Even though the large dining cruise company Hornblower Cruises has a branch in the city, there are no regularly scheduled dining cruises in Long Beach. That is, there are no brunch, lunch, or dinner cruises in Long Beach that are open for public booking. However, Hornblower, along with a couple of other companies, allows you to rent ships for private dining cruises, and there are also some dining cruises that depart near Long Beach, and below we explore these different possibilities in more depth.
Unlike the other eight locations where Hornblower Cruises operates, there are no ships based in Long Beach on a regular, long-term basis. Several ships are available to rent, but they aren’t actually located in Long Beach, at least not with any regularity, and thus they must be requested. Presumably, this explains the lack of regularly scheduled dining cruises, which obviously can only be offered in a place where ships are present to sail on a set schedule. However, the lack of Hornblower ships is not much of an impediment to private charters, as a ship can be relocated easily enough to Long Beach if a client wants to depart from this exact location for a wedding, say, or for some other sort of private party. Not surprisingly, there are other boat rental companies in Long Beach as well, but obviously not all of them can accommodate an elaborate dining cruise for something like a wedding.
As far as we can tell, the only dining cruises that depart from Long Beach specifically are private, but there are dining cruises open to the public that depart from locations near Long Beach. To the south, there are dining cruises from Newport Beach, which are operated by Hornblower Cruises. Hornblower also operates a little to the north of Long Beach, offering dining cruises in Marina del Rey. There is also a company called Spirit Cruises that is located in San Pedro, which is closer to Long Beach than either Newport Beach or Marina del Rey. San Pedro is directly west of Long Beach, probably only about a 10 minute drive away. Spirit Cruises also offers private charters, but they open up their ship to public dinner cruises from time to time. (For the record, this company doesn’t have any connection to the larger dining cruise company Spirit Cruises, which is based in several large cities across the U.S.) The dining cruises in San Pedro, Newport Beach, and Marina del Rey are all realistic options if you are in Long Beach and want to take a dining cruise.
So, there are no dining cruises open to the public in Long Beach, but several such cruises depart from places near Long Beach. In addition, there are private dining cruises from Long Beach, which might be reasonable to pursue if you are planning a larger event.
