royal caribbean cruises from fort lauderdale

Royal Caribbean Cruises from Fort Lauderdale

Royal Caribbean offers cruises from Fort Lauderdale to the Eastern Caribbean , Western Caribbean and Aruba and Transatlantic . The schedule of departures is below.

From sunrise to sunset, there's something exciting for you to do on a Royal Caribbean cruise vacation. Take a swim or get a relaxing massage. Try your luck in the casino, attend an art auction, or dance in a nightclub. There are even supervised activities for kids.

The Royal Caribbean cruise terminal at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale is terminal 18. If it's in use, your ship may dock at another terminal. There are digital direction signs at the port that are updated daily to direct you to the correct place.

3-night Bahamas cruises on Liberty of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Perfect Day at CocoCay (Bahamas) and Nassau (Bahamas). • 2024 departures: January 2, January 5, January 12, January 19, January 26, February 2, February 9, February 16, February 23, March 1, March 8, March 15, March 22, March 29, April 5, April 12, April 19, November 1, November 8, November 15, November 22, December 6.

3-night Bahamas cruises on Liberty of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Perfect Day at CocoCay (Bahamas). • 2024 departures: November 29, December 13, December 20, December 27.

4-night Bahamas cruises on Liberty of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Perfect Day at CocoCay (Bahamas) and Nassau (Bahamas). • 2024 departures: January 8, January 15, January 22, January 29, February 5, February 12, February 19, February 26, March 4, March 18, March 25, April 8, April 15, April 22, November 4, November 18, November 25, December 2, December 9, December 16, December 23, December 30.

Eastern Caribbean

5-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Grandeur of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Labadee (Haiti) and Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic). • 2024 departures: November 10, November 24, December 8.

5-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Grandeur of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Labadee (Haiti) and Grand Bahama Island (Bahamas). • 2024 departure: December 22.

7-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to CocoCay (Bahamas), San Juan (Puerto Rico) and St Thomas (US Virgin Islands). • 2024 departures: July 21, August 4, August 18, September 1, September 15, September 29, October 13, October 27.

8-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic), St Thomas and St Maarten. • 2024 departure: November 23. • 2025 departures: March 15, April 12.

8-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to St Thomas, St Kitts and Puerto Rico. • 2024 departure: December 21.

Southern Caribbean

8-night Southern Caribbean cruises on Symphony of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Aruba, Curacao and Labadee (Haiti). • 2024 departures: March 9, March 23, April 6, April 20.

8-night Southern Caribbean cruises on Oasis of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Aruba, Curacao and CocoCay (Bahamas). • 2024 departures: November 30, December 28. • 2025 departures: January 25, February 22, March 22, April 19, May 17, June 14, July 12, August 9, September 20, October 18, November 1, November 15, November 29, December 13, December 27.

8-night Southern Caribbean cruises on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to St Maarten, St Lucia and St Kitts. • 2024 departure: December 7. • 2025 departure: March 1.

8-night Southern Caribbean cruises on Grandeur of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Labadee (Haiti), Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire. • 2024 departures: November 1, November 15, December 13.

Western Caribbean

6-night Western Caribbean cruises on Odyssey of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Perfect Day at CocoCay (Bahamas), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands). • 2024 departures: January 14, February 11, March 10.

6-night Western Caribbean cruises on Symphony of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Falmouth (Jamaica), Labadee (Haiti) and Nassau (Bahamas). • 2024 departures: January 7, January 21, February 4, February 18, March 3, March 17, March 31, April 14, April 28.

6-night Western Caribbean cruises on Oasis of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Perfect Day at CocoCay (Bahamas), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Labadee (Haiti). • 2024 departures: November 10, November 24, December 8, December 22.

6-night Western Caribbean cruises on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Labadee (Haiti), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands). • 2024 departures: November 3, December 15.

7-night Western Caribbean cruises on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to CocoCay (Bahamas), Labadee (Haiti), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands). • 2024 departures: July 28, August 11, August 25, September 8, September 22, October 6, October 20.

8-night Western Caribbean cruise on Freedom of the Seas. Round-trip from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau (Bahamas), Cozumel (Mexico), Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), Falmouth (Jamaica) and Labadee (Haiti). • 2025 departure: December 29.

Panama Canal

16-night Panama Canal cruise on Serenade of the Seas. One-way from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles (California). Visit Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), Cartagena (Colombia), Colon (Panama), the Panama Canal, Puerto Quetzal (Guatemala), Puerto Vallarta (Mexico) and Cabo San Lucas (Mexico). • 2025 departure: April 13.

Transatlantic

14-night cruise to Italy on Odyssey of the Seas. One-way from Fort Lauderdale to Rome (Italy). Visit Ponta Delgada (Azores), Malaga (Spain), Cartagena (Spain) and Florence (Italy). • 2024 departure: April 21.

15-night cruise to England on Jewel of the Seas. One-way from Fort Lauderdale to Southampton (England). Visit CocoCay (Bahamas), Tenerife (Canary Islands), Cadiz (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal) and Vigo (Spain). • 2024 departure: April 5.

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Cheap Royal Caribbean Cruises out of Fort Lauderdale

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8 Night Cruise to the Southern Caribbean

• You want to sail on the largest cruise ship in the world
• You want lots of choices for both dining and activities
• You like big, busy ships with theme-park-style diversions
• You dislike crowds; lines and congestion are still a reality
• You want a quieter cruise on a smaller, more intimate ship
• You care about visiting unique, off-the-beaten-path ports

6 Night Cruise to the Western Caribbean

7 night cruise to the eastern caribbean.

• You want a big-ship cruise to the most popular ports of call
• You want nonstop active entertainment by day and by night
• You want the latest features of Royal Caribbean's larger ships
• You don't like being upsold; extra cost activities abound
• You want to visit exotic, off-the-beaten-path ports of call
• You are looking for an intimate, traditional cruise experience

3 Night Cruise to the Bahamas

• You want mega-ship fun with innovative onboard features
• You need a cruise that is suitable for families of all ages
• You want your ships big and bold but with a touch of class
• You hate crowds; things can get competitive at the buffet
• You are looking for cruises longer than a week in duration
• You don't enjoy being upsold for promotions and packages

5 Night Cruise to the Eastern Caribbean

• You a value-packed cruise on a ship with plenty of features
• You find Royal Caribbean's newer ships to be just too big
• You like to keep busy and want a full schedule of activities
• You want the wow factor of Royal Caribbean's big new ships
• You need spacious cabins; standard cabins are fairly tight
• You want all the latest bells and whistles to be onboard
• You want an energetic, action-packed resort-at-sea experience
• You like the sound of surfing, climbing and ziplining at sea
• You enjoy Vegas-style experiences, with glitz at every turn
• You want to see the sea; many interiors have few windows
• You like traditional touches; this ship is about rule breaking
• You're looking for an intimate cruise; this ship is huge

4 Night Cruise to the Bahamas

8 night cruise to the eastern caribbean, 9 night cruise to the southern caribbean, 5 night cruise to the western caribbean, explore fort lauderdale.

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Embark from Florida: A Gateway to Caribbean Wonders & Beyond

Category: Royal Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale

Royal Caribbean’ huge fleet of ships sails out of Fort Lauderdale. You can choose itineraries that visit stunning ports in the Bahamas, Western Caribbean, Eastern Caribbean, Southern Caribbean, Panama Canal, and more aboard Royal Caribbean ships that depart from Fort Lauderdale. Some of the most luxurious ships, like the Liberty of the Seas, Rhapsody of the Seas, Adventure of the Seas, Vision of the Seas, Odyssey of the Seas, Harmony of the Seas, Symphony of the Seas, and Brilliance of the Sea, sail from Fort Lauderdale.

Fort Lauderdale

Because of its historic riverfront and gondola rides on the canals, Fort Lauderdale is now known as the “Venice of America.” With 31 neighborhoods ready to welcome you, fantastic scenery, great dining options, and a range of things to do, Fort Lauderdale has it all. Spend a few days before or after your trip to visit Hugh Taylor Birch State Park and cycle, swim, or paddle board through its mangrove forests. Las Olas Boulevard is filled with everything from the best cocktail bars and foodie haunts to some stunning little boutiques where you can shop till you drop. Hop on the Water Taxi and explore the city center from a totally different perspective. Alternatively, explore and discover the Museum of Science and Discovery with more than 200 dynamic hands-on exhibits in downtown Fort Lauderdale, where both kids and adults will learn something new. And there are 24 miles of golden sandy shores that invite you to swim virtually all year.

Port Everglades

Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades) is the world’s third-busiest cruise port , with millions of passengers passing through its eight cruise terminals. Several cruise lines use Port Everglades as an embarkation and disembarkation point for Caribbean cruises. Royal Caribbean operates from Terminal 18 , which has an elegant and sophisticated passenger waiting area, 6 elevators, 7 escalators, 90 check-in stations, and free Wi-Fi . The nearby Parking Lots #18 and #19 have about 1000 spots and provide secure parking.

Find and plan your next Royal Caribbean departure from Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades).

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 31, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 31, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, March 30, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 30, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 24, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 24, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 21, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 21, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 17, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 17, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, March 16, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 16, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 14, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 14, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 10, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 10, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 7, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 7, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, March 3, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 3, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, March 2, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: March 2, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 28, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 28, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 24, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 24, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 21, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 21, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 17, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 17, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, February 16, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 16, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 14, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 14, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 10, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 10, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 7, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 7, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, February 3, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 3, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, February 2, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: February 2, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 31, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 31, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 27, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 27, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 24, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 24, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 20, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 20, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Western Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, January 19, 2025

6-day cruise to CocoCay, Falmouth and Labadee on board Oasis of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 19, 2025; Duration: 6-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas; Ports of Call:[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 17, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 17, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 13, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 13, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 10, 2025

3-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 10, 2025; Duration: 3-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean, Nassau & CocoCay from Fort Lauderdale, January 6, 2025

4-day Bahamas mini cruise on board Liberty of the Seas Cruising from: Fort Lauderdale (Port Everglades), Florida; Departure Date: January 6, 2025; Duration: 4-day cruise; Cruise Line: Royal Caribbean; Cruise Ship: Liberty of the Seas; Ports of Call: Fort Lauderdale, Nassau,[…]

Royal Caribbean sails to some of the most popular cities and destinations across the globe. Its growing fleet of innovative, stylish ships is relaxed, elegant and upscale with a broad appeal that attracts everyone from honeymooners to families to couples celebrating golden anniversaries.

The first to install a rock wall on every ship in its fleet, Royal Caribbean International emphasizes new experiences. Each and every ship is jam-packed with fun activities, restaurants, bars and lounges, shopping, entertainment and sports and spa facilities guaranteed to make each guest's vacation unforgettable. Kids ages 3 to 17 will enjoy Royal Caribbean's Adventure Ocean youth program and teen facilities, which feature age-appropriate activities and amenities in a kid-friendly environment. 

On land, Royal Caribbean delivers unique adventure tours and guided excursions that satisfy all types of travelers. Swim with stingrays in the Caribbean, hike through glacial waterfalls in Alaska or see the view atop the Rock of Gibraltar. If you choose, combine your cruise vacation with a land tour on a Royal Caribbean cruise tour.

Take a look at our Royal Caribbean cruise discounts for your next cruise.

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Celebrity Beyond

Launched in April 2022, Celebrity Beyond is the third ship in the cruise line's Edge Series, capable of holding up to 3,260 passengers and 1,400 crew members. On board, guests have their pick of 32 food and beverage venues serving everything from Greek to French to Italian cuisine; there are also several cocktail bars and lounges where guests can grab a drink.

One of the highlights of Celebrity Beyond is its 4,500-piece art collection, which includes works by travel photographers and international artists. There is also no shortage of unique entertainment options; these range from acrobatic shows to juggling mixologist performances. To enjoy stunning water views, enjoy Celebrity's "Magic Carpet," a large platform that hangs off the edge of the ship and moves from deck to deck.

Staterooms offer amenities like plush bathrobes, comfortable Cashmere mattresses and flat-screen TVs; many also come with private verandas. For a one-of-a-kind experience, splurge on a room in The Retreat. This resort-within-a-resort features villas and suites with added luxuries like plunge pools, hot tubs and butlers. Plus, guests of The Retreat have exclusive access to a private sundeck, restaurant and lounge, along with an onboard credit that can be used however you see fit.

Celebrity Beyond sails to a variety of popular Mediterranean and Caribbean destinations, including the French Riviera, Italy, Mexico and more. 

U.S. News Insider Tip: On Celebrity Beyond, if you're lucky, your drink might be poured by Captain Kate McCue herself during the nightly flair bartender show at the Grand Plaza Martini Bar. Make sure to follow her behind-the-scenes adventures on Instagram. – Skye Sherman, Contributor

Debuted in October 2021, Rotterdam welcomes up to 2,668 guests. The name hearkens back to the line's founding in the late 19th century, when its first ship, Rotterdam, sailed from the Netherlands to New York. Though the ship's name is rooted in the cruise line's past, its amenities are anything but antiquated. 

Among Rotterdam's standout facilities is World Stage, a performance venue that features a two-story, 270-degree wraparound LED screen that creates a panorama of light and sound for audience members. For more entertainment, passengers can catch a performance at any of the ship's numerous music venues, including the Rolling Stone Rock Room and B.B. King's Blues Club.

When travelers aren't grooving to live tunes, they can test their luck at the onboard casino or relax at the spa. Meanwhile, kids can play the day away at the Kids Club. Foodies will be pleased to hear the ship offers eight dining options, including Rudi's Sel de Mer, a French brasserie, and Tamarind, which highlights the culinary traditions of Southeast Asia, China and Japan.

Cabins range in size from 143 square feet to 1,290 square feet, with some of the luxury suites boasting floor-to-ceiling windows, whirlpool baths and verandas with hot tubs.

Sailings aboard Rotterdam depart from ports like Fort Lauderdale, Florida , and Amsterdam to destinations in the Caribbean, Europe and the Panama Canal.

U.S. News Insider Tip: The art collection aboard Rotterdam is valued at more than $4.1 million and has 2,645 pieces of diverse works ranging in value from $500 to $620,000. Take some time to walk around the ship to explore the collections. Each of the three stairwells has a theme that reaches from top to bottom: architecture, music or zoology. – Jill Schildhouse, Contributor

Celebrity Apex

The Celebrity Apex – which made its inaugural sailing in June 2021 – can hold up to 2,910 passengers and 1,320 crew members. Guests can wine and dine at 29 restaurants, bars and lounges, then spend the night testing their luck at the casino or enjoying live music at the Magic Carpet (which offers great ocean views). Specialty restaurants include a steakhouse and a raw bar, while main dining options feature Mediterranean, Italian and French cuisines. There are also meeting spaces and multipurpose areas on board, as well as upscale shops. 

Visit the spa or adults-only Solarium pool to stay relaxed throughout your stay at sea. For younger travelers, there are some kid-friendly areas of the ship – such as a Camp at Sea. However, the ship is geared more toward adult clientele (or families with older children) looking for a relaxing escape.

The ship's staterooms, which start at 181 square feet, offer smart TVs, customizable air conditioning and plenty of storage space. Many rooms also offer private verandas. If you're willing to splurge, consider booking a room in The Retreat. This exclusive section of the ship features luxury accommodations as well as access to a private restaurant, sun deck and lounge. Plus, rooms in The Retreat offer more space, measuring up to 1,892 square feet.

The Celebrity Apex sails to European destinations like Greece, Italy, Croatia and Portugal, as well as to Caribbean hot spots like St. Thomas , Puerto Rico , Belize and Grand Cayman . 

The 930-passenger Viking Sky – which debuted in February 2017 – receives rave reviews from past cruisers for its port-heavy itineraries (fares include one complimentary excursion per port) and luxurious, comfortable staterooms. Cabins offer between 270 and 1,448 square feet of space and include balconies, complimentary Wi-Fi access, flat-screen TVs and bathrooms with heated floors, among other amenities. Those who opt for an upgraded stateroom or suite are treated to additional perks, like priority reservations at the spa and specialty restaurants.

Viking Sky's activities include classes at the fitness center, treatments at the spa and destination-focused lectures. The ship also offers two pools and two whirlpools, including an infinity pool on the stern of the ship. In the evenings, passengers can enjoy live performances in the theater or watch destination-related movies in one of two cinemas.

Guests also have their choice of cuisine, from alfresco dining on the Aquavit Terrace to Manfredi's Italian Restaurant. With 550 crew members on board, the ship maintains a nearly 2-to-1 guest-to-crew ratio.

Viking Sky sails to the Mediterranean, Europe, Central America and more. The ship also offers world voyages.

Viking Mars

Viking's newest ship, the Viking Mars accommodates 930 passengers and, since it's a smaller vessel, it can dock in many ports where some of the larger ocean-faring cruise ships can't reach. The all-veranda accommodations on this ship, which debuted in May 2022, range in size from around 270 square feet to 1,448 square feet. In-room amenities include free Wi-Fi access, flat-screen TVs, safes, minibars filled with drinks and snacks, robes, slippers and 24-hour room service.

Visitors will find a relaxing spa, a hair salon, a yoga area and a well-equipped indoor fitness center (plus an outdoor fitness center) aboard the ship. Those looking to unwind with a book in one hand and a cocktail in the other should snag a cozy spot in The Living Room. Like other Viking ships, the Viking Mars offers educational programming, lectures, cooking classes and more on board.

Cruisers can also enjoy amenities like the main pool and hot tub, the infinity pool, the cinema, the theater, a jazz lounge and various bars. Dining options on this ship include Manfredi's Italian Restaurant, Aquavit Terrace, World Café, The Chef's Table and The Kitchen Table.

Viking Mars receives rave reviews from recent cruisers. The variety of excursions, the delectable onboard dining and the comfortable cabins are a few things previous guests highlighted as superb. However, the staff received mixed reviews: Some experienced attentive and friendly employees, while a few noted they were expecting better service across the board for the price point.

Upcoming itineraries on the Viking Mars include cruises with ports of call in Iceland, Norway, Greece, Italy, Spain, the U.S. and Canada.

Disney Magic

The 2,713-passenger Disney Magic is the oldest ship in the Disney Cruise Line fleet (it first launched in 1998). It was last refurbished in May 2023, when it received updates like a "Soul"-themed lounge, concierge-level upgrades and a new "Encanto" live show. The ship also features family favorites such as the AquaDuck waterslide, the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique dress-up shop and Edge, an interactive game center for tweens.

Disney Magic features diverse entertainment, including live shows, an open-air Wide World of Sports deck, three pools and a splash area for children younger than 3. Unique to the Magic is the teens-only Chill Spa. When it comes to dining, the ship offers eight eateries, including an adults-only specialty restaurant and buffet options. Recent cruisers gave the food quality mixed reviews.

In terms of lodging, 70% of cabins offer ocean views or verandas. All cabins are outfitted with flat-screen TVs, sitting areas and bathrooms with separate showers and tubs. Suites include extra perks such as concierge service and media libraries. Past cruisers noted that the service on this ship is up to Disney's standards, but so is the price tag.

Disney Magic sails from Galveston, Texas ;  San Diego ;  Miami ; Fort Lauderdale, Florida ;  New Orleans ; and  San Juan, Puerto Rico . It visits destinations across the Bahamas , the Caribbean, Mexico and the Panama Canal.

U.S. News Insider Tip : Once per sailing, guests are invited to watch Tangled: The Musical in the Walt Disney Theater. This Broadway-style show retells the story of Rapunzel and Flynn Rider with three new original songs, puppets, and beautiful costumes. This show is very popular, so it's best to get to the theater about an hour before the show starts to get a good seat. Doors open 30 minutes prior to showtime. – Megan duBois, Contributor

Silver Moon

Cruisers seeking an intimate experience should consider booking a trip aboard Silversea's Silver Moon, one of the line's newest ships. Debuted in June 2021, Silver Moon accommodates just 596 passengers. And with 411 crew members, travelers can expect an attentive experience.

One standout amenity is the Sea And Land Taste (S.A.L.T.) program. The dining experience aims to introduce passengers to their destinations through food. On board, the S.A.L.T. Lab offers travelers the chance to participate in tastings and workshops, while the S.A.L.T. Kitchen provides a unique dining experience. On shore, foodies can book special cuisine-focused excursions through the program. Not an adventurous eater? Not to worry. Silver Moon boasts seven additional eateries serving everything from pizza to tapas to grilled meat and fish.

Following a delicious meal, travelers will have access to a wealth of amenities, including the spa, a pool, several whirlpools, lounges and a fitness center. When evening rolls around, cruisers can press their luck at the casino or catch a live show.

As with other Silversea ships, Silver Moon boasts all-suite accommodations, ranging in size from 334 to 1,970 square feet. Each suite boasts butler service, marble bathrooms, free Wi-Fi access, flat-screen TVs, minibars and large windows. Plus, you'll get a welcome bottle of Champagne. Upgraded staterooms may include multiple bedrooms, sitting areas and bathrooms; espresso machines; daily canapes and private balconies.

Silver Moon is set to explore a variety of regions, including Europe, Africa, Central America and Asia. The ship also completes transoceanic voyages.

Symphony of the Seas

The 6,680-passenger, 2,200-crew-member Symphony of the Seas set sail in 2018 and features 18 decks packed with activities.

For heart-pounding fun, travelers will find a surf simulator, an indoor ice skating rink, two 40-foot rock walls, a zip line and a 10-story slide. Meanwhile, relaxation seekers can unwind in the spa, sip cocktails made by robotic bartenders or stroll through the Central Park -inspired neighborhood.

Onboard snacks and meals are served at 20 quick-service and sit-down eateries. The Main Dining Room is where the ship's traditional, complimentary dinners are provided nightly, but specialty options like a steakhouse, a bistro and a Johnny Rockets outpost are also available. What's more, cruisers can dine at Jamie's Italian, a restaurant helmed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

After filling up on gourmet fare, passengers can retreat to their cabins, all of which include work desks, flat-screen TVs and minibars. Guests can choose from 149-square-foot Interior Staterooms, some of which have virtual balconies with real-time views of the ocean, or opt for upgraded cabins with furnished balconies and up to 1,524 square feet of space. Select suites also feature two bedrooms, whirlpool tubs and dining rooms.

Symphony of the Seas departs from Cape Liberty, New Jersey, Miami , Fort Lauderdale, Rome and Barcelona for sailings throughout the Caribbean and Europe.

U.S. News Insider Tip: If you’re on one of the 19 Royal Caribbean ships that have a FlowRider, like Symphony of the Seas (which has two!), reserve a private lesson with a pro. For a small fee, you'll save yourself some embarrassment and get more ride time. – Skye Sherman, Contributor

Odyssey of the Seas

Launched in July 2021, the Odyssey of the Seas holds 5,498 passengers and 1,550 crew members. Royal Caribbean's latest ship is the first Quantum Ultra Class vessel to sail in the United States. As a member of this class, Odyssey of the Seas offers standout amenities like RipCord by iFLY, billed as the only skydiving simulator available at sea, and the FlowRider, a 40-foot-long surf simulator. There is also the North Star observation capsule, which hoists guests 300 feet above sea level over the cruise ship to enjoy unparalleled views below. 

In addition to these thrilling activities, the ship comes equipped with standard facilities like pools, an arcade, a spa, a fitness center with classes, kids clubs and shopping venues. There are also 15 dining options, ranging from Japanese fare to all-you-can-eat buffets to Starbucks. For drinks, the ship offers nine bars and lounges, giving passengers plenty of places to enjoy libations. Entertainment options include theatrical performances, live music, a casino, outdoor movie nights and more. 

As far as cabins go, cruisers can choose between Interior, Ocean View, and Balcony staterooms, as well as suite accommodations and new Virtual Balcony rooms. These technologically advanced cabins feature floor-to-ceiling displays that project real-time views of the sights and sounds from the outside of the ship. 

Odyssey of the Seas sails to ports in Europe, as well as to various destinations in the Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Cape Liberty, New Jersey.

Disney Dream

Last renovated in 2015 (after being introduced in 2011), the 4,000-passenger Disney Dream is one of Disney's largest ships. Highlights include the 765-foot AquaDuck water coaster, a virtual sports simulator (for an extra fee) and theatrical performances that bring Disney animated favorites – like "Beauty and the Beast" – to life.

While the ship emphasizes family-focused entertainment with five specialized kids clubs, parents can enjoy the adults-only Quiet Cove pool and the Senses Spa & Salon. At night, a section of the ship called The District transforms into an adult oasis with host of bars and lounges. In terms of dining, the ship offers nine themed venues including two specialty adults-only restaurants.

Staterooms also cater to cruising clans, offering perks like sofa beds. Over 85 percent of cabins have ocean views or verandas. Those looking for extra space can opt for Concierge Suites, which range from 622 to 1,781 square feet.

While some recent cruisers commented that the ship is more expensive than other mainstream competitors, most said it was well worth the price due to the personalized attention they received from the staff.

Disney Dream departs from Fort Lauderdale, Florida ;  New York ; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Southampton, England; and more for sailings in the Bahamas , Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. The cruise line also offers some transatlantic voyages.

U.S. News Insider Tip : Don't skip dinner at Animator's Palate and its Undersea Magic dinner show. During the meal, you'll be immersed in the world of Finding Nemo, as Crush the turtle from the movie swims by virtually to chat with families between courses. (This dinner show is also available on the Disney Fantasy ). – Megan duBois, Contributor

Disclaimers about ship ratings: A ship’s Health Rating is based on vessel inspection scores published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If a ship did not receive a CDC score within 22 months prior to the calculation of its Overall Rating, its Health Rating appears as N/A; in such a case, the ship’s Overall Rating is calculated using the average Health Rating of all CDC-rated ships within the cruise line. All ship Traveler Ratings are based on ratings provided under license by Cruiseline.com.

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Cruises from Fort Lauderdale, Florida

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Fort Lauderdale, Florida Port Guide

Fort Lauderdale has a little bit of everything: smooth, white sandy beaches, endless shopping on Las Olas Boulevard, and the Atlantic Ocean welcoming you to swim almost year-round. Once a spring break town, Fort Lauderdale is now known as the “Venice of America” for its intricate system of canals and lush tropical landscape. Head to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park for trails and biking blanketed by mangroves. Travel down the Florida Everglades on an airboat tour, complete with alligator and flamingo sightings. Or beat the heat with a trip to the Museum of Science and Discovery in downtown Fort Lauderdale, where kids and adults alike will learn something new. 

Aside from being a city full of fun experiences, Fort Lauderdale is also home to one of the biggest cruise ports in the world: Port Everglades. On cruises from Fort Lauderdale, you can sail to the idyllic beaches of the Bahamas and more stunning tropical locations scattered throughout the Caribbean.

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There’s nothing quite like the Bahamas, a stunning collection of islands surrounded by crystal clear waters in turquoise hues. Revel in the laid-back atmosphere of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, where there’s excellent snorkeling and shopping opportunities. Spend a fun family day at the Atlantis Resort, a sprawling water park that is sure to be a hit with the kids. Explore nearby oases like Blue Lagoon Island and Balmoral Island, where you can swim with dolphins or dive into its rich coral reef systems teeming with underwater animals.

Eastern Caribbean

Make your way through historic forts and lively towns during a cruise through the Eastern Caribbean. Stop in San Juan and experience the best of this vibrant island by sampling the local food, walking around its historic center, and hiking through its spectacular natural parks. In St. Maarten, you’ll be exposed to Dutch and French influences, both in the island’s cuisine and architecture. When you visit the volcanic island of St. Kitts, you’ll discover a mix of scenic landscapes and heavenly beaches.

Western Caribbean

On a Western Caribbean cruise, you’ll find active adventures and plenty of time to while away on flawless beaches. In Cozumel, explore ancient ruins and enjoy Mexican food and tequila. In Grand Cayman, walk along Seven Mile Beach, a beautiful stretch of impossibly white sand and turquoise ocean. While in Key West, grab a slice of the city’s famous key lime pie and visit Ernest Hemingway’s former home.

Southern Caribbean

Sail off to the Southern Caribbean and embark on an unforgettable vacation to some of the most popular destinations in the region. Lounge on the white sand beaches and swim in the gentle waters of Aruba. Take a photo in front of the scenic Pitons in St. Lucia. Stroll by the colorful waterfront buildings of Curaçao, and enjoy the lovely beaches and famous rum punch of Barbados.

Our Ships Sailing Out of Fort Lauderdale

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Why Sail from Fort Lauderdale with Celebrity Cruises®

There’s no better way to experience the joys of the Caribbean than on a cruise with Celebrity. Our award-winning ships sail year round to the region’s most beautiful destinations, including the white-sand beaches of the Bahamas, the coral reefs of Cozumel, the lively town of Key West, and the ancient forts of San Juan. 

Spend your days swimming under the tropical sun and enjoying the shade of a palm tree. Get your heart pumping during thrilling underwater excursions or explore the wealth of natural wonders waiting to be discovered. On board, unwind at the spa or relax by the pool. In the evening, enjoy meals crafted by a Michelin-starred chef and end the night with a drink at the Martini Bar or dancing under the stars.

Enjoy an unforgettable vacation while aboard one of our spectacular ships, which seamlessly combine luxury and design. Sail on Celebrity Edge or Celebrity Apex, our newest vessels with innovative outward-facing accommodations and breathtaking venues like the Magic Carpet®. Enjoy the stunning re-designed interiors of our recently revolutionized ships, Celebrity Summit®, Celebrity Equinox, and Celebrity Millennium. Or book a stay on Celebrity Reflection, where you’ll find world-class dining and unparalleled service at every turn.

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Fort Lauderdale Port Facilities & Location

On cruises from Fort Lauderdale, you’ll sail from Port Everglades. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is only a ten-minute drive from Port Everglades, and shuttle buses can take you from the airport to the cruise port. Free wi-fi and parking facilities are available at the port.

Train to Port on Brightline

Why stress about traffic and parking? With Brightline’s convenient train service, you’ll arrive at the cruise port relaxed and ready for your adventure. It’s the smoothest way to transition from city to sea. Brightline is far from your ordinary train ride. Enjoy comfortable seating, complimentary Wi-Fi, a variety of food and beverage options, and friendly service. All designed to make your trip as pleasurable as your cruise.

Opt for Brightline+ services, designed to take you from train to cruise ship—or vice versa—with zero hassle. Secure your transit arrangements in advance and set the stage for a relaxed, carefree voyage from the moment you step aboard our train.

And for our PREMIUM guests, relish in the added luxury of a complimentary Private Ride powered by Uber within a 5-mile radius of any South Florida Brightline station, making your entire vacation smooth sailing.

Top Sights & Attractions to See Before Cruises from Fort Lauderdale

Fort lauderdale beach.

Seeing the beautiful Fort Lauderdale Beach is a must. Rent a beach chair and lounge on the sand, rollerblade on the boardwalk, or go windsurfing. Grab lunch or a drink at one of the conveniently located restaurants lining the promenade before diving back into the ocean. 

Bonnet House Museum & Gardens

Don’t miss a guided tour of this plantation-style home in Fort Lauderdale, which was originally built in 1895. Explore 35 acres of the estate’s grounds, including its gardens. The Bonnet House happens to contain an extensive art collection, so it feels a little like an art museum, historic home, and garden all rolled into one. Everything is open Tuesday through Sunday.

Hugh Taylor Birch State Park

Tucked between Florida’s famous A1A Highway and the Intracoastal Waterway, you’ll find Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, where visitors can hike, bike, swim, and paddle at the park. As you navigate the trails, you’ll pass through forests of mangroves and coastal dunes along the way.

Museum of Discovery and Science

The Museum of Science and Discovery provides education and escapism for all ages. This fascinating museum is perfect for kids or a rainy day. You can dig for prehistoric fossils, learn about the ecosystem of the Everglades, or take a trip to Mars. The museum is home to an IMAX theater, where you can watch the latest releases.

Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park

This natural state park is less manicured than the surrounding South Florida beaches, but it’s perfect for a relaxing afternoon away from the bustle of the city. Walking trails lined by mangrove trees will give you a sense of the tropical Floridian landscape. Paddle, kayak, or walk the long beachfront. There’s a picnic area too, and you can rent a sailboat or pontoon boat at the park.

Learn More About Fort Lauderdale Shore Excursions

Top sights & attractions for cruises from fort lauderdale, stroll along the fort lauderdale riverwalk.

Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk is a serene pedestrian walkway lining the New River. You’ll feel a warm breeze as you soak in the views of boats docked in the nearby waters. Meander down the Riverwalk past restaurants and parks, or board the ferry to see the city from a different vantage point.

Visit the Stranahan House

Before departing on cruises from Fort Lauderdale, take a guided tour of this historic museum where residents Frank and Ivy Stranahan lived and left a lasting impact on the Fort Lauderdale community. The Stranahan House was built in 1901, and it happens to be the oldest building in Broward County. You’ll learn about their story as well as the growth of the town throughout the 21st century.

Head to the Everglades

An airboat tour of Sawgrass Recreation Park is just one way to experience the mythical magic of the Everglades. This is a one-of-a-kind experience for families and nature lovers who want to see the wildlife—like alligators—and plant life of the Florida Everglades. If you’re feeling extra adventurous, try the nighttime airboat tour.

Shop on Las Olas Boulevard

Las Olas Boulevard embodies the spirit of Fort Lauderdale. This stretch of bars, nightclubs, restaurants, art galleries, and boutiques is bordered by yachts dotting the nearby waterfront and trees lining the entire 14 blocks. It’s perfect for a stroll or shopping while you’re in Fort Lauderdale.

Where can I eat in Fort Lauderdale?

BREW Urban Cafe

Address: 537 NW 1st Ave, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33311

Start your day in Fort Lauderdale with a cup of joe at trendy BREW Urban Cafe. Try one of their hand-brewed selections, or order your favorite caffeinated beverage. In the evenings, BREW transforms into a lively bar serving up craft beers and cocktails.

Laspada’s Original Hoagies 

Address: 1495 SE 17th St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316

The sandwiches at Laspada’s really hit the spot. Pick up a delicious hoagie or salad on the way to Fort Lauderdale Beach and find out why this is a local favorite. 

925 Nuevo’s Cubano’s

 Address: 925 N Andrews Ave, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33311

If you’re searching for authentic Cuban food or a good cafecito, head to colorful 925 Nuevo’s Cubano’s for a juicy Cuban sandwich, carne asada, croquetas, and much more served from a window. Grab a seat on one of the blue and red picnic benches at this casual restaurant.

Casa D’Angelo 

Address: 1201 N Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304

For a fancy date night, try Case D’Angelo, which brings Northern Italian food to Fort Lauderdale. You’ll find everything from gnocchi with buffalo mozzarella to classic risotto on the menu, along with wood-fired pizzas and an extensive wine list.

What’s the history of Fort Lauderdale?

The first human settlement in the Fort Lauderdale area happened over 4,000 years ago by Native Americans, including the Tequesta tribe. Throughout the 17th to the 20th centuries, Spain, England, and the United States all claimed the territory for themselves at different points, but the area didn’t see development by the United States until the early 1900s. Florida experienced a major real estate boom in the 1920s, and people began to flock to the Fort Lauderdale area as a result. Then, Fort Lauderdale acted as a major naval base during World War II, which led to an unprecedented population increase and major growth of businesses in Fort Lauderdale and the surrounding areas. 

In the 1980s, Fort Lauderdale was a popular spring break destination. The city took careful measures to reallocate the spring breakers to other parts of Florida, and put their focus on attracting tourism from other sources. Fort Lauderdale’s makeover from a spring break town to a sunny, year-round destination for relaxing and family-friendly vacations was successful. Today, Fort Lauderdale continues efforts to revitalize its downtown and arts community, maintain its beautiful beaches, and seamlessly serve the area’s massive cruise economy.

Where can I go shopping near the Fort Lauderdale cruise port?

Though a little further from Port Everglades, Sawgrass Mills Mall is a huge shopping complex with over 350 outlets, designer shops, and restaurants. You could spend an entire day shopping here. For shopping a little closer to the cruise port, head to The Galleria at Fort Lauderdale, where you’ll find staples like H&M to luxury names like Neiman Marcus.

How can I get around Fort Lauderdale?

Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk and beachfronts are fairly walkable, but you’re better off getting a taxi, using rideshares, or renting a car for longer distances. To get to Miami or West Palm Beach, you can use the Brightline, a high-speed rail system that travels to both cities in 30 minutes. You can also take the Tri-Rail, which makes more frequent stops in South Florida. The Sun Trolley is a fun way to navigate the city, as is the Riverwalk Water Trolley.

What are the local currency and tipping customs?

The U.S. Dollar (USD) is the official currency in Fort Lauderdale and all other areas of Florida. You’ll find ATMs almost everywhere. If you need to exchange currencies, most airports and large banks have exchange centers available. While at a bar or restaurant, a tip of 15% to 20% for good service is part of the culture. Be sure to tip your barista, taxi driver, or bellhop as well.

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Coast Guard crews searching for 20-year-old who fell overboard from cruise that set sail from Port Everglades

Courtesy Royal Caribbean

EASTERN CARIBBEAN (WSVN) – Coast Guard crews from Miami are searching for a 20-year-old man who fell overboard from a cruise ship.

The USCG said that the man went overboard from the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas cruise ship 57 miles from Great Inagua, Thursday morning.

#Breaking @USCG crews are searching for a 20-year-old man who went overboard from the Liberty of the Seas cruise ship 57 miles from Great Inagua this morning. USCG Cutter Seneca and Air Station Miami HC-144 crews are conducting the search. #USCG #SAR pic.twitter.com/zZPpKOdyCn — USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) April 4, 2024

According to CruiseMapper , the 4-day, round-trip Eastern Caribbean Cruise set sail from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on Monday and is set to return on Friday.

USCG Cutter Seneca and Air Station Miami HC-144 crews are conducting the search.

Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.