Getting There & Parking at Port Everglades

The port publishes a real rate table, which puts it ahead of most of its competitors for honesty. Parking costs $4 for zero to one hour, $8 for up to five hours, with fees for additional hours varying up to a daily maximum of $20. Oversized vehicles carry a $25 daily maximum, and the port defines oversized as anything exceeding the standard width or height of a parking space. Crucially, all daily rates begin when you pull the parking ticket from the machine at the garage or lot, not at midnight and not at some notional check-in hour. Your meter starts the moment you arrive. What that means for a normal cruise is straightforward arithmetic with one soft edge. A seven-night sailing where you pull a ticket on a Sunday morning and exit the following Sunday morning runs somewhere in the region of $140 to $160 at the daily maximum, depending on how the machine treats the partial days at each end. The port publishes the structure for the first five hours and then says only that additional hours vary up to the cap, so the precise handling of a partial final day is not something we can state from the source. Budget the higher number and be pleasantly surprised. The larger structural point is that Port Everglades does not accept reservations or pre-payment for parking at all. There is no booking site, no confirmation email, and no rate to lock in. You drive up, you pull a ticket, you park. That removes an entire category of pre-cruise admin, and it removes an entire category of guarantee along with it. On a heavy embarkation Saturday with several ships turning over, the facility nearest your terminal can fill, and your fallback is whichever one still has room. Payment is settled on the way out, not on the way in. The port takes cash, credit or debit card, and runs a contactless parking system with payment machines on the first floor of the parking garages. There is no need to keep a card on file or carry cash for the outbound leg, but do keep the ticket somewhere you will still be able to find it after a week at sea, because it is the only thing standing between you and a lost-ticket conversation on the morning you least want one.

• $4 for zero to one hour; $8 for up to five hours; additional hours vary up to the daily maximum.
• $20 daily maximum for a standard vehicle, $25 for an oversized one.
• The daily rate starts when you pull the ticket, not at a fixed hour.
• No reservations and no pre-payment are accepted. It is drive-up only.
• Cash, credit and debit are all accepted, on contactless machines on the ground floor of the garages.

The rate structure, the oversized definition, the ticket-pull timing and the no-reservations policy are quoted from the Port Everglades parking and parking-rates pages; the payment methods and contactless machine location from the port's cruise FAQ, all read on the date in the sources below.

This is where Port Everglades quietly punishes people who do not read ahead, because the port sprawls across three distinct areas and the parking is not interchangeable between them. There are two garages and three surface lots, and together the five named facilities account for roughly 5,550 spaces. The Heron Garage holds 1,818 of them and serves Cruise Terminals 2 and 4. It is the best-connected facility at the port by a distance: an air-conditioned, elevated passenger bridge with moving sidewalks links the garage directly to Terminal 2, reached either from the garage's fifth floor or from the elevators on the outside of the terminal. If you are sailing from Terminal 2, which handles Princess, that bridge means you never cross a road or stand in the sun with a carry-on. The Palm Parking Garage is the bigger of the two at 1,966 spaces, and it serves Cruise Terminals 19, 21, 25, 26 and 29. Four of those five are a walk. Terminal 29 is the exception, and the port runs a free shuttle between the garage and that terminal specifically, which is worth knowing before you set off across the tarmac on foot with a suitcase. Then there are the three surface lots, which matter most to anyone sailing from Terminal 18, since Terminal 18 has no garage assigned to it. Parking Lot A is the largest at 770 spaces, near Terminals 19 and 26, with its entrance at 2000 Eller Drive. Parking Lot B holds 404 spaces and sits between Terminals 18 and 19, accessed off SE 19th Avenue. Parking Lot C has 600 spaces adjacent to Terminal 18. Lot B is the smallest facility the port operates, and on a busy morning it is the one most likely to be full when you get there. The practical rule is the same one that applies at every multi-terminal port: park against your terminal number, taken off your cruise documents, and not against your cruise line. Lines move between Port Everglades terminals from season to season, and a facility that is a covered walk from one terminal is a genuine drive from another once you are inside the port's road system. Look up your terminal number the week before, decide which garage or lot goes with it, and put that name into your phone's map rather than searching for the port on the morning.

• Heron Garage, 1,818 spaces: Terminals 2 and 4, with an air-conditioned elevated bridge into Terminal 2.
• Palm Parking Garage, 1,966 spaces: Terminals 19, 21, 25, 26 and 29.
• Terminal 29 is served by a free shuttle from the Palm Garage rather than a walk.
• Lot A, 770 spaces, near Terminals 19 and 26, entrance at 2000 Eller Drive.
• Lot B, 404 spaces, between Terminals 18 and 19, off SE 19th Avenue. The smallest facility at the port.
• Lot C, 600 spaces, adjacent to Terminal 18, which has no garage of its own.
• Navigate to the facility name, not to the port, and go by terminal number rather than cruise line.

Space counts, terminal assignments, lot entrances and the Terminal 29 shuttle are quoted from the Port Everglades parking page and the individual Terminal 2 and Terminal 29 pages, read on the date in the sources below.

Both Port Everglades garages have a seven-foot clearance. That is more generous than the six-foot-eight you will find at some ports, but it is still the number that ends the plan for a large minority of drivers every single week. A roof box will usually take a standard SUV past seven feet. So will a raised suspension, a bike rack mounted on the roof, a camper conversion, and most full-height vans. Measure before you commit, and measure to the top of whatever is bolted to the roof rather than to the roofline itself. If you do not fit, the port has an answer, and it is a narrower one than people expect. There is special limited parking for oversized vehicles, capped at a maximum of 24 feet, intended for RVs, trailers and other vehicles that exceed the maximum height for accessing the upper floors of the parking garages. The rate is $25 as a daily maximum rather than $20. Two words in that description do the heavy lifting. The first is limited, which is the port telling you plainly that this is a small allocation and not a guaranteed product. The second is 24 feet, which rules out a great many motorhomes: a mid-size Class C is often longer than that, and anything towing is going to have a conversation. The port lists a parking management team on 954-468-3680 for oversized vehicle details, and given that there is no reservation system to fall back on, calling ahead is the only way to find out whether you have somewhere to put a large vehicle before you are already on Eller Drive with it. Make that call a week out, not the night before. It is also worth knowing that the off-site alternative is not a way around this. Park By The Ports states in capitals that it takes absolutely no RVs, and that RV and boat trailer parking is prohibited outright. So the port's limited oversized allocation is not one option among several for a big vehicle. It is close to the only one within the immediate area that publishes a policy at all, which is a good reason to treat that phone number as a first step rather than a last resort.

• Seven-foot clearance in both the Heron and Palm garages.
• Measure to the top of the roof box or bike rack, not to the roofline.
• Oversized parking is capped at 24 feet and described by the port as special limited parking.
• Oversized vehicles pay a $25 daily maximum instead of $20.
• Call parking management on 954-468-3680 well ahead, because nothing can be reserved.
• Park By The Ports takes no RVs or boat trailers, so off-site is not a fallback for a large vehicle.

Clearance, the 24-foot oversized limit, the $25 oversized maximum and the parking management number are quoted from the Port Everglades parking page. The RV prohibition is quoted from parkbytheports.com. Both read on the date in the sources below.

At ports where the official rate is high and fixed, off-site lots win on price alone and the analysis stops there. Port Everglades is not that port. A $20 daily maximum is at the reasonable end of the American cruise-parking market, and it comes with covered garages, a bridge into one terminal, and a walk into most of the others. That raises the bar an off-site operator has to clear. The clearest independent option to plan around is Park By The Ports, at 100 Fronton Blvd in Dania Beach, which sits in the northeast corner of the Casino @ Dania Beach parking lot as a fenced, open-air, self-park facility. Its process is specific enough to be useful. You arrive with your luggage already packed and tagged, drop the bags at a white tent, check in at an orange trailer with your reservation ready, and receive a return ticket and a vehicle tag. Shuttles run to the terminal curb, with the first four passengers included in the reservation and additional passengers charged per person round trip. Coming home, you wear the stickers you were given on arrival and look for the vans marked Park By The Ports, and the operator says it tracks ship arrival times to keep the wait down. Reservations are not required but are strongly recommended, and the operator says outright that it sells out during peak travel periods. Cancellation is free provided you cancel at least 24 hours before your scheduled arrival time. One thing to be careful about: the operator's own pages do not entirely agree with each other. Its FAQ says shuttles begin around 7:00 AM and run every 15 to 30 minutes until 2:00 PM, while its parking-process page says drivers begin shuttling after 8:00 AM and run every 20 to 30 minutes until 2:30 PM. The additional-passenger fee is given as $10 round trip per person on one page and $8 on another. That is not a reason to avoid the operator, but it is a reason to confirm your own shuttle window and your own party's total in writing at the point of booking rather than assuming what you read on a marketing page. Note too that its FAQ is explicit that no shuttle service is available before 7:00 AM or after 2:00 PM, which is a hard constraint if your ship has an unusually early check-in or you land back late. Neither Park By The Ports nor the port publishes a like-for-like number you can hold up side by side, since the off-site operator quotes at booking. So the honest comparison is not really about the headline rate. Off-site here competes on being outside the port's road system on a heavy morning, on curb-to-curb luggage handling, and on cancellation flexibility that the port simply does not offer, since the port has nothing to cancel. If you value none of those, the port's own garage is the simpler answer.

• Park By The Ports: 100 Fronton Blvd, Dania Beach, in the Casino @ Dania Beach lot. Fenced, open-air, self-park.
• Check in at the orange trailer; luggage goes to the white tent. Have bags tagged before you arrive.
• First four passengers included in a reservation; additional passengers charged per person round trip.
• No shuttle at all before 7:00 AM or after 2:00 PM.
• Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your scheduled arrival time.
• Reservations are not required but the operator says it sells out at peak periods.
• Its own pages disagree on shuttle hours and the extra-passenger fee, so confirm both at booking.
• Vehicles are parked at the owner's risk, which the operator states plainly.

Address, lot description, check-in process, shuttle windows, passenger allowances, cancellation terms and the owner's-risk statement are all quoted from parkbytheports.com's own Port Everglades parking pages, FAQ and parking-process pages, read on the date in the sources below. The discrepancies noted are between those pages as read on that date.

This is the calculation that changes most on a long cruise, and it is the one most people run backwards. The park-and-cruise structure is simple: you buy a night in a hotel near the port, and the package folds in long-stay parking for the duration of your sailing plus a shuttle to the terminal and back to your car. Rodeway Inn & Suites, which markets itself directly at Port Everglades cruisers, includes up to 10 days of complimentary on-site parking in its Park, Stay & Cruise package, with additional parking days available at $10 each, complimentary shuttle service that drops guests directly in front of the terminal and brings them back to the hotel afterwards, and a front desk running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The package rate itself is quoted at booking rather than published as a fixed figure. The arithmetic works like this. Take what the port would charge you for the full duration at its $20 daily maximum. Then take the package rate for the same dates and subtract what you would have paid for a pre-cruise hotel night anyway, because on a longer sailing most people are staying somewhere the night before regardless. On a seven-night cruise the port side of that comparison is well over a hundred dollars, and once you have already decided to arrive the day before, the parking is close to free inside the package. On a three-night sailing where you were planning to drive down that morning, the same package is asking you to buy a hotel night you did not want, and the port garage wins comfortably. The 10-day inclusion is the boundary worth watching. It covers the overwhelming majority of Caribbean itineraries out of Fort Lauderdale, but a longer sailing starts adding $10 days on top, and at that point you are back to comparing totals rather than assuming the package is cheaper. One practical advantage the package has that does not show up in the money at all: a hotel shuttle drops you at the terminal and takes you back to your car, which means you never walk luggage across a parking structure at either end. For anyone traveling with mobility limits, small children, or more bags than hands, that is often the deciding factor regardless of which column is a few dollars lower.

• Rodeway Inn & Suites includes up to 10 days of complimentary parking in its Park, Stay & Cruise package.
• Extra parking days beyond the included allowance are $10 each.
• Complimentary shuttle drops at the terminal and returns you to the hotel for your car; the hotel runs 24 hours.
• The package rate is quoted at booking rather than published.
• Subtract the hotel night you would have bought anyway before comparing against the port's daily maximum.
• Packages win on longer cruises where you were already staying over; the port garage wins on short drive-down sailings.
• Shuttle door-to-door handling matters more than the price gap for anyone with mobility limits or heavy bags.

The 10-day parking inclusion, the $10 additional-day rate, the shuttle description and the 24-hour operation are quoted from hotelftlauderdale.net's own Park and Cruise page, read on the date in the sources below. The package rate itself is not published on that page.

FLL sits about 1.8 miles from the port, which makes it the closest major airport to any cruise terminal in the United States and prompts an obvious question: why not leave the car at the airport and take a five-minute ride to the ship? The rates make the answer clearer than you might expect. Long-term parking at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International runs $2 per 20-minute interval with a $20 daily maximum, spread across the Hibiscus Garage levels 3 to 7, the Palm Garage levels 2 to 4 and the Cypress Garage levels 6 to 9. Short-term parking is the same $2 per interval with a $36 daily cap. Curbside valet is $30 per day with no proration. There is an overflow lot at $10 per day, but the airport says it opens only during peak travel periods, so it is not something you can plan around. That $20 long-term daily maximum is exactly the same number the port charges. You save nothing on the rate, and you add two rideshare legs and a luggage transfer at each end. Unless you have a specific reason to be at the airport, such as dropping a family member at a flight on the way, parking at the port is simpler for the same money. One naming trap deserves its own warning, because it catches people out and it is entirely the fault of the two facilities involved. Port Everglades has a Palm Parking Garage. FLL also has a Palm Garage. They are different structures, roughly two miles apart, serving completely different purposes, and if you type Palm Garage into a map app in Fort Lauderdale you have a coin-flip chance of being routed to the wrong one on the morning you can least afford it. Navigate to the full name plus the port, or better, to the terminal number you are sailing from and let the port's signage take you the rest of the way. Getting into the port itself is its own small skill. There are three entrances: Southeast 17th Street at Eisenhower Boulevard, East State Road 84 off US 1, and I-595 East onto Eller Drive. The I-595 entrance is the one that keeps you out of the 17th Street causeway traffic that builds through the middle of the morning. The port recommends dropping all luggage and passengers at the terminal before parking, which is genuinely good advice here given the distances inside the facility, and it asks that you attach your baggage tags before arriving, with porters waiting at the front of every cruise terminal to take the bags. If you are flying in rather than driving, the port advises allowing 45 minutes to one hour for the transfer process from FLL. From Miami International it says two to three hours, and from Palm Beach three to four. Those are transfer-process estimates rather than pure drive times, and they are a reminder that the short hop from FLL is the only one of the three that leaves any margin at all on an embarkation morning.

• FLL long-term: $2 per 20-minute interval, $20 daily maximum. The same cap as the port charges.
• FLL short-term is capped at $36 a day and curbside valet is $30 a day with no proration.
• The $10 overflow lot opens only during peak travel periods, so do not plan around it.
• Both the port and FLL have a facility called Palm Garage. They are two miles apart and easy to confuse.
• Three port entrances: SE 17th Street at Eisenhower, East State Road 84 off US 1, and I-595 East onto Eller Drive.
• Drop luggage and passengers at the terminal before you park; tag your bags before arriving.
• Allow 45 minutes to an hour for the FLL transfer; two to three hours from MIA and three to four from Palm Beach.

FLL rates and garage levels are quoted from Broward County's airport parking page. The port entrances, the luggage and porter advice, the drop-off recommendation and the airport transfer allowances are quoted from the Port Everglades cruise FAQ. Both read on the date in the sources below.