Everglades. Of these eight cruise lines, four have a particularly large presence at the port. With 12 ships based at the Port Everglades, Holland America operates the most of any cruise line. (Holland America operates 15 ships in total.) Princess Cruises operates eight ships at Port Everglades, Celebrity Cruises seven, and Royal Caribbean six. The fate of each of these cruise lines is therefore substantially intertwined with Port Everglades. If something were to happen to the port, or if people for whatever reason had difficulty getting there, a significant portion of each cruise lines’ business would evaporate. This is also true of the two luxury cruise lines that sail from Port Everglades, Seabourn and Silversea. Each cruise line has three ships based in Port Everglades, representing half of Seabourn’s fleet and nearly half of Silversea’s.
So, there is no shortage of cruise lines and cruise ships to pick from if you are looking to sail from Fort Lauderdale, but to where can you actually sail? By far the most popular cruise from Port Everglades is to the Caribbean. Every cruise line with the exception of Curnard (which only offers world cruises from Port Everglades) sails multiple ships to the Caribbean. Some of these cruise lines (Carnival, Princess, and Royal Caribbean) offer trips to the Caribbean all year long, whereas the remainder only operate seasonally. One cruise line, Carnival, exclusively sails to the Caribbean from Port Everglades. While trips to the Caribbean are the most common out of Fort Lauderdale, this is certainly not the only place one can sail to. With the exception of Carnival and Cunard, every cruise line with a presence in Port Everglades offers transatlantic cruises, and four of the eight offer transcanal cruises (i.e., cruises that sail through the Panama Canal). There are also occasional cruises to South America and to New England/Canada.
There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to cruises from Port Everglades. There are a particularly high number of cruises to the Caribbean from Port Everglades, but there are also cruises to many other parts of the world. Almost any cruise for which it makes sense to depart from the southeast coast of Florida can be taken from Port Everglades. And if you find yourself there waiting for a cruise, here are some things to see and do while in the port city of Fort Lauderdale.