Cruise Whenever You Want: Living Near the Port of Palm Beach, Port Everglades and PortMiami (2026)

Oct 16

Quick answer: Palm Beach County residents have three cruise ports in reach. The Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach is the home port of Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, which sails two to five nights to Nassau, Grand Bahama Island, Key West and Bimini, with parking at $19 a day. Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale handled a record 4,773,873 passengers in its 2025 fiscal year, hosts Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess, Holland America, Disney and the luxury lines, and charges a $25 daily maximum to park; it's an estimated 39 minutes from Boca Raton and about an hour from West Palm Beach. PortMiami, which the county calls the Cruise Capital of the World, counted about 8.56 million passengers in fiscal 2025, lost the busiest-port title to Port Canaveral that year by roughly 100,000, then passed 10 million in September 2026. It's about 54 minutes from Boca and 1 hour 18 minutes from West Palm by car, estimates both. Port Canaveral is the long drive at roughly 2 hours 42 minutes from West Palm. If the weekend cruise is the point, Singer Island, Palm Beach Shores, Riviera Beach and North Palm Beach put you minutes from the Riviera Beach terminal. Boca Raton and Delray Beach are the pick for Port Everglades.

There's a certain kind of buyer who calls me and says the words "we cruise a lot" before they say anything about bedrooms. For them, Palm Beach County has an argument the Space Coast can't quite make: it isn't one port, it's three. There's a small ship that sails to the Bahamas from Riviera Beach, across the bridge from Singer Island. There's Port Everglades, forty minutes south of Boca Raton, with Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess, Disney and most of the luxury lines. And there's PortMiami, an hour and change from most of the county, which passed 10 million cruise passengers in a single year this September. Here's what each port is right now, what sails from it, what it costs to park, and where to live if the ships are part of the plan. Numbers are from the ports and the cruise lines as of mid-October 2026; schedules change, so check before you book.

The Port of Palm Beach: the weekend cruise

The port sits at 1 East 11th Street in Riviera Beach, on the Lake Worth Lagoon just inside the inlet. Margaritaville at Sea tells its guests to take I-95 Exit 76, Blue Heron Boulevard, east to US 1, then south about a mile to East 11th Street. The ship is Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, and it's the only cruise ship based here. The line's own description is "the intimate, easy-to-navigate ship," which is a nice way of saying it's small, and that's the point. Paradise went into drydock and returned to Palm Beach in January 2026 with refreshed dining venues and public spaces.

Its itineraries run two to five nights. The February 2026 lineup announcement lists three-night trips to Key West, Nassau and Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, four-night weekday sailings, new three- and four-night sailings to Bimini, more Key West departures (including a Jimmy Buffett Day sailing on September 2, 2027), a limited run of two-night sailings that leave on Fridays, first-ever calls at Puerto Plata and Grand Turk, and five-night festival voyages to Key West and Mexico, Nassau, and Cozumel. I can't quote you a fare; the price is whatever the booking engine says the day you look.

Two things buyers get wrong about this port. First, the line's other ships don't sail from here: the Islander sails four to ten nights out of Port Tampa Bay, and the new Beachcomber is slated for four- to nine-night cruises from PortMiami starting in 2027. Second, this is a working cargo port, not a cruise park. The Florida Ports Council profile lists three slips, 17 berths and seven roll-on roll-off ramps for ships up to 700 feet, more than 2.8 million tons of cargo a year, nearly 80 percent of it exports, and a ranking as the fourth-busiest container port among Florida's 16 seaports. Florida East Coast Railway serves it twice a day on 6.5 miles of port-owned track, with switching that runs around the clock, and the profile's news feed is about Tropical Shipping's new ships and CEMEX's cement terminal. The cruise ship shares the basin with all of that, which matters when we get to living next door.

What it costs at the Port of Palm Beach

Parking is $19 a day for self-parking, counting both the arrival and departure days, and $25 a day for a first-come VIP lot that replaced the old valet. Credit cards only, no cash, no prepaid reservations. The port opens at 9:30 in the morning on sailing days and the terminal doors close at 3:00; arrive after that and you're a no-show. The Rafiki Tiki restaurant and the Peanut Island shuttle boat are a five-minute walk from the terminal, which tells you how compact it all is.

The feature that fits a local better than anyone else is the pass. In August 2025 the line relaunched its Paradise Pass: a Silver Pass from $799 for unlimited, non-consecutive two- and three-night weekend sailings in an oceanview stateroom for two, and an Ultimate Gold Pass from $1,499 for the four- to seven-night trips, both sold for sailings through December 31, 2026, with reservations confirmed up to 30 days out. Ask what the 2027 version looks like before you count on it. A pass like that is the whole "cruise whenever you want" pitch in one purchase, and it only makes sense if the terminal is twenty minutes from your driveway.

Port Everglades: the big-ship port

Port Everglades is at 1850 Eller Drive in Fort Lauderdale, next to the airport. It counted 4,773,873 cruise passengers in its 2025 fiscal year, a 16 percent jump and a port record, and calls itself the third-busiest cruise homeport in the world. The port planned 40 ships from nine lines plus a daily ferry for the 2025 to 2026 season, and its October 2026 announcement says more than 5 million passengers are expected this season.

The lines based here are Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess, Holland America, Disney, Crystal, Silversea, Viking and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, plus Balearia Caribbean's ferry to the Bahamas. The port's cruise page flags Legend of the Seas as new this season and the first Icon-class ship to sail from Port Everglades, Crystal Symphony returning after a refit, and the three-masted Orient Express Corinthian. Celebrity's Edge, Apex and Beyond use Terminal 25, which the port renovated for more than $100 million. Port Everglades is Disney Cruise Line's second year-round homeport, with a dedicated terminal under a 15-year agreement, and the new Disney Believe will make its maiden voyage from here on December 18, 2027 on four- and five-night Bahamas and Caribbean sailings, with bookings opening October 19, 2026.

Parking is a $25 daily maximum in two garages and four lots with more than 5,500 spaces, $35 for oversized vehicles, no reservations and no prepayment. The Heron Garage (1,818 spaces, 7-foot clearance) connects to Terminals 2 and 4; the Palm Garage (1,966 spaces) serves Terminals 19, 21, 25, 26 and 29; Lots A through D sit around Terminals 18, 19 and 26. The rate clock starts when you pull the ticket.

Drive times, all estimates from Rome2Rio and all subject to I-95: Boca Raton about 29.7 miles and 39 minutes, Delray Beach about 36.7 miles and 44 minutes, West Palm Beach about 54.2 miles and 1 hour 4 minutes, Jupiter about 69.1 miles and 1 hour 21 minutes. The alternative is Brightline from West Palm Beach or Boca Raton to its downtown Fort Lauderdale station, then a taxi or rideshare to the terminal; Rome2Rio puts the train plus the county's Route 40 bus at about 1 hour 11 minutes from West Palm. If you'd rather not leave a car in a garage for a week, that's the play.

PortMiami and the busiest-port title

PortMiami's own numbers tell the story. It moved 6,823,817 cruise passengers in fiscal 2019, 8,233,056 in fiscal 2024 and 8,564,151 in fiscal 2025. That 2025 figure is the one that lost the world title: Port Canaveral counted 8,602,047 in its 2025 fiscal year and, as Central Florida Public Media reported in December 2025, edged Miami by about 100,000 passengers, only the second time Canaveral has finished first (the other was 2022). Miami answered. On September 14, 2026, two weeks before the fiscal year ended, it crossed 10 million passenger movements.

The terminals are a who's who. Terminal AA, opened in 2025 for MSC, is 490,000 square feet, handles up to three ships at once and can process 36,000 passengers in a day. Terminal A is Royal Caribbean's, with a second Royal Caribbean terminal, G, under construction for 2027. Terminal B is Norwegian's, D, E and F are Carnival's, V is Virgin Voyages', and J is the boutique terminal for small ships and luxury lines.

Parking is more expensive and more complicated than the other two. The county garages C, D, F and G and surface lot E charge $28 a day for overnight parking; Garage B, which serves Norwegian, is a flat $35 a day; Garage AA for MSC is $35 a day overnight; and Garage A for Royal Caribbean posts its rates only on its own reservation site. Cash and credit cards are accepted, debit cards are not, and a lost ticket costs up to $275. Drive times, estimates again: Boca Raton about 46.4 miles and 54 minutes, Delray Beach about 53.4 miles and 59 minutes, West Palm Beach about 70.9 miles and 1 hour 18 minutes, Jupiter about 85.8 miles and 1 hour 35 minutes. Rome2Rio lists Brightline from West Palm Beach to Miami at about 1 hour 22 minutes, and the station is a short ride from the port.

Port Canaveral, the long drive

Port Canaveral is worth knowing about even from here. It is the homeport for 18 ships across seven lines, moved 8.6 million passengers in fiscal 2025, and is in the middle of a $912 million five-year building program. Parking is $20 a day plus tax, card only, paid on arrival. The catch is the drive: Rome2Rio estimates about 135.9 miles and 2 hours 42 minutes from West Palm Beach and 159.2 miles and 3 hours 6 minutes from Boca Raton. For a seven-night cruise that's fine. For a three-night it eats the weekend. The ships themselves are in the Port Canaveral guide.

The four ports side by side

Port	What sails from it	Drive time estimate	Parking
Port of Palm Beach (Riviera Beach)	Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, 2 to 5 nights to Nassau, Grand Bahama Island, Key West, Bimini and, on select dates, Puerto Plata and Grand Turk	About 10 minutes from West Palm Beach, 21 from Jupiter, 41 from Boca Raton	$19 a day self-park, $25 VIP, cards only
Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale)	Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess, Holland America, Disney, Crystal, Silversea, Viking, Ritz-Carlton, Balearia ferry; 40 ships in the 2025 to 2026 season	About 39 minutes from Boca Raton, 44 from Delray Beach, 1 hour 4 minutes from West Palm Beach, 1 hour 21 minutes from Jupiter	$25 daily maximum, $35 oversized, no reservations
PortMiami	Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian, MSC, Virgin Voyages and the luxury lines at Terminal J; 10 million passengers in fiscal 2026	About 54 minutes from Boca Raton, 59 from Delray Beach, 1 hour 18 minutes from West Palm Beach, 1 hour 35 minutes from Jupiter	$28 a day in county garages, $35 at Garages B and AA, Garage A priced separately
Port Canaveral	18 homeported ships from 7 lines; 8.6 million passengers in fiscal 2025	About 2 hours 42 minutes from West Palm Beach, 3 hours 6 minutes from Boca Raton	$20 a day plus tax, cards only

Drive times are Rome2Rio estimates for a normal day; on a Saturday turnaround with a lane closed on I-95, add accordingly.

Where to watch the ship

The Paradise leaves the Port of Palm Beach through the Lake Worth Inlet, and the two best public seats are county parks. Peanut Island is an 80-acre island in the Intracoastal at the inlet, next to the port, open sunrise to sunset, with a snorkeling lagoon, a fishing pier, picnic pavilions and tent camping by reservation; the shuttle boat leaves from the Riviera Beach side a five-minute walk from the cruise terminal. Phil Foster Park, at 900 East Blue Heron Boulevard, is 17.92 acres on the lagoon with a guarded beach that the county says "lies in the shadow of the Blue Heron Boulevard bridge," a two-acre snorkel trail, 24-hour boat ramps and a fishing pier open until 10 at night. Bring a chair; the ship is not in a hurry.

Living next to the port

If the Friday-afternoon cruise is the reason, the places that make it a ten-minute errand are all clustered around the inlet. Singer Island is the barrier island across the Blue Heron Bridge from the port, mostly condominiums along North Ocean Drive, with the ocean on one side and the lagoon on the other; most of it is inside the City of Riviera Beach. Palm Beach Shores is the separate small town at the south tip of the island, on the inlet, so the ship goes past the end of the street. Riviera Beach proper, on the mainland, is the port's city, and it is still a part of the coast where the median sits under $500,000: Redfin's page for the 33404 zip code, the port's own zip, showed a median sale price of $459,801 in August 2026, up 21 percent in a year, with homes taking a median 140 days to sell. North Palm Beach, one bridge north on US 1, is the village with the Old Port Cove and Twelve Oaks condo communities and a Redfin median of $540,892 in August 2026, up 16.3 percent. All of it is twenty minutes or less from the terminal on a normal day.

If your cruising is the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity kind, you want the south county. Boca Raton is 39 minutes from Port Everglades by Rome2Rio's estimate and has its own Brightline station; Redfin put its median at $774,631 in September 2026, up 8.3 percent, with 501 sales in the month. Delray Beach is five minutes farther and its median was $505,000 in August 2026, up 8 percent, with a median 80 days on market. Both put PortMiami at about an hour, which means every ship in South Florida is a day trip's drive away. The Jupiter vs. West Palm vs. Wellington post covers the north-versus-south trade-offs in more depth.

Two checks on any address near the port. Singer Island is a barrier island, so flood zones and insurance need checking before you fall in love. And if you're buying in a condo building, ask for the association's structural inspection reports and reserve study before you write the offer; they're a line item in the budget now, not a footnote.

The honest downsides

I'd be a poor advisor if I only told you about the sunset sailaways. Noise and trucks. The Port of Palm Beach is a working port with container ships, a cement terminal, roll-on roll-off ramps and rail switching that runs 24 hours a day, and its truck traffic uses the same Blue Heron Boulevard and US 1 approach that Margaritaville tells its guests to drive, which is also the bridge road onto Singer Island. If you buy within a few blocks of the port, go stand on the street on a weekday morning first. Hurricane season. It runs June 1 to November 30, with the peak on September 10 and most of the activity from mid-August to mid-October, per the National Hurricane Center. Itineraries get rerouted, ports get skipped, and a two-night cruise can become a cruise to nowhere; read the ticket contract before you book a fall sailing. Parking adds up. Seven nights in a Port Everglades garage at the $25 maximum is roughly $200 across eight calendar days; the same week at PortMiami's county garages is about $224, and in Garage B it's $280. That's the real argument for the Brightline, and for the two-night Bahamas trip from Riviera Beach, where the whole parking bill is $57. Turnaround traffic. Port Everglades counted 4.8 million passengers last year and PortMiami 10 million; a lot of them drive, and I-95 and the port exits show it on weekends. Most people who move here for the ships decide a lit-up ship sliding past Peanut Island is worth it. I think they're right.

The relocation page covers the towns, and the Treasure Coast cruise guide and the Port Canaveral guide are the other two parts of the conversation.

Questions people ask about cruising from Palm Beach County

What cruise ships sail from the Port of Palm Beach?

One ship: Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, which sails two- to five-night cruises from Riviera Beach to Nassau, Grand Bahama Island, Key West, Bimini and, on select dates, Puerto Plata and Grand Turk. The line's Islander sails from Port Tampa Bay and its new Beachcomber is slated to start from PortMiami in 2027.

How much is parking at the Port of Palm Beach, Port Everglades and PortMiami?

As of October 2026: $19 a day self-parking or $25 VIP at the Port of Palm Beach, credit cards only; a $25 daily maximum at Port Everglades with no reservations; and $28 a day overnight in PortMiami's county garages, $35 a day in Garages B and AA, with Royal Caribbean's Garage A priced on its own site. Budget for both the arrival and departure days at all three.

How far is Port Everglades from Boca Raton and West Palm Beach?

Rome2Rio estimates about 29.7 miles and 39 minutes from Boca Raton, 36.7 miles and 44 minutes from Delray Beach, 54.2 miles and 1 hour 4 minutes from West Palm Beach, and 69.1 miles and 1 hour 21 minutes from Jupiter, depending on traffic. Brightline runs from West Palm Beach and Boca Raton to downtown Fort Lauderdale, a short taxi ride from the terminals.

Is PortMiami or Port Canaveral the busiest cruise port in the world?

Port Canaveral was for its 2025 fiscal year, with 8,602,047 passengers against PortMiami's 8,564,151, per Central Florida Public Media, Seatrade Cruise News and PortMiami's own figures. PortMiami passed 10 million passengers on September 14, 2026, in its 2026 fiscal year, and took the title back.

Which cruise lines sail from Port Everglades?

The port lists Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess, Holland America, Disney Cruise Line, Crystal, Silversea, Viking and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, plus Balearia Caribbean's ferry to the Bahamas. The port planned 40 ships from nine lines for the 2025 to 2026 season, expects more than 5 million passengers this season, and adds Disney Believe in December 2027.

Where can you watch the cruise ship leave Riviera Beach?

Peanut Island, the 80-acre county park at the Lake Worth Inlet next to the port, reached by shuttle boat from the Riviera Beach side, and Phil Foster Park at 900 East Blue Heron Boulevard, whose beach sits under the Blue Heron Bridge. Both are open sunrise to sunset; the Phil Foster fishing pier stays open until 10 at night.

Where should I live in Palm Beach County if I cruise a lot?

For the weekend Bahamas trips from the Port of Palm Beach, Singer Island, Palm Beach Shores, Riviera Beach and North Palm Beach are all minutes from the terminal. For Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Princess and Disney out of Port Everglades, Boca Raton and Delray Beach are 39 to 44 minutes away by Rome2Rio's estimate and about an hour from PortMiami.

Talk with William. If cruising is part of why you're moving, tell me how often and which ships, and I'll show you homes from Singer Island to Boca Raton that put the right port on your way home. Call or text (772) 800-2274 or send a message.

General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Prices, fees and club rules change; confirm current details with the club and association. William Merchant, REALTOR®, RE/MAX Gold. Each RE/MAX office is independently owned and operated.

Sources

cruisesPort of Palm BeachPort EvergladesPortMiami

William Merchant