The Port of Fort Lauderdale

Cruising out of Fort Lauderdale

At the end of November, I went on the Liberty of the Seas for a weekend getaway out of Fort Lauderdale. I have been on a cruise out of Seattle, Port Canaveral, Miami, and now out of Lauderdale.

Without a second of hesitation, I want this cruise to be the last one out of Lauderdale. I am from Orlando so anytime I want to go on a cruise, I travel an hour to Canaveral and jump aboard with a total time of about an hour and a half from my house to the buffet. Or on a weekend cruise an hour from my work when I work a half day on Friday and work on Monday.

The three and a half hour drive from Orlando to the port of Fort Lauderdale is a champagne problem, and I am well aware how good I have it living in Central Florida regarding cruises. When I lived in North Florida, it took over six hours to drive to Canavral, and a six hour flight to Seattle when I went on my Alaskan cruise and we had to deal with the typical airport issues. Not as ideal as an hour drive after a half day at work.

After this three hour drive, we finally got there and were greeted by bumper to bumper traffic to get into the port. We left at 930 and didn’t get on the ship until almost three. Why was traffic so bad so close to the port? Because you have to show all of your IDs and you are asked if you have any weapons in the car. All windows have to be rolled down, and you have to show every passenger you have. It felt like we were crossing the border just to get on a weekend booze cruise as the border patrol walked up to your car to hand you  a piece of construction paper for a hang tag. I don’t want to complain too much but it didn’t scream vacation vibes. There must have been something that haooened because I have never witnessed anything like that. It was like getting on a military base.

We drove up to the ship to drop some luggage to be greeted by no parking garage next to our ship. There was some surface level parking but that was all full by the time we got there and it really didn’t look like there were many spots. One of the VERY FEW signs said to go to the Heron parking garage which was over a half mile away from our ship and was directly in front of the Princess Cruise Line ship.

Luckily, we didn’t have to drag our suitcases for a half mile just to get on the boat, there were shuttles from the garage to the ship, and they came every ten minutes based on how long our wait was. This was the first shuttle I had ever taken at a port to transfer me to my cruise ship. There is a parking garage in front of every cruise ship in Port Canaveral, so it was odd when they just had extremely limited surface parking.

We have been getting in the habit of being the last on board the cruise ship. It helps lower the security and check in lines, and I have the opportunity to take less days off of work. This terminal was once again, very unusual. We had to wait about twenty minutes from the security line to the check-in line. A very bizarre circumstance for getting on 45 minutes to all aboard time.

Disembarking the ship was once again, a hassle. We had to get onboard a shuttle after waiting for ten minutes where we finally got moved back to our parking garage. After we had to wait in a small line to get out the parking garage, we finally made it into the traffic of Fort Lauderdale and after four hours we were back in Orlando. The cruise itself was good, I love a good Royal ship, but this was my last time in Fort Lauderdale. If you ever go to Lauderdale, remember your IDs for the border patrol, and always bring your passports on cruises.