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Cruise from Miami, Florida

Best deals to miami, florida.

These cruises are selling out fast, get them while you can.

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THE WORLD'S BEST FAMILY VACATION

Introducing the new Icon of the Seas℠ , a whole new class of Royal Caribbean® adventure. Let your adrenaline surge at the largest waterpark at sea. Here, every day is a sun day with an all-you-can-swim buffet of seven unique pools — the most ever on a cruise. And families discover adventure for all ages at Surfside ℠ , a stay-all-day destination right onboard that opens the floodgates on family fun.

EXPLORE Icon of the Seas℠

A BOLDER WAY TO GETAWAY WEEKEND CRUISES

Break up with your weekly routine with a weekend cruise from Miami and set sail on a memory filled getaway that’ll take you so much further than a standard staycation. Royal Caribbean® offers plenty of bolder-than-ever weekend sailings to some of the Caribbean’s most stunning shores onboard the world’s most incredible cruise ships — no days off required. Which means you can fill your year with even more bucket list adventures.

EXPLORE WEEKEND CRUISES

WOW-WORTHY SIGHTS IN THE MAGIC CITY 

From a bustling downtown with shimmering skyscrapers to endless beaches, Miami is an urban paradise all year long. Enjoy a plethora of things to do before your cruise out of Miami. If you crave an exhilarating day of adventure on the water, head to Oleta State Park for a myriad of water sports in the Biscayne Bay. If you’re needing an art fix, explore the Perez Art Museum or historic Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. If a break in nature is needed, there’s no shortage of places to experience wildlife up close, head to Zoo Miami or Miami Seaquarium for interactive shows and encounters. With so many options and things to do, Miami is the perfect place to set the tone for your next cruise adventure.

Blazing With Adventure

Feel the heat of adventure in The Magic City and cool off with with a cruise to the Bahamas or Caribbean from the Miami cruise port on some of our most amped up ships yet.

INDEPENDENCE OF THE Seas

You’ll always find bold adventures onboard Independence of the Seas ®. From non-stop thrills to mouthwatering dining and the hit Broadway musical Grease, this fan-favorite is your ticket to a memory-maxing getaway.

EXPLORE iNDEPENDENCE OF THE SEAS

Freedom of the SeaS

Trade “sea days” for “see more” days on an all-around all-star - Freedom of the Seas®. Experience more to do onboard the ship, with fewer days between some of the world's most exotic travel destinations.

EXPLORE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

ICON OF THE SEAS

It’s time for the time of your life — multiple times a day. Onboard the new Icon of the Seas ℠. Brace yourself for the largest waterpark at sea. Or take your pick of seven different pools. And in between, bond over bites with over 20 ways to dine.

EXPLORE ICON OF THE SEAS

KICK START THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE FROM MIAMI

Whether you’re on a short getaway or weeklong wander, conquer record-breaking thrills and discover epic ways to chill at the award-winning Perfect Day at CocoCay. Luxe the day away in an Overwater Cabana at Coco Beach Club ® .Or crank up the party at Hideaway Beach ℠ , the ultimate adults-only beachfront paradise. Plus, get your fix of non-stop thrills like the tallest waterslide in North America. And refuel over foodie finds from signature wings to all-you-can-eat island favorites.

Whether you’re on a short getaway or weeklong wander, conquer record-breaking thrills and discover epic ways to chill at the award-winning Perfect Day at CocoCay. Luxe the day away in an Overwater Cabana at  Coco Beach Club® .Or crank up the party at  Hideaway Beach ℠, the ultimate adults-only beachfront paradise. Plus, get your fix of non-stop thrills like the tallest waterslide in North America. And refuel over foodie finds from signature wings to all-you-can-eat island favorites.s.

Miami Shore Excursions

Amazing experiences coming soon., sorry, there are no excursions for this port at this moment., things to do in miami.

Art Deco Hotels Collins Avenue, Miami, Florida

South Beach is a bright hot spot no matter what time of day. Soak up the sun along the shore and admire the Art Deco gems along lively Ocean Drive. Stroll busy Collins Avenue, sip mojitos in beach bars, dance in ultra-hip nightclubs, and enjoy the best people watching in the city.

Called Culture

Older Men Close Up Smoking Cuban Cigars, Miami, Florida

Experience Miami’s Cuban traditions along Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Here you can wander streets filled with fiery salsa sounds and meet locals smoking cigars over a game of dominoes. From its colorfully painted rooster statues to its hand-rolled cigar shops and open-air fruit markets, this is as authentic as it gets.

Blank Canvas

Unleash your creative side with a jaunt through the Wynwood Art District during your Miami cruise. Every façade in this art-centric neighborhood comes decked out in vibrant life-size murals by globally recognized talents. And don’t miss Wynwood Walls, a collection of old warehouses adorned with abstract paintings, graffiti quotes and unique sculptures.

Local Cuisine

Miami is an international culinary powerhouse. Michelin-starred chefs fill many kitchens and Latin American flavors highlight many menus. You can’t miss the city’s signature Cuban food: Enjoy pastelitos (pastries) for breakfast, lunch on a famous frita (spicy burger), then savor ropa vieja (beef stew) for dinner. If seafood is your thing, crack into succulent stone crab claws, a true South Florida delicacy.

Bayside Marketplace, across from the port, is a popular waterfront shopping spot for visitors. Locals love the quirky boutiques in Coconut Grove. Lincoln Road Mall spans 10 blocks of shops— and Miracle Mile is a long string of specialty stores. Cruise to Miami and head to Calle Ocho for hand-stitched guayabera shirts and hand-rolled Cuban cigars.

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Set sail for unforgettable memories with Miami Boat Cruises

Embark on an adventure like never before with our unique experiences.

Fort Lauderdale

Marathon Key

 Adventure with our handpicked featured tours, carefully crafted to offer you exceptional and unparalleled experiences!

Miami Skyline 90 min Cruise of South Beach Millionaire Homes & Venetian Islands

Miami Skyline 90 Min Evening Cruise on Biscayne Bay

Miami Skyline: Happy Hour 90 Min Sightseeing Cruise & Millionaire Homes

Cigar and Coffee Walking Half-Day Guided Tour in the Little Havana & free 90 Min cruise

Miami: Snorkeling Adventure in Miami for Beginners

Miami South Beach: Snorkeling Beginners from Miami Beach Marina

Miami: New Years Eve Fireworks on Biscayne Bay and South Beach

Miami Skyline 3-hour New Years Eve Sightseeing Cruise

Miami Boat Tour on Biscayne Bay & Miami Skyline

Miami: Day Party Boat Water Toys Sandbar from Bayside Marketplace

Miami: Snorkeling on Secluded Deserted Island

Miami: 60 Min Night Cruise on Biscayne Bay

Miami 90 min Skyline Sunset Cruise of South Beach & Venetian Islands

Miami Skyline 90 min Cruise of South Beach Millionaire Homes & Venetian Islands (HOP ON HOP OFF)

JetSki One Hour with Free Pontoon Sightseeing Tour of South Beach

Miami JetSki Rental in Biscayne Bay for 60 minutes

Miami Skyline Sunset Cruise with optional upgrade to Hard Rock Cafe

South Beach 1-Hour JetSki Rental with Gas Included + Free Pontoon Boat Ride

3-Hour Miami South Beach nightclub on water with Open Bar and DJ

4-Hour Miami Deep Sea Fishing from Biscayne Bay

Miami: 90-Minute Skyline & South Beach Millionaire Homes Cruise & Hard Rock Meal

Little Havana Food and Walking Tour in Miami

Miami City Half-Day Bus Tour with South Beach Cruise

Biscayne Bay JetSki Tour for one hour from Collins Ave

Miami 90 minute Cruise on Biscayne Bay & Free Drink

Miami Full-Day Combo Sightseeing Tour with 90 min cruise and Everglades Airboat

Miami 1 day Hop-On Hop-Off Open Top Double Decker Tour from Bayside Marketplace

Bimini Day Trip on Cruise with RoundTrip Miami Transfer

1-Hour JetSki Rental in Sunny Isles

Miami to Key West Sightseeing Bus Tour Day Trip

Double Decker Sightseeing Bus Tour of Miami in English & Spanish

Everglades Admission Ticket with Airboat Ride and Wildlife Show

Everglades National Park & Airboat tour with Roundtrip Transfer

MIAMI: 90-Min South Beach Cruise Millionaire Homes Spanish & Hard Rock Cafe Meal

Key West Snorkeling Shared Experience from Miami

Miami Tour Pass Boat ride, JetSki and Double Decker Bus

Double Decker Hop on Hop off plus 90 Minute Miami Skyline cruise of South Beach

Miami: Little Havana History & Cultural walking tour+Salsa Music

Spring Break Boat Party in Miami

3 Hours Miami Day with Boat Party Cruise

Miami Night Skyline & Miami Boat Tour on Biscayne Bay

Key West Sightseeing Day Trip from Miami

Miami Exclusive: Jet Car Experience on Biscayne Bay

Miami: City Cruise Millionaire's Homes & Venetian Islands 60 Min

Miamiboatcruises.com

Return to Cruising & Touring

At this time, we are resuming our Millionaire’s Row™ Cruises, Everglades Safari Park Tours, Bus Transportation to Key West, Hop-On Hop-Off Big Bus Tour, and private yacht charters. Our ample vessels feature multiple decks with indoor and outdoor spaces. We will update this page as our schedule expands and restrictions lift.

COVID-19 Safety Measures

Social distancing.

• Seating will observe social distancing protocols and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. We can make accommodations for family units.
• All queue areas will be marked with social distancing parameters. Our ticket counter features plexiglass to minimize contact between employees and customers.

Employee Requirements

• All staff uniforms will adhere to CDC guidelines. This will include masks that will be disinfected/changed for every tour.

Cleaning & Sanitation

• We will be providing hand sanitizing stations throughout the vessel, at boarding on the dock, on every deck, as well as near food and beverage areas.
• All team members are trained to thoroughly clean and disinfect key surfaces and areas before, during, and after each tour. This includes but is not limited to handrails, backs of chairs, doorknobs, bars, counters, tables, bathroom sinks, toilet handles, etc. These ongoing tasks will be completed per the CDC and Miami-Dade County guidelines.
• Our bathrooms feature individual private stalls. These areas will be serviced throughout the tour and will be equipped with hand dryers and disinfectant soap.

Additional Safety Precautions

• Photo operations have been temporarily ceased.
• Our schedule will fit within the parameters of the Bayside Marketplace operating hours.
• If additional steps are desired, we are happy to provide them as requested.

ISLAND QUEEN CRUISES & TOURS

The best way to experience miami.

Island Queen Cruises & Tours is the one-stop destination for planning a full schedule of fun during a visit or stay in Miami. Unique Waterfront Dining, Cocktails, Live music, performers & transportations services, we offer the ultimate Miami experience!

MILLIONAIRE'S ROW™ CRUISE

Enjoyable sightseeing cruise with the spectacular view of the Miami Skyline and the Home of the Rich and Famous™

MIAMI ESSENTIAL TOUR

Experience the city of Miami with the Island Queen Millionaire’s Row Tour Bundle! A luxury tour on Bayside waters followed by a one-of-a-kind Bus Tour through the magnificent views of Miami.

EVERGLADES EXPERIENCE

Visit the Everglades and its treasured Ecosystem and all native and exotic wildlife that is completely unique to South Florida

DISCOVER TOUR

Discover Miami on an open-top, double-decker, hop-on, hop-off Big Bus tour with our 1-day Discover Ticket. You’ll see all the famous Miami neighborhoods, with entertaining narration from our informative recorded commentary!

EXPLORE TOUR

Explore Miami for longer with our great value 2-day Explore Ticket, which also includes a Millionaire’s Row boat cruise and an exclusive Big Bus Everglades Tour.

Hop on our 75–90-minute panoramic Miami Night Tour to discover the Magic City all lit up for the evening. Our live guides will introduce you to Miami’s best sights after dark. Enjoy the vibrant buzz on South Beach’s Ocean Drive and discover the city’s best landmarks as they’re illuminated in the evening.

These tiny islands are amazing, and the trip down to Key West is just as exciting and exhilarating as spending time there. On your journey to Key West, you will cross the famous “Seven Mile Bridge” which is featured in movies such as  True Lies, 2 Fast 2 Furious , the James Bond film  License to Kill ,  CrissCross, Up Close & Personal , and the hit Netflix show  Bloodline .

BROWSE OUR FLEET FOR PUBLIC CRUISES & PRIVATE CHARTERS

Host Your Next Private Event ON A YACHT Rent one of our fabulous yachts and impress your guests!

OUR TRUSTED PARTNERS

Miami Aqua Tours

Boat tours & cruises in miami, fl, select your miami boat tours or cruises.

• Most Popular
• Hour Glass 1 Hour 20 Min
• Users All Ages

Sightseeing Cruise

Join us on our most popular sightseeing cruise around Biscayne Bay! Highlights include the Venetian Islands, Star Island, downtown Miami, and its dazzling skyline!

• Great for all ages

Miami Pirate Boat Tour

Experience the islands, downtown skyline, and houses of the rich and famous of Miami, all from the decks of our pirate ship! There’s no better way to discover Miami!

• Users Ages 4+

Skyline Miami Cruise

Come to enjoy the breathtaking Downtown Miami sunset view seen from the water. There is always a reason to celebrate with your family, partners, or friends!

Nite Sea Party Night Cruise in Miami

Come join us for the Nite Sea Party. Boat party around Miami downtown with remarkable views of Miami’s Skyline.

• Hour Glass 1 hour & 20 minutes
• Users Ages 21+

Sunset Champagne Cruise

Come to enjoy the breathtaking Downtown Miami sunset view seen from the water with 1 FREE glass of champagne per adult (must be 21+ with ID).

Toast Champagne Cruise

• Hour Glass 3 Hours

Pirate Ship HALLOWEEN Boat Party

Haunted Pirate Ship Halloween Part only on Friday October 27th. There will be an Open Bar including waters, sodas, beers and champagne!

• Hour Glass 2 Hours

Fourth of July Cruise – Fireworks Party on our ICONIC Pirate Boat!

Experience July 4th like a pirate! Enjoy the most iconic and important evening of the year aboard the most spectacular cruises in Miami.

Fourth of July Cruise – Fireworks Party on the “Michael B Meli” Cruise!

July is here! So why not join us while we sail on Biscayne Bay and celebrate the 4th of July on the water!

Fourth of July – Fireworks Party on the “Island Princess” Cruise!

Celebrate the 4th of July on the water! Duration 2 hours About 4th of July is here! So why not join us while we sail on Biscayne Bay!

New Year’s Eve Cruise – Fireworks Party on the “Island Princess” Cruise!

Celebrate New Year’s Eve in Miami and enjoy an amazing cruise in Biscayne Bay! Just choose between our three wonderful cruises!

New Year’s Eve Cruise – Fireworks Party on the Manatee II Cruise!

Experience the stunning skyline and night sky filled with Fireworks that reflect on the water while enjoying a toast of champagne at midnight!

New Year’s Eve Cruise – Fireworks Party on our ICONIC Pirate Ship “El Loro”

Party and enjoy a wonderful night cruising the bay through Miami’s beautiful skyline, toasting champagne during amazing Fireworks Show!

Host Private Events On Our Boat Rides In Miami

Celebrating a special occasion in Miami? We offer private events to make your birthday, anniversary, corporate event or any other occasion truly memorable. Contact us directly!

About Miami Aqua Tours

Miami Aqua Tours is a sightseeing tour and cruise company operating out of Bayside Marketplace in Miami for over 20 years.

How are we different? Our business is to entertain, excite, and create a pleasurable environment for our guests. Our numerous boat tours of the Biscayne Bay offer incredible views of the Miami skyline, Millionaire’s Row, and other points of interest along the Florida coast. Our team of dedicated and knowledgeable professionals strives to create an enjoyable journey for each of our guests.

Join us on our one-of-a-kind Pirate Boat, El Loro, or check out Manatee II and the Island Princess for adventures that will lead to unforgettable memories. Come aboard and enjoy music, snacks, cocktails, and fun as we venture through the Biscayne Bay!

Our Special Cruises

Cruise Through Reviews of our Miami Boat Tours

We had a blast! Super cool boat with friendly staff and the best tour guide ever! We are planning on coming back with the whole family.

Im absolutely Inlove with all the amazing views!!! I highly recommend this tour. You guys won’t regret it! Such a great way to start my vacations.

Great party tour with amazing skyline views! My husband and I loved the tour! The people that work at the boat are very nice and helpful.

Amazing Tour! Alain was awesome and so much fun!! I highly recommended this to anyone visiting the beautiful MIAMI as well as a nice day trip for locals!

The staff was great and the hospitality was perfect. The views were amazing, I’m so happy that the tour guide is bilingual in both Spanish and English.

Miami Skyline Cruises

      miami boat cruises & miami   boat tours, "your miami boat tour company"    , "home of the miami sunset cruise & miami sunset tours",   miami skyline & star island boat tour, our miami boat cruises & bayside boat tours,    ,       miami's wealthy haven: mansions of miami beach, discover the best vantage points to view the stunning miami skyline.

Get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey to one of the world’s most glamorous cities - Miami! Picture yourself cruising along the azure waters of Biscayne Bay, basking in the glow of Miami’s radiant sunset, marveling at the opulence of the Mansions of Miami Beach, and uncovering the allure of the Venetian Islands and Fisher Island. Ready? Let’s sail away into the Magic City and admire the stunning Miami skyline, with Miami Skyline Cruises!

Exploring the Magic of Miami's Skyline on a 90 - min Miami Celebrity Boat Tour!

Prepare to enjoy the beauty and magic of Miami’s skyline from the optimal viewpoint – the water! The Miami skyline cruise is a 90-minute sightseeing extravaganza that takes you on a panoramic tour of the city’s most iconic residential areas and the prestigious Venetian Islands. As you glide along the waters of Biscayne Bay, you will be wowed by the stunning views of:

• South Beach millionaire homes
• Famous star homes on the Venetian Islands
• Beautiful houses on Hibiscus Island, Palm Island, Sunset Island, Fischer Island, and Star Island

The cruise provides:

• English and Spanish services, accommodating a wide variety of travelers
• A narrated tour that vividly describes Miami’s coastal attractions
• Accommodation for up to 120 travelers, ensuring a comfortable and delightful experience for all.

Whether you reside locally or are visiting, regardless of age, you can relax and enjoy the cruise.

Departure Details

The stunning Miami Skyline cruise departs from the heart of Downtown, Biscayne Bay, offering you immediate access to the vibrant Bayside Marketplace. You’ll receive exact location details on your ticket, making check-in a breeze. The Miami Cruise will return back to Bayside marketplace.

Please ensure to arrive at least 30 minutes prior to departure or the scheduled tour time to allow for an easy boarding process.

Remember, the boat is located behind Victoria Secret on the waterside.

Onboard Amenities

Aboard the bi-level yacht, you’ll find a variety of amenities to enhance your cruising experience. The yacht features air conditioning with open windows, providing a comfortable journey irrespective of the weather. For those craving some refreshments, the onboard cash bar offers a delightful selection of snacks and drinks for purchase, making sure you never go hungry or thirsty during the cruise.

The cruise offers:

• Indoor and outdoor seating options, available on a first-come, first-serve basis
• Onboard restrooms
• Narrated tours
• Spanish narration
• English narration

Whether you want to enjoy the tropical breeze on the deck or stay cool indoors, the choice is yours! The cruise is family-friendly, welcoming guests of all ages, and ensures a convenient and enjoyable cruising experience.

Sights to See

The Miami Skyline cruise offers stunning views of:

• Millionaires’ homes on Hibiscus Island
• Palm Island
• Sunset Island
• Fischer Island
• The renowned Venetian Islands
• The famous Star Island

The Miami sightseeing tour offers an exciting glimpse into the luxurious lifestyle of Miami’s elite, with the bilingual tour guide enhancing the sightseeing cruise experience with captivating commentary and fascinating facts.

The Allure of Venetian Islands & Fisher Island

Next stop, the Venetian Islands! This chain of artificial islands in Biscayne Bay is a sight to behold. Known for their picturesque setting, they are perfect for sightseeing, sunset walks, jogging, and rollerblading. The islands include Biscayne Island, San Marco Island, San Marino Island, Di Lido Island, Rivo Alto Island, and Belle Isle. The islands are also home to several celebrities, adding to their glamour and appeal.

Venetian Way Wonders

The Venetian Way, a causeway connecting Miami on the mainland and Miami Beach on a barrier island, is home to some of the city’s most luxurious mansions. With roots dating back to 1913, the Venetian Way and its islands have a rich history that adds to their charm. The mansions along the Venetian Way showcase unique Gothic and Venetian palazzo architectural styles, exuding elegance and historical charm.

The Famous Venetian Islands are not just about stunning views and architecture, it’s also about the people who call it home. Over the years, these islands have been graced by the presence of many incredible and influential figures, including:

• Lenny Kravitz
• Anna Kournikova
• Phil Collins
• Antonio Banderas
• Paulina Rubio
• Jackie Chan

Fisher Island Fascination

Once filled with mangroves and coconut palms, Fisher Island has transformed into a luxurious residential island with beautiful buildings in the Mediterranean Revival style. The island offers a host of amenities, including:

• A saltwater pool at the Beach Club
• Multiple restaurants
• A decadent spa
• A 9-hole golf course
• 18 tennis courts with different surfaces

This tropical paradise is accessible only by ferry, intensifying its exclusivity and appeal.

The Miami Skyline Evening Cruise! Yes, if its pretty in the day, its Beautiful at Night!

The Miami Skyline Cruise is a most do during the day! But have you thought about the Miami Night Cruise? OMG, its a totally different experience. Its a local favorite sense you get to see Miami Star Island at Night.

All the house light up, you may even see a celebrity or two just hanging out in the back yard enjoying the city lights. The Miami Evening Cruise is becoming one of the top attractions at night time. Don't let anybody tell you, experience it your self and see why!

Uncover the Legends of Miami's Mansion of Miami Beach Boat Tour

Miami’s Mansion of Miami Beach is a captivating stretch of waterfront in Miami Beach, boasting coveted oceanfront mansions that have been home to celebrities and business magnates alike. Over the years, the Row has been graced by the presence of:

• Gloria Estefan
• Don Johnson
• Shaquille O’Neal
• Rosie O’Donnell
• Adams Family Movie
• Bad Boys 2 Movie
• Silvester Stallone

among others.

The architectural styles of start Island is unique, including old English, colonial, and a blend of distinct cultural architectures, mirroring the area’s affluence and allure. One of the iconic landmarks that can be seen from the Miami Skyline cruise is Al Capone’s Mansion, also known as Villa Angela, a staple of the luxurious and storied history of Star Island. With Villa Angela located on this prestigious stretch, it adds to the charm and fascination of the area.

Private Miami Skyline Cruises

For those seeking a customized experience, a private Miami Skyline cruise is an ideal choice. You can easily book a private tour by calling Miami Skyline Cruises at 786-714-1314.

The private cruises offer:

• Custom-tailored experiences
• Spacious and stable boats
• A variety of entertainment options
• Private charters
• The opportunity to see the homes of the rich and famous with your team or family in a private 90 minute tour.

The best Miami Sunset cruise

Imagine watching the sun slowly set over the Miami skyline, painting the sky in hues of pink, orange and red. This is what you can expect on a Miami sunset cruise . These cruises offer a romantic ambiance with live music and entertainment, making it a memorable evening on the water. Typically, a Miami sunset cruise lasts for about 90 minutes, giving you ample time to soak in the beauty of the city from the water.

Miami’s best sunset cruises offer:

• A full cash bar on board from the mojito bar, full of drinks and snacks, they even have Vapes for sale, served by a professional crew
• Knowledgeable guides to enhance your cruising experience
• Stunning views of the iconic Port of Miami, American Airlines Arena, the historic Art Deco buildings in South Beach, and the luxurious waterfront mansions along Biscayne Bay
• Beautifully framed by the vibrant colors of the sunset

As you sip your favorite cocktail, you can enjoy all of these features.

One day Miami to Key West Bus Tour

If you desire a change of scenery, a one-day bus tour from Miami to Key West could be considered. These tours offer an exciting day trip adventure, with the bus journey taking around 4 hours . Once in Key West, you can look forward to experiencing amazing sights such as:

• The Seven Mile Bridge
• Duval Street
• Mallory Square
• The Southernmost Point Buoy
• 6 hour of free time in Key West
• Roundtrip from Miami to Key West in one day

The cost of these tours are so cheap, you most go, and you can easily check the detailed instructions here .

Refreshments and Relaxation: Cash Bar and Light Snacks on board your Miami Skyline Cruise, we now sell Vapes!

To ensure you remain refreshed and relaxed throughout your journey, the Miami Skyline cruise offers a cash bar with a variety of food and drinks for purchase. Whether you desire a chilled soda, a revitalizing cocktail, or some light snacks, the cash bar caters to your needs. Just remember, it’s all part of the experience, so sit back, enjoy your drink, and take in the stunning Miami skyline! Why Smoke when you can Vape? Smoking is not allowed, but vaping is. Just be aware of your surroundings, don't bother anybody with the smoke.

Practical Information for Your Miami Skyline Adventure

Before starting your adventure, there are a few practical aspects to consider:

• The cruise departs from the vibrant Bayside Marketplace in Miami, with the check-in window conveniently located behind Victoria Secret, near the waterfront.
• You should arrive at least 45 minutes before the departure time.
• The mall is large and parking may take extra time, so it is important to plan accordingly.
• Remember to check in at the check in window.

If you’re driving, you’ll be pleased to know that the Bayside Marketplace features convenient paid parking for shoppers and guests. The rates vary, and there’s even valet parking available during special events. Additional parking garages and lots are in the vicinity, just a few minutes walk from the area’s exciting attractions.

Ticketing and Boarding Pass Insight

If it’s your first time booking a cruise, here’s what you need to know. You can easily book tickets for the Miami Skyline cruise through HERE , a convenient and hassle-free platform. It’s recommended that you purchase your tickets in advance as they tend to sell out weeks ahead. This ensures that you secure your spot and avoid missing out on this amazing experience.

Your ticket and boarding pass are two distinct items. The boarding pass usually includes a barcode that is essential for boarding the ship, while the ticket can be used for entry or as proof of purchase. If you misplace your boarding pass, simply inform a cruise representative, who will be more than happy to assist you and quickly provide a solution.

Navigating Bayside Market Place

Navigating the Bayside Marketplace is a breeze. This popular shopping center is in the heart of Downtown Miami, overlooking the stunning Biscayne Bay. To reach Bayside Marketplace via public transportation, take a bus to the Biscayne Bd & NE 4 St stop or the light rail to the College/Bayside station. Both are just a short walk to the marketplace.

Planning Your Visit: Booking, Cancellation Policy, and Full Refund Terms from Miami Skyline Cruises

After deciding to take the Miami Skyline cruise, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the booking process, cancellation policy, and full refund conditions. The Miami Skyline cruise offers a full refund if the booking is cancelled 24 hours before the start time. However, if the cancellation occurs less than 24 hours before the start time, the cruise unfortunately cannot provide a refund.

For more detailed information about the full refund policy, it’s recommended to reach out to Miami Skyline Cruises directly. They will be delighted to assist you and provide any specific information you may require.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does miami have a big skyline.

Miami is renowned for its impressive skyline with over 100 buildings that stand taller than 400 feet and 68 buildings that are higher than 491 feet. It's the third-tallest skyline in the U.S. after New York City and Chicago, making it an amazing sight to behold.

What's Miami famous for?

Miami is renowned for its beautiful beaches, amazing architecture, legendary parties and delectable food options, making it one of the best cities in the US to experience all those things.

How to see Star Island Miami?

Take a Mansions of Miami Beach Cruise with Miami Skyline Cruises and experience the city's luxury from the comfort of your own Miami Boat Cruise. Make reservations 24-48 hours in advance to ensure a spot for you and your party! Book Now!

How long does the Miami Skyline Cruise last?

Enjoy the beauty of Miami for 90 minutes aboard the Miami Skyline Cruise.

What our clients say

All Rights Reserved | Miami Skyline Cruises

NO WALK-IN RESERVATIONS - ALL RESERVATIONS MUST BE MADE ONLINE

Miami Sightseeing Cruises

Water tours & cruises in miami, choose my sightseeing activity, here we come waves.

• Most Popular!
• Hour Glass 1.5 Hours
• User All Ages

Miami Boat Tour

Embark on a Miami Sightseeing Cruise that’s more than just a ride – it’s a journey into the vibrant heart of the city! Glide along the Biscayne Bay waves while diving into the tales behind celebrity homes, spotting luxurious yachts, and taking in the dazzling Miami skyline. With lively narration and endless photo ops, this cruise is an adventure-packed joy ride for all!

Miami Sunset Cruise

Discover Miami’s iconic sights under the mesmerizing hues of a setting sun aboard our Sightseeing Boat Tour. Witness the city’s beauty in a whole new light as day transitions into a breathtaking Miami sunset.

Night Boat Tour in Miami

The best way to experience Miami! On this Miami night boat tour, we’ll take you along the Biscayne, Millionaire Row, and other iconic spots all framed by the unforgettable Miami skyline.

Miami’s Best Sightseeing Boat Tours

Welcome to Miami Sightseeing Cruises, where we transform sightseeing into an unforgettable voyage. As your hosts in the Magic City, we’re more than just a cruise company; we’re your companions on an adventure that captures the very essence of Miami. Our crew, a passionate and knowledgeable team, is dedicated to providing you with a remarkable experience.

At Miami Sightseeing Cruises, we’re committed to delivering more than just a boat ride; we’re here to offer you an experience that encapsulates the magic of Miami, whether you’re celebrating a special occasion or seeking an adventure. Your passage to Miami’s marvels begins with us. Come aboard, and let’s embark on an unforgettable Miami adventure!

GUEST REVIEWS

We loved this tour! Got to see all the millionaire houses and the skyline views. Our entire family of 8 had a great time. We will be back to south beach soon.

We had a nice time out on the water. It was pretty cool to see the mansions of the rich and famous, and we even saw a group of 4 dolphins. Overall it was a nice experience.

The boat trip was very nice and relaxing. The tour guide on board was very funny and knowledgeable. The narration was in English and Spanish. Boat was very clean, and the trip lasted 90-minutes. Good time.

Protect Your Trip »

The 10 Best Miami Boat Tours

Take in the sights and sounds of the Magic City while cruising the waterways in and around Miami.

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A private sunset sail in Miami's Biscayne Bay National Park is a must-do, according to travelers.

Known for its art deco architecture, glitzy nightlife, white sand beaches, Cuban culture and ample people-watching, Miami offers something for everyone. After you've explored its land-based attractions via a guided tour , hop on a boat to experience the city's waterways and the nearby Everglades National Park . Whether you're zipping along Biscayne Bay in a speedboat or gliding through the glass-like water of the Everglades, there's a boat trip you'll want to take. U.S. News researched both expert opinion and traveler reviews to compile the best Miami boat tours.

Sailing Adventure in Miami's Biscayne Bay National Park

According to reviewers, this private tour is a must-do while in Miami. During the approximately 3 1/2-hour trip, you'll sail around Biscayne Bay via a wind-powered boat passing sandbars, mangroves and islets along the way. You may even spot dolphins and manatees. In addition to the boat's eco-conscious reliance on wind power, the vessel is also heralded for its ability to access parts of the bay that larger boats can't reach. Tourgoers praise the friendly, engaging crew and report seeing plenty of dolphins.

Trips, which depart from Coconut Grove, are available Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tickets cost approximately $130 for adults and $100 for children and teens ages 2 to 17.

[ View & Book Tickets .]

Thriller Miami Speedboat Adventures

This high-speed adventure takes passengers on a 45-minute ride around PortMiami and the Rickenbacker Causeway, Star Island and Biscayne Bay. The jet boats can reach speeds up to 40 mph, with the capability to do 180-degree spins and turns. Patrons say the tour is a great way to see the Miami skyline and beaches. They also enjoy the lively music, entertaining guides and accelerated spins.

Tours run daily several times a day and you must check in 30 minutes prior to departure. Tickets cost around $40 for passengers ages 12 and older and $30 for children ages 3 to 11. Children must be 3 years old to ride.

Fiesta Cruises – Miami Celebrity Homes Tour

Marvel at celebrity homes and the opulent mansions used in popular TV shows and movies on this 90-minute tour from Fiesta Cruises. Tours, which sail around Palm, Star and Hibiscus islands as well as Miami's shoreline, are narrated in both Spanish and English. Reviewers call this a fun activity with an entertaining, informative staff and great music. Many call this a must-do in Miami.

Tickets start at $28 per person 12 and older and $17 for kids ages 4 to 11; children 3 and younger ride free. Cruises leave multiple times daily. The company operates several other tours, including a sunset cruise.

Duck Tours South Beach

Board this semiaquatic vehicle for a 90-minute land and water tour that takes you past famous Miami landmarks in South Beach and the Art Deco Historic District. Then, take the plunge into Biscayne Bay where you'll cruise by the homes of Star Island's famous residents. Along the way, guides, who have theatrical backgrounds, provide entertaining and informative commentary. Tourgoers comment that the ride is entertaining and fun and some say they wish they had done the tour on their first day in Miami.

Tickets cost approximately $45 per adult, $30 for kids 4 to 12 and $10 for children 3 and younger. The tours operate daily at 11 a.m. and 1, 3, and 5 p.m.

Everglades Nature Tours – Semi-Private 1-Hour Airboat Tour

Explore the everglades with a professional "gladesman," who is also a Coast Guard-trained guide, on this one-hour airboat tour. The educational and fun experience offers an opportunity to see alligators, many species of birds, butterflies and native plant life in Everglades National Park. Many tourgoers call this the highlight of their trip and praise the guides for their knowledge of the Everglades ecosystem.

The company offers tours Friday through Monday at several different times in the morning and afternoon. Tickets start at $65 per person ages 6 and older; you must call the company if you are reserving a tour with a child younger than 6. Note that the airboat ramp is located about 35 miles west of downtown Miami and that transportation from central Miami to the departure point is not included in the ticket price. Everglades Nature Tours also offers private walking tours and private airboat tours, among others.

Airboats are a classic way to tour Everglades National Park.

Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours – 45 Minute Tour

Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours feature a 45-minute excursion into the Everglades with a native guide. See local wildlife, such as alligators, wading birds, turtles and raccoons, in their natural habitat. Tourgoers will also have plenty of Instagram-worthy moments thanks to a nature trail walk and a stop at a Native American village. Reviewers enjoy the authentic feel of the small-group tour and the knowledge of the guides. They also mention seeing a variety of alligators.

Prices start at $45 per participant. Tours are available daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours can also customize a private tour, upon request.

Coopertown Airboats – The Original Air Boat Tour

Offering airboat rides since 1945, Coopertown Airboats earns high marks from reviewers for its educational, skilled guides and the abundance of wildlife spotted. The boats travel approximately 9 miles in Everglades National Park. During the 40-minute adventures, tours stop to view alligators, the colorful purple gallinule bird and other wildlife living in the "River of Grass."

Tours are offered daily from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tickets start at approximately $26 for adults and $15 for children ages 6 to 11. Children younger than 6 ride for free. There is an additional $5 fee to enter the park for anyone 16 or older. The company also offers private tours.

Island Queen Cruises & Tours – Millionaire's Row Cruise

Glide along Biscayne Bay as you pass by the posh homes of "Millionaire's Row," the Port of Miami, Miami Beach and Fisher Island. The 90-minute narrated sightseeing trip is bilingual and offers both air-conditioned indoor seating and outdoor seating with an awning. Snacks, beverages and alcoholic drinks are available for purchase. Most tour-takers enjoy their experience, calling it relaxing. Others say they had a difficult time hearing the commentary.

Tours depart multiple times daily. Adult tickets start at $30 each and tickets for children (ages 4 to 12) start at $20. Children 3 and younger ride for free. Island Queen also operates tours that visit Everglades National Park.

Wild Lime Adventures – 1-Hour Air boat Ride and Nature Walk with Naturalist in Everglades National Park

If you're looking for an immersion in nature during your Miami getaway, consider this tour, which includes an airboat ride and naturalist-led hike in Everglades National Park. During the hourlong airboat cruise, you'll visit up to two Native American tree island villages to gain a better understanding of how the Miccosukee people, who lived in Florida before it became a state, survived in the Everglades. You'll then embark on a 90-minute hike with your naturalist guide to learn about the unique ecosystems within Everglades National Park. Keep your eyes peeled for alligators and the Everglades snail kite, an endangered bird. Tourgoers describe the airboat ride as beautiful and report seeing a variety of alligators and birds. Others praise the company and the guides for their organization and attention to detail.

Tours are generally offered daily beginning at 7 a.m. and last about six hours. Tickets cost approximately $160 for adults and $140 for children ages 5 to 12. The cost includes pick up from your Miami hotel, snacks, water, soft drinks and fresh fruit. If you would prefer to meet at the departure location and do not need hotel pickup, you can take advantage of a discounted ticket price. Can't get enough of the Everglades? Wild Lime Adventures also offers daylong tours of the national park.

Miami Aqua Tours – Sightseeing Cruise

Enjoy a relaxing cruise around Biscayne Bay on this 80-minute boat tour. In addition to the Miami skyline, you'll also spot the Venetian Islands and Star Island as you listen to commentary from the boat's bilingual guide. Reviewers call this a great experience thanks to the interesting commentary provided by the onboard guide. They also gush about the photo-worthy views.

Cruises are offered daily multiple times a day. Ticket prices start at $30 for adults and $20 for children ages 4 to 12. Infants up to age 3 can ride for $5. Miami Aqua Tours also operates a nightly skyline cruise complete with a live DJ, among other options.

You may also be interested in:

• The Best Miami Tours
• The Best Jet Ski Rentals in Miami
• The Best Parasailing in Miami
• The Best Everglades Tours
• The Best Things to Do in Miami
• The Best Miami Hotels
• The Top Museums in Miami

Tags: Miami , Tours , Travel , Vacations , Florida Vacations , Southeast Vacations , US Vacations

World's Best Places To Visit

• # 1 South Island, New Zealand
• # 4 Bora Bora

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• Port Overview
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• Dropping Off at the Port
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Port of Miami Cruise Guide: Everything About Sailing From Miami

When it comes to cruising, there’s simply no bigger — or busier — port than the Port of Miami. Also known as PortMiami, the cruise side of the port handles about 6 million passengers in a typical year, making it the most popular starting point for cruises on the entire planet.

By our count, the Port of Miami has eight active terminals with more on the way (including the current or soon-to-be “flagship” terminals of several major cruise lines), services over 1,200 sailings in the typical year, and offers a year-round warm weather locale to start (and end) your cruise.

With so much going on at the port, you might have questions about cruising from the city. For instance, how do you get to the port? Where do you park? What sort of tips and advice is there to make embarkation smoother?

We’ve dug into the all the details of cruising from PortMiami below. It will give you everything you need to know before you set sail.

In This Article...

• Distance from Miami Airport: 10 miles
• Number of Terminals: 8 (AA/AAA under construction and F being renovated)
• Passengers Carried Each Year: ~6 million
• Cruise Ship Dockings Each Year: 1,200+

Port of Miami Location

The Miami cruise port sits in a perfect location, on Dodge Island just over the causeway from downtown Miami. About three miles from the open waters of the Atlantic, the port is protected from the ocean yet still close enough to make it a short time to get out to sea.

The port is also near the Miami airport, which is roughly 10 miles away. The ride over will take 15-25 minutes by car.

If you are driving to the port, the address is:

1015 North America Way Miami, Florida 33132

The entire South Florida area is a hotspot for tourism, so you might be coming from anywhere in the area. In that case, here is the distance and expected drive time from a number of popular spots:

• Miami Airport: 10 miles | 15-25 minutes
• Fort Lauderdale Airport: 30 miles | 40-60 minutes
• Hollywood: 20 miles | 25-45 minutes
• South Beach: 6 miles | 10-15 minutes
• Doral: 15 miles | 30-40 minutes
• Brickell: 3 miles | 10 minutes
• Downtown Miami: 2 miles | 5-10 minutes

Things to Do Near the Port of Miami

As we said, downtown is near the port, meaning there are a number of interesting things to do and see right nearby.

FTX Arena Home of the Miami Heat, along with a number of special events, FTX Arena is right at the foot of the bridge that crosses to the cruise port. If you’re staying in the area before or after your cruise, check out the schedule to see if there is a concert or sporting event to give you something to do without going far.

Frost Science Museum A great place to visit with kids, the Frost Science Museum is just a couple of blocks from the cruise port. The museum offers a lot of science-focused exhibits, along with aquariums and a planetarium. Head up to the roof to get a dramatic sweeping view of the entire port area in the thoughtfully-designed open-air wildlife exhibit.

Freedom Tower The Freedom Tower is perhaps Miami’s most famous building. Originally built in the 1920s, the tower looks small and a bit out of place next to the towering modern skyscrapers nearby. Still, there is a lot of history here as it served as a processing center for Cuban refugees following the Communist revolution. Today it houses an art museum and is a gem in the history of Miami.

Cruise Terminals at the Port

As you would expect given the number of cruises that leave Miami, it has the capacity to dock a number of cruise ships as once. In fact, with a total of eight terminals (with several more on the way), more than a half-dozen ships can be berthed at any given time. Below we’ve listed current terminal and those under construction or soon to be built.

Terminal A Currently one of the crown jewels of the Port of Miami, Terminal A is exclusive to Royal Caribbean and is a monument to the cruise line. Featuring a modern styled look, Terminal A is at the far east end of the port, and is large enough to handle Royal Caribbean’s biggest ships, which are the largest in the world.

Terminal AA/AAA  Slated for completion in 2023/24 at a cost of $300 million, this terminal complex (pronounced “Double A” and “Triple A”) will be home to MSC and act as a flagship terminal at the port, with the ability to dock two ships at once. It is planned at the far east end of the terminal complex, making them the last terminals as you make your way out of the main channel to the open ocean.

Terminal B Terminal B (pictured above) is home to a Norwegian Cruise Lines. Featuring a large rounded façade that’s reminiscent of an ocean wave and a spectacular piece of modern architecture, the terminal — known as “The Pearl of Miami” — acts as the flagship home for one of the world’s largest cruise lines. 

Terminal C An older terminal that often served Norwegian Cruise Lines before that cruise line moved next door, Terminal C still gets use from cruise lines like Disney and MSC. From here you can get a great view of all of the Miami area, looking out east to South Beach or west to downtown.

Terminals D & E Often serving Carnival ships, Terminals D & E are where you will likely go if you are sailing the world’s largest cruise line. Terminal D in particular is bright, open and airy, making check-in a breeze.

Terminal G Terminal G sits at the far west end of the cruise port. It’s literally across the street from Garage G, making it extremely easy to park and get to your ship in just a couple of minutes. The terminal currently sees use from Royal Caribbean on weekend trips when the cruise line has multiple ships in port.

Terminal F Terminal F is undergoing a nearly $200 million renovation (which is likely to be completed by the time you read this) to become the new home to Carnival’s Excel class ships, like Carnival Celebration. It marks the third terminal dedicated to Carnival, with plans to keep ships there for at least 20 years.  

Terminal J Sailing on a cruise line with smaller ships, like Regent Seven Seas or Oceania? There’s a good chance you’ll sail from Terminal J. The cruise terminal is on the southern side of the island, opposite of the rest of the cruise port traffic. Its location with no other ships around make getting to your cruise a bit less hectic than some of the busier terminals.

Terminal V Notice that all the terminals go in alphabetical order, until you reach Terminal V? That’s because this is home to Virgin Voyages. The new terminal sits on the west end of Dodge Island, serving the adults-only cruise line.

Hotels in the Miami Port Area

When you cruise, it’s usually a good idea to arrive to the port city the day before your trip. Not only are there lots of things to do in the Miami area, but it also give you plenty of time should you run into a delay getting to the port. You don’t have to stress about missing the ship due to a flat tire or delayed flight on cruise day.

Of course, there are a number of hotels near the Miami cruise port. Hotels closest to the port usually offer higher-end accommodations due to being near trendy downtown and also usually have nicer atmosphere. You can also try staying in South Beach, with its famous art-deco hotels. It’s only about 10-15 minutes from the port and offers lots to see and do before a cruise.

If you’re not picky, however, you can save some cash by staying at hotels nearer the airport or elsewhere around the city. These hotels don’t have the “flash” of a swanky downtown Miami or South Beach hotel, but offer a comfortable place to stay for cheaper.

Below, we’ve listed just a few hotel options (there are hundreds — if not thousands in the Miami area).

Hotels Near the Cruise Port:

• Hampton Inn & Suites Miami/Brickell-Downtown
• DoubleTree Biscayne Bay

Hotels Near the Airport (Usually Less Expensive):

• Comfort Suites Miami Airport
• Hampton Inn Miami Airport South/Blue Lagoon
• Hyatt Place Miami Airport-West/Doral

One thing to watch is that many hotels in the touristy areas like South Beach have expensive charges to park and also charge resort fees. If you want to stay in South Beach, be sure to ask about these possible charges before you book so that you don’t see surprise charges you weren’t expecting. 

Getting to the Port (Transportation)

The great news about being in a tourist hotspot like Miami is that there’s an entire industry catering to tourists and cruise passengers to help you with anything you need. That means you have an number of transportation options to get to the port.

We’ve covered all of your options in-depth here in our port transportation page . For most people, however, they will use one of a handful of options.

Driving to The Port Live in Florida? Then you might be thinking about driving to the cruise port. While that means you’ll have to deal with South Florida traffic, it is a convenient way to get to your ship. Driving offers you the ability to arrive exactly when you want and to leave to get home as soon as you debark the ship. There is also ample parking at the Port of Miami, but know that it will cost $22 per day ($25-$28 if sailing from the Royal Caribbean terminal). See details on parking below for more details.

Uber/Lyft If you fly in for your cruise — or simply don’t want to deal with driving — then Uber and Lyft offer service throughout South Florida to the Miami cruise port (including the airports). Getting a ride at any time you want is as simple as opening the app and requesting a ride at your location. Estimated rates from points of interest are below and will vary based on traffic. Keep in mind these rates are for the car, not per person.

• Miami Airport: $20-$25
• Fort Lauderdale Airport: $40-$45
• Hollywood: $30-$35
• South Beach: $10-$15
• Doral: $25-$30
• Brickell: $10-$15
• Downtown Miami: $10-$15

Taxi Taxis are usually more expensive and less convenient than using a rideshare program like Uber or Lyft. Still, for those without a rideshare account or who simply prefer to take a cab, you can pick one up at the airport or request one from area hotels. Rates from the Miami airport are a flat $27. Estimated fares are below from the location listed to the port:

• Miami Airport: $27 (Flat Rate)
• Fort Lauderdale Airport: $65-$75
• Hollywood: $60-$70
• South Beach: $20-$25
• Brickell: $20-$25
• Downtown Miami: $10

Hotel Shuttles If you are staying at a hotel in the area, then know that many of them offer shuttles to the cruise port. Some hotels offer the service for free while others charge a nominal amount for the service. Either way, it’s a simple way to get to the ship on cruise day. See our full list of hotels in Miami with cruise shuttles to the port .

For all of your options on getting to the Miami cruise port, (including public transportation and more details on each of the items above), see our port transportation page here .

Parking at the Cruise Port

If you’re driving to the port, then you obviously need a place to park your car. As in other port cities, there’s an industry surrounding cruise parking for passengers. We cover all of your options in full detail (with prices and locations) in our Port of Miami cruise parking article .

To keep things simple, you have two main options — park at the official port parking or with an independent parking lot.

Official Port Parking The Port of Miami offers parking garages and lots near all of the cruise terminals. Parking is literally across the street from the ship. In total there are thousands of parking spaces — you don’t need to reserve a space or worry about finding a spot. 

Parking at the port is convenient, but it’s also expensive. Rates run $22 per day. There is space for oversized vehicles like RVs, but the rate is an additional $22 each day. Cash and all major credit cards are accepted, but debit cards are not.

Note that parking at Royal Caribbean’s Terminal A is $25 per day for sailings of six nights or more. The rate is $28 per day for cruises of five nights or less.

Are you a disabled cruiser? If so, you may be eligible for free parking at the Port of Miami. If your car has special modifications — such as ramps or driving controls — or you have a Florida Disabled Veteran license plate then you can park for free. For more details, see our article on free parking for disabled passengers here .

Independent Lots In addition to parking your car at the port, there are a number of independent lots on the mainland, across from the cruise port. While these lots aren’t near as convenient as parking right at the ship, they do offer transportation to and from the cruise ship.

The biggest draw, however, is that they offer much cheaper prices than the port. That said, the reviews we’ve seen of these independent lots aren’t always stellar and the lots seem to change hands often. In our opinion, it’s a safer bet to park at the port or with a hotel that offers parking.

Hotels with Parking Miami is known for its tourism and that means there are countless hotels in the area. If you stay in the area between the airport and cruise port, then the hotels also cater heavily to cruise passengers.

As a perk, many hotels near the Port of Miami offer cruise parking deals. You stay one night and parking while you are on your cruise is included in your room package or is a small additional daily fee. As a bonus, many of the hotels also offer shuttles to the cruise port. Given the high cost of parking at the cruise port, hotel parking can save you considerably. You can see our list of Miami hotels with cruise parking here .

Dropping Off/Picking Up Passengers

Dropping off passengers at the port? Or picking up someone after your cruise? That’s a great way to help passengers save money and hassle of parking at the port.

While navigating around the port can be a little confusing given the twists and turns and the number of terminals, picking up and dropping off is simple. You’ll see signs at the terminal directing you to the spot where you can let out passengers (and pick them up afterward). Simply pull up and drop them off, similar to what you would do at an airport.

Numerous signs throughout the port area will direct you to the correct terminal for your ship. It may help to drop off or pick up at the very beginning or end of the terminal as there is less traffic here and it may be less of a hassle to stop and let out passengers.

Security & Check-In

These days many of us have gotten used to airport security, complete with long lines, body scanners, and strict rules on what you can and cannot bring. By comparison, security at the Port of Miami is much more enjoyable.

While the specifics of each terminal may be a little different, you’ll usually drop off any bags you want to check (simply meaning you don’t want to carry them on and rather have them delivered to your cabin later), enter the terminal and be asked for your boarding documents and ID. After this initial check, you’ll put any carry-on items through an x-ray machine and then you’ll walk through a metal detector.

Assuming that there’s no contraband or prohibited items in your luggage, you’ll collect it on the other side of the x-ray machine and then proceed to check-in.

These days many cruise lines have made a switch to allow passengers online check-in. There, your entire account is set up before cruise day. If you opt for this, you’ll proceed directly to the ship. Your room keys will be waiting in a sealed envelope at your cabin.

If you don’t do online check-in, no problem. You’ll wait in line for a cruise line representative. There are usually dozens of them working in the terminal, making the line move quickly. When it’s your turn, you will set up your onboard spending account, get your room keys and then proceed to the ship.

Disembarkation

Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, and that also means your cruise. So what’s it like to get off of a cruise ship in Miami?

Thanks to its popularity as a cruise port, we’ve found that Miami is one of the best in the business at getting folks off the ship as quickly as possible. When announced that you can depart the ship, you’ll re-enter the terminal that you left from but be directed to the disembarkation part of the facility.

Here, you will pick up any luggage that you set outside your cabin door for the crew to pick up. Many people, however, choose to simply carry all of their luggage off to get off the ship sooner.

Once off the ship and in the arrival hall, you will wait your turn for a Customs and Border Patrol officer to check your travel documents to return into the United States. Most terminals now have electronic kiosks that allow you to scan your passport or just take a photo and then continue on your way. It can literally take just minutes from leaving the ship until being out of the terminal. After that, you simply head outside to find your transportation from the cruise terminals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What time should I arrive for my cruise from Miami? When you book your cruise, you’ll be assigned a boarding time or given a window when the cruise ship boards at the port. For instance, Carnival lets you select a 30-minute boarding time of your choice. Other lines simply tell you that boarding is open from, say, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

If you are given a boarding time, then obviously you should get to the port at this time. Entering the port, parking, and walking to the ship is usually pretty quick. For that reason, we suggest planning only about 10-15 minutes time extra. So if your boarding time is 1:00 p.m., then plan to actually get to the Port of Miami around 12:45.

If your cruise line has a broad boarding window (something like noon to 4 p.m.), then you can arrive at any point during that window. We suggest waiting until the second half of the boarding window to actually arrive. There is usually a big rush of people who want to board as early as possible, leading to longer lines. Waiting a little later can make check-in a breeze as the crowds have died down.

Is there anything to do at the port? If you are early for your cruise or need to kill some time before catching a ride to the airport or home, there is a small park at the Miami cruise port. Seafarer’s Park offers a swimming pool, restaurant, tennis courts, basketball court, and a sand volleyball court. It’s where you might find some crew from the cruise ships blowing off steam in between cruises.

If you want to walk over the causeway bridge, there are restaurants and things to do in downtown Miami. But in general, there isn’t a ton to do right at the cruise port. You’ll want to exit the area and head to downtown Miami most likely if you have time to spare.

How can I see what ships are in Miami the day I sail? Chances are slim that you’ll be the only cruise ship in port the day that you sail out and when you get back. If you’re interested in the other cruise ships that you’ll see while in port, then you can see a full schedule at Crew-Center.com . It’s a neat way to know what other mega ships you will see while on your trip.

How long does it take to get to the airport from the Port of Miami? We mentioned it above, but it takes about 15-25 minutes in normal traffic to get to the Miami airport from the cruise port. Expect 45 minutes to one hour if you are headed to Fort Lauderdale.

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Do I pay for parking at Garage G after the cruise is over? Thank you

When arriving at the port for a Royal Caribbean cruise do you drop of luggage in front of the ship and then park or do you park and bring it all with you from the parking garage?

You can do either. When you turn into the terminal when driving, you’ll see a huge wall with “Bag Drop” painted on it. Here you can drop luggage and then proceed to parking. Or if you want to just walk it in, you can do that too.

I need transportation from the Port of Miami to the Hampton Inn Ft. Lauderdale-Plantation on January 25th for 5 people. Could you give me an estamate of the cost for this? thank you

We see estimates of about $40 for a regular Lyft and about $80 for Lyft XL (larger car). Given the number of people and luggage, you’ll either need two cars or Lyft XL to fit everyone.

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3 of the world's biggest cruise ships soon will battle for supremacy out of Miami

Get ready for the Battle of the Cruise Ship Giants out of Miami.

Fast-growing MSC Cruises on Thursday officially announced its North America schedule for the summer of 2025, including a Miami deployment that will set the stage for an epic matchup between three of the world's biggest cruise vessels.

As part of the announcement, MSC Cruises confirmed that its soon-to-debut MSC World America would sail from Miami from April 2025 through at least October 2025. This will place it in a head-to-head matchup with Royal Caribbean 's just-unveiled Icon of the Seas and Carnival Cruise Line 's one-year-old Carnival Celebration .

For more cruise news, guides and tips, sign up for TPG's cruise newsletter .

All three of the vessels will be the biggest in their respective fleets.

Scheduled to begin sailing in April 2025, MSC World America will be the world's seventh-biggest cruise ship when it debuts and the biggest MSC Cruises ship ever deployed to North America. Unveiled in January, Icon of the Seas is the world's biggest cruise ship .

Dating to November 2022, Carnival Celebration is the world's 14th biggest cruise ship.

For the summer of 2025, both MSC World America and Icon of the Seas will sail from Miami on Saturdays on seven-night trips to the Caribbean. Carnival Celebration will sail out of Miami on Sundays on six- to eight-night trips to the Caribbean .

As confirmed on Thursday, MSC World America will operate alternating itineraries to the Eastern Caribbean and Western Caribbean.

• Eastern Caribbean voyages will bring stops at Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Ocean Cay, MSC Cruises' private island in the Bahamas.
• Western Caribbean sailings will stop at Costa Maya and Cozumel in Mexico; Roatan, Honduras; and Ocean Cay.

Icon of the Seas will rotate among four different itineraries across the Eastern and Western Caribbean that bring visits to such destinations as St. Thomas; St. Maarten (the Dutch side of the island of St. Martin); Roatan; and Costa Maya and Cozumel, Mexico.

Related: Yikes, does Icon of the Seas really cost that much?

Carnival Celebration will mostly sail to Eastern Caribbean destinations such as St. Thomas, San Juan and Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic. It'll also operate some Southern Caribbean cruises.

The matchup between MSC World America and Icon of the Seas is particularly notable as it marks the first time vessels measuring more than 200,000 tons from two different cruise brands have competed on sailings out of a North American port.

Giants of the seas

MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean are currently the only cruise brands in the world with ships measuring more than 200,000 tons. MSC World America is expected to measure around 216,000 tons. Icon of the Seas measures 248,663 tons. Carnival Celebration measures 183,521 tons.

All three vessels are among the most venue-filled in their respective fleets, with dozens of restaurants, bars, showrooms and over-the-top attractions on the decks.

Related: Our first impressions of the giant Icon of the Seas

MSC World America and Icon of the Seas, in particular, have several similarities, including public area venues segmented into "districts," as MSC Cruises calls them. Royal Caribbean calls them "neighborhoods."

Both ships have been designed around a central interior promenade with entertainment, shops and bars.

Among the standout features planned for MSC World America will be an Aquapark with multiple waterslides that integrate virtual reality technology. MSC Cruises also announced last week that the ship would have what's billed as the only overwater swing ride at sea; the attraction is called Cliffhanger, and it's suspended 160 feet above the water.

MSC World America will also have six pools and 14 hot tubs, making it one of the most pool-covered ships at sea.

Related: The 6 types of MSC Cruises ships, explained

As part of its Thursday announcement, MSC Cruises confirmed summer 2025 plans for three other vessels sailing out of North American ports:

• The 4,540-passenger MSC Seascape will operate three-, four- and seven-night itineraries from Miami departing on Thursdays and Sundays. Stops will include Nassau, Bahamas; San Juan; Puerto Plata; Jamaica; Grand Cayman; and Ocean Cay.
• The 4,488-passenger MSC Meraviglia will operate seven-night itineraries from New York City to Florida and the Bahamas and Bermuda, departing on Sundays. Stops on the Bahamas cruises will be Port Canaveral, Florida; Nassau; and Ocean Cay. The Bermuda cruises will bring an extended call at Bermuda's Royal Naval Dockyard.
• The 4,540-passenger MSC Seashore will operate three-, four- and seven-night itineraries from Port Canaveral with a range of port options departing Thursdays and Sundays.

All three of the vessels are among the 25 biggest cruise ships in the world.

Planning a cruise? Start with these stories:

• The 5 most desirable cabin locations on any cruise ship
• A beginners guide to picking a cruise line
• The 8 worst cabin locations on any cruise ship
• The ultimate guide to what to pack for a cruise
• A quick guide to the most popular cruise lines
• 21 tips and tricks that will make your cruise go smoothly
• Top ways cruisers waste money
• The ultimate guide to choosing a cruise ship cabin

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

Watch CBS News

Holland America crewmember missing after going overboard before vessel docks at Port Everglades

By Hunter Geisel

Updated on: April 13, 2024 / 4:52 PM EDT / CBS Miami

FORT LAUDERDALE  — A search is underway for a cruise ship crewmember who went overboard while the vessel was still at sea before docking in South Florida this weekend.

Around 11:18 a.m. Saturday, deputies with the Broward County Sheriff's Office Port Everglades District responded to a report of a missing crewmember on a Holland America cruise ship.

According to Holland America, the crew member was reported missing when the Rotterdam vessel docked in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. After reviewing the security camera video, the crew member went "purposefully overboard" around 9:45 p.m. Friday while the vessel was still en route between Cuba and Key West, the cruise line told CBS News Miami.

BSO's Homicide and Crime Scene units have responded to Port Everglades to investigate, while the U.S. Coast has been notified and is currently searching the sea for the crew member.

"All of us at Holland America Line are deeply saddened by this incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the team member's family at this difficult time," the cruise line shared in a statement with CBS News Miami.

This is a developing story. Tune into CBS News Miami on-air and online for the latest updates.

• South Florida
• Fort Lauderdale
• Cruise Ship
• Broward County

Hunter Geisel is a digital producer at CBS News Miami. Hunter has previously produced digital content for local and national outlets, covering several topics from breaking news and current events to politics and pop culture.

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NO WALK-IN RESERVATIONS - ALL RESERVATIONS MUST BE MADE ONLINE!!

• Likely To Sell Out

MIAMI SUNSET CRUISE

Quick Details

• Clock Duration: 90 minutes
• Checkered Flag Daily: Yes
• User Tour guide language: Spanish , English

Departs from:  Downtown Miami – Exact location will be provided at time of booking.  RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED

Clock Departure time:  6:30 PM & 7:00 PM

Ticket Reservations: RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED . You can make reservations online, or over the phone with a debit or credit card.

🚗 Parking: There’s a parking garage at the departure location. Parking rates vary depending on the duration of stay.

Experience The Best Miami Sunset Cruise🛥

Leave your worries behind as you cruise the tropical waters of Miami on a Miami Sunset Cruise . Our 90-minute sunset boat ride takes you to see the Biscayne Bay, Flagler Monument, the Miami City skyline, Port of Miami, Star Island, Fisher Island, celebrity homes, Miami Beach, and world famous Millionaire’s Row.

All of our boats are double-decker boats, and you can either sit on the lower level, which is climate controlled, or enjoy the open-air top level. While you enjoy the Miami   Sunset Cruise , our local tour guide will reveal fun and interesting facts about all the different sites. The narration is done by a local guide in both English and Spanish.

Set sail for 90-minutes and enjoy the warm ocean breeze, and the magnificent Miami skyline  as a backdrop with us! There really is no better way to explore Miami than from the water. ☀️

Tour Highlights

• Cruise the Bay and see the sunset from the water
• See the lavish homes on Millionaire’s Row.
• View of the Miami Skyline, Brickell Key, Fisher Island, Star Island, and the Miami sunset.
• Cash bar, snacks, and restrooms onboard

Bring your friends and family on our  Sunset  Cruises in Miami , and toast to another perfect day in paradise as you see these amazing views and celebrity mansions (Millionaire’s Row — the homes of the rich and famous) in South Florida.

Relax on board, and enjoy a drink from our cash bar 🍹, while watching the sunset.

📸 Don’t forget to bring your camera to capture all the amazing landmarks you see on this Miami Sunset Sightseeing Cruise .

• 90-minute sunset cruise
• Professional tour guide
• Air conditioning on lower level and bathrooms on board
• Food and drinks
• Hotel pick-up and drop-off

There’s a parking garage at the departure location (Bayside Marketplace). Parking rates vary depending on the duration of stay.

Places You See The Sunset Boat Cruises:

A visit to Miami is not complete without a sunset sail that takes you to see the striking panoramic views of the city of  Miami from the water .

On our sightseeing tour, you will learn fun facts about the various mansions, and their owners. Some of the million dollar houses you see belong to actors like Al Capone or musicians, including Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan and Paulina Rubio and basketball players like Shaquille Rashaud O’Neal.

Not only will we take you around to see the sunset, but you will also have spectacular views of some of the city’s must-sees:

• Biscayne Bay
• Fisher Island , a unique place with one of the highest per capita income in the United States.
• Downtown Miami
• Star Island , the island of stars, with mansions worth several tens of millions of dollars.
• South Beach
• Brickell District , Miami’s financial district.
• Celebrity Mansions
• Venetian Islands
• Miami Beach
• Flagler Monument Island, is an almost secret hideaway tucked amongst the spectacular small islands located between Miami and Miami Beach.
• Jungle Island
• Miami skyline
• Millionaire’s Row , where Shaquille O’Neal, Gloria Estefan and Julio Iglesias, among other rich and famous, have their homes.

You will also probably recognize several parts of these neighborhoods, since these areas are very often used as a set for music videos and films. For example,  Shakira and Usher  have filmed several video clips in these areas,  Scarface,  and the Adams Family.

☀️ Come join us today to see breathtaking views of Miami’s Sunset on our double-decker boat cruise.

• Chevron down Tour Map

Explore Our Cruise Route

Below you can see the route our 90-minute Sunset Boat Cruise  takes.

• Chevron down Additional Information
• Confirmation is received at the time of booking.
• It’s mandatory to arrive 40 minutes before the departure time to check in.
• You are required to present the card used to make the reservation and a valid government ID.
• We do not assign seats on our cruises. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis.
• Chevron down Cancellation Policy

These tickets are non-refundable. However, the tickets are valid any day any time up to a year from the purchase date.

QUESTIONS ❓

If you have questions about our shared or private  sunset cruises , feel free to check out our Frequently Asked Questions page or give us a call at 305-639-8395 .

Looking for other tours in Miami? Check out our Miami Tours page.

We joined this tour on May 2nd, and it was such a great way to experience Miami. The staff was very friendly, and the boat was super clean which is a big +. The boat we went one was the island queen cruises double decker boat. On the tour we were able to see so many celebrity mansions and sun set. Overall, it was a great experience and I highly recommend the tour.

This was a very nice night sightseeing cruise around Miami. We all really enjoyed the tour.

Nice sunset cruise, well maintained vessel, practiced crew. The Capt. was excellent boat handler and the guide was bilingual. Nicely stocked snack bar/Bar. Good Miami experience and would recommend. (boat very stable too)

RELATED TOURS

• User English
• Clock 45 min.

Thriller Miami Speedboat Tour

Take this adrenaline-pumping speedboat tour through Miami’s Biscayne Bay. With speeds up to 50 miles per hour, you’re  able to cover over three times the area compared to other tours. Book your tour online!

• Family Friendly
• Clock 2 hours.

Everglades Park Admission Tickets

Visit the Florida Everglades premier and most complete airboat ride attraction!

Entrance Ticket Includes:

• Shared 30-minute air boat ride
• Live alligator wildlife show
• Jungle Trail access

*Transportation is not included*

• Top Water Activity
• Clock 90 minutes

Miami Parasailing

Come out for some fun with some Miami Parasailing, and see Miami from a different perspective. Experience why we are the leader in Miami water sports on state of the art equipment.

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here .

MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

Explore the May 2024 Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Pregnant Woman Evacuated From Disney Cruise Ship

A pregnant woman was medevaced by helicopter from the Disney Fantasy cruise ship on Monday, April 15, after she experienced health complications while the ship was in transit, the US Coast Guard said.

Footage released by US Coast Guard Sector San Juan shows the evacuation of the 35-year-old US citizen from on board the cruise ship.

The coast guard said the ship was 180 miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, when the rescue was carried out.

A Jayhawk helicopter and Ocean Sentry aircraft were deployed from Coast Guard Air Station Miami, the coast guard said.

A rescue swimmer was then deployed from the Jayhawk onto the cruise ship and was able to prepare the patient for evacuation.

The patient was taken to the Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport in San Juan and from there to a local hospital.

Her condition following the rescue was not reported. Credit: US Coast Guard Sector San Juan via Storyful

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Moscow River Boat Tours

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Moscow River Boat Tours - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)