Florida Guide > Other Activities
Picking up a cruise from Port Canaveral – Part 1
Port Canaveral is situated in Broward County, Florida, on the east coast, just north of Cocoa Beach. It is becoming one of the busiest cruise ports in the world with nearly 1. 3 million passengers passing through in 2007. The port is used by three major cruise lines – Carnival, Royal Caribbean International and Disney – with several ships making regular departures from the port, including Monarch of the Seas, Freedom of the Seas, Carnival Sensation, Carnival Pride and Carnival Glory, Disney Wonder and Disney Magic, with Disney Dream and Disney Fantasy joining the port in 2011 and 2012. Carnival’s new ship, Carnival Dream will also be based at the port, and Norwegian Cruise Lines will be using the port for Norwegian Sun, for the first time.
Port Canaveral is very easy to get to from Orlando, and recently, following one of our regular trips to our villa, we joined a cruise from this port. We had already hired a car from Budget for our stay in Orlando, and we drove down to the port early on the day of our sailing on Carnival Glory. This was our first experience of embarking on a cruise from this port but we found it to be ‘plain sailing! ’
Leaving our villa on Highway 27 we joined the 192 for the short drive to the Greeneway Toll road (417). Just north of Orlando International Airport we joined the Beechline (SR 582) for the final leg of our journey.
As we neared Port Canaveral the signage was extremely good, and we had no problem finding it. The countryside was very beautiful as we approached the coast with several bridges to traverse and large stretches of water close to the highway.
We had to return our hire car to the Budget depot so we actually drove past the port itself and carried on along Highway 1. The car drop off is situated close to a large garage, and as we drove in we could see the shuttle bus waiting to take people to the ships. We unloaded our suitcases quickly and completed the necessary paperwork before helping the driver to load our baggage into the minivan, ready for our journey to the port. With everything stowed our excitement was reaching fever pitch as we knew that very soon we would be seeing our cruise ship for the first time.
Our driver was, surprisingly, very grumpy and uncommunicative, but as we set off along the road we could hardly contain our excitement. It was not long before we saw the bright red funnels of Carnival Glory ahead, and we knew that we had arrived - now our cruise was about to start.
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