The dining cruises in Fort Lauderdale are limited, and the situation is fairly complex. Unlike the other cities we have written about, there aren’t dining cruises held on a consistent basis, and there also isn’t a company that is dedicated to offering dining cruises that are open to the public. However, Fort Lauderdale is the home of Windridge Yacht Charters, and while this company is primarily in the private ship rental business, they open up their two vessels for dining cruises every so often. Below we outline what is available, giving you a guide to dining cruises in Fort Lauderdale that will help you find and book a cruise.
We should begin by noting that Windridge Yacht Charters is part of the conglomerate Entertainment Cruises, which owns several dining cruise companies. If you have ever taken a dining cruise on the East Coast, it is more likely than not that you booked with a company operated by Entertainment Cruises. So, Windridge is actually part of a much larger operation. However, as we noted above, and as the company’s name more or less implies, Windridge is mainly a private yacht rental company, so it is distinct from most of the other companies that Entertainment Cruises operates, like Spirit Cruises and Odyssey Cruises, both of which focus more on regularly scheduled brunch, lunch, and dinner cruises that people can book individual tickets for (as opposed to chartering an entire ship). However, Windridge does periodically use their ships to host regular dining cruises, and that is what we are presently concerned with.
Windridge and the two ships in its fleet – Lady Windridge and the newly renovated Windridge K – serve the entire South Florida region, and they sail out of four different locations: Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Palm Beach, and Boca Raton. However, the company is based in Fort Lauderdale, and this is where there regular dining cruises begin and end. As far as we can tell, there is no set pattern to Windridge’s dining cruise schedule, and we presume this is because the company must work around an erratic schedule of privately booked parties. At present, the company has committed to perhaps a dozen or so brunch and dinner cruises for the rest of the year. The brunch cruises are always held on Sunday, and the dinner cruises are on either Monday or Wednesday. This is fairly consistent, but only superficially so because the dates are irregular. For example, there is one dinner cruise in June, and then there are none for the next a few months, and then there are two cruises each, scheduled on seemingly random Mondays or Wednesdays, in October, November, and December. In addition to the brunch and dinner cruises, there are also periodically cruises for holidays, like the Fourth of July and New Year’s.
So, there are dining cruises in Fort Lauderdale thanks to Windridge, but there aren’t many, and they don’t seem to be held on a consistent basis. Rather, it seems like the company figures out their private bookings and then builds some extra cruises open to the public into their schedule, although we aren’t certain of this. In any case, there is a Windridge Yacht Charters page dedicated to Fort Lauderdale, and on this page you’ll be able to find out more information about the periodic cruises they offer.
