Symphony of the Seas docked in Miami
Miami, Florida has the largest cruise port in the world with 10 functioning cruise ship terminals, soon to be 11. Many terminals are built by and for specific cruise lines, though terminal J serves several of the small-ship luxury cruise lines. On-port parking is provided for drive in passengers. Drop-off passengers exit vehicles at the entrance to their ship’s terminal whether coming by private car, taxi, uber, limo, or shuttle bus. Some of the terminals are new, others have undergone recent renovations whether to modernize that particular terminal or in some cases to accommodate various cruise line’s ever-larger ships. Royal Caribbean’s Terminal A (AKA The Crown of Miami) is currently the largest cruise ship terminal in the USA. Which is fitting as Royal Caribbean at any given time has several of the largest cruise ships in the world even though some of their ships that had the designation of largest in the world at the time they were built don’t even make the top 20 now. While their older ships don’t, Royal’s newest ships do. Most of the Miami cruise ship terminals letter designations follow the alphabet, but Virgin’s is dubbed terminal V (AKA terminal H or Palm Grove.) Terminal B (Norwegian’s) is also known as the Pearl of Miami. MSC has a new terminal under construction due to open later this year. It will be the biggest once it opens, able to berth 3 ships at the same time. Two of those berths designed and built by MSC to accommodate its largest new ships, and the third by Miami-Dade for use by other lines.
ships docked in Miami
If you are arriving by uber, it’s really helpful if you know the address to the specific terminal where your ship docks so you can enter the correct address when you book the ride. Otherwise the route may be scheduled to the wrong terminal. With taxi drivers you can just say which ship it is since the ride isn’t pre-set to a specific terminal before you even get in the car like uber is. If you didn’t give the right address and your uber driver heads to the wrong ship you can divert them to the correct one, but that messes up their completion of journey on their app so it is much better to use the right address as each terminal has its own.
Miami port map
Miami Cruise Port is located on Dodge Island in the shelter of Biscayne Bay. It’s just over 9 miles from Miami airport so not too costly for taxis or ubers if you go directly to or from the airport to the cruise terminal. Ships sail in and out in a long channel guided by a pilot. If you look out at the right time you might see the pilot boat pull up next to the ship as it enters/exits the channel so the pilot can get on or off depending on which direction you are heading. Dolphins also may escort the ship through the bay.
view from Symphony of the Seas while docked in Miami
Cruise ships are not the only ships with terminals at the Port of Miami as there are facilities there for cargo ships as well. Cruise ship passengers will see them in use as they sail in or out of the port. Dodge Island is a manmade island created when the channel was dredged to improve access for shipping in the early 1900’s. It was originally several small islands, but all were joined together in further dredging that expanded the waterway in the 1960’s when the port moved to Dodge Island. The facilities have been expanded further since then with new terminals built and others remodeled to accommodate the ever-larger size of cruise ships. Construction and renovation of terminals is somewhat of an ongoing process there.
waiting to get in the door of the port building
In the old days people could just go into the building as soon as the door was open and check in for their cruise in the order they arrived, other than people with priority boarding who were always taken first. Checking in on Royal now involves scheduling a time online when you complete your cruise registration. At the port people line up at signs for their scheduled time. When the current time lane clears the next line is let through, but to a longer secondary line to get to the actual door than the one where people whose scheduled time it is get sent to. Paperwork (or the same info on phones if people don’t have it printed out) gets checked then people are sent upstairs to wait in another line.
inside a cruise terminal in Miami
On the day we were there to board Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas once we got upstairs there was a row of lines, but people were assigned to a line rather than picking one of their choice. Some lines went to one help desk, others to two. Even the one desk line we were sent to would have moved fairly quickly if it weren’t for the person at the other end of those lines directing people from some of the other lines to the one desk our line had leaving anyone assigned to that one particular line standing still and never moving along at all unless people made a break for an open desk when she wasn’t looking. Meanwhile all the other lines filled and cleared multiple times while the people in our line went nowhere. It took forever for the two groups ahead of us to get through. When it was finally our turn as soon as the desk opened up we started heading for it, but the lady turned around and sent people who had just arrived in the next line over so recently they hadn’t even stopped walking yet there instead. As soon as one of the two desks the line on the far side of us had that was kind of hidden behind a big pole cleared we made a run for it while her back was turned and got helped there. The people behind us in line were still waiting in that line as we headed off to the ship, with another new arrival from a different line at the desk to our line. That employee was definitely more of a hindrance than a help because without her people would have just gone to the desk(s) at the head of their line and everyone would have gotten through fairly quickly. Either she really hated that particular line for some reason or somebody was doing some sort of an experiment on what people would do if they were sent to a line that never moved.
view from docked ship in Miami
Checking out involves getting off the ship, finding your luggage if you didn’t bring it out yourself, passing through customs, and then exiting the port by whatever means you had planned. That could be by private car if you parked there or had someone picking you up, by taxi uber, or shuttlebus, or on a post–cruise tour. We had an Everglades to airport excursion booked when we disembarked Symphony of the Seas because our flight was late in the day so we had lots of time and that gave us something to do.
The gangway connects the ship to the port building and is the way passengers embark and disembark
They had everyone on the excursion meet at the ice arena, but rather than any guidance to the bus we were just sent off the ship when they decided it was time for us to go, leaving everyone on their own to negotiate their way through the port and find where the tour bus stops. There were a few people out in that area to ask where to go, but not all had the same answer. People from the tour did all eventually end up in the same place, but the bus wasn’t there. There were supposed to be separate busses for Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports, but the Miami one never came so the Fort Lauderdale bus took everybody and stopped at both airports after going to the Everglades. Luckily neither tour had been full so there was room on the one bus for everyone.
view of Miami from docked ship
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