Getting There & Parking at Port of Long Beach

The Long Beach Cruise Terminal sits at 231 Windsor Way, in the geodesic dome that once housed the Spruce Goose, and the garage attached to it charges $23 per day. That figure is published openly, with the caveat that rates are subject to change, alongside a short-stay ladder for anyone dropping off rather than sailing: no charge for the first 30 minutes, $4 from 31 to 59 minutes, and $8 for one to two hours. If you are meeting a returning ship rather than boarding one, that ladder is the number you care about, and the free half hour is genuinely enough to collect someone at the curb if you time it. Compare this to how the rest of the industry behaves and the difference is stark. Galveston, Port Canaveral and most large ports have moved to dynamic pricing, where the rate depends on your sail date, your ship, and how full the lot already is, and the number appears only after you enter your dates into a reservation system. Long Beach has not. The terminal is owned and operated by Carnival Corporation rather than a port authority, and it prices its garage the way a garage prices itself: a posted daily rate that applies whether four ships are in port or one. The practical consequence is that you can budget for Long Beach parking before you book anything. A seven-night sailing is seven days of garage time plus the day you return, and at a flat $23 per day the arithmetic is the arithmetic. There is no early-bird rate to chase and no reservation discount to lock in, because none of the pages published a booking flow for the garage. Bring the terminal's parking line, 800-764-7419, if you have a question that the posted rate does not answer, because both the terminal information page and the Queen Mary's own site point you there rather than to a form.

• Posted rate: $23 per day, subject to change.
• Short stays: free to 30 minutes, $4 to 59 minutes, $8 to two hours.
• Address is the terminal address itself, 231 Windsor Way, so parking is a walk rather than a shuttle.
• No dynamic pricing and no published online booking flow for the garage.
• Parking questions go to 800-764-7419.

The daily rate, the short-stay ladder, the Carnival Corporation ownership and the parking phone number were read on the Visit Long Beach cruise terminal information page, with the rate and the terminal address confirmed independently on a second directions page, both on the date in the sources below.

The garage height limit at the Long Beach Cruise Terminal is seven feet, and the terminal's published rule goes further than clearance alone: oversized vehicles, defined as those using more than one parking space, cannot park in the cruise terminal garage at all, and guests are told to make alternate or off-site arrangements. Read that twice if you are driving anything other than a standard car. Seven feet is a low ceiling by the standards of American cruise parking, and Southern California drives a lot of vehicles that do not fit under it. A roof box on a family SUV will usually clear seven feet on paper and then not clear it in practice once the box is loaded and the suspension is not. Lifted trucks are out. Sprinter and Transit van conversions are out. Anything with a roof rack carrying a kayak or a bike is out, and the bike rack on the back that pushes you into a second space is a separate disqualification from the height rule. The awkward part is what you do instead, because the off-site market here is unhelpful on exactly this point. Cruise Parking Long Beach, the closest independent operator that publishes anything, states flatly that it accepts no oversized vehicles or RVs, even though its own inventory listing shows a handful of oversized spaces. The downtown public lots do not publish per-lot height or oversized rules at all, which means you would be driving there on hope. The one lot in the region that is explicit about welcoming oversized vehicles, the Long Beach Cruise Terminal lot in San Pedro, describes itself as oversize vehicle friendly with no height restriction, and it is at the wrong port. If you are driving something tall or long, this is the question to settle before you book the cruise, not the week before you sail. Call the terminal parking line, describe the vehicle honestly including anything mounted on the roof or hitch, and get an answer. The alternative plan that works reliably is to leave the vehicle at home and arrive by rideshare, which at Long Beach is a short trip from most of the metro.

• Height limit is seven feet in the terminal garage.
• Oversized vehicles using more than one space are excluded regardless of height.
• Loaded roof boxes, lifted trucks and van conversions are the usual casualties.
• Cruise Parking Long Beach also refuses oversized vehicles and RVs.
• Downtown lots publish no height rules, so do not drive there untested.
• Settle the vehicle question by phone before you book, not the week you sail.

The seven-foot limit and the oversized vehicle exclusion are quoted from the Long Beach cruise terminal information page; the no-RV rule from Cruise Parking Long Beach's own site; the no-height-restriction description from Parking Concepts' Long Beach Cruise Terminal lot page. All read on the date in the sources below.

The Queen Mary is moored a short walk from the terminal, which makes it the obvious pre-cruise hotel and the obvious place to leave a car. Both instincts need qualifying. Start with the price, because two official sources disagree. The City of Long Beach parking site lists the Queen Mary Lot at 1126 Queens Highway with free parking to 20 minutes, $10 to 59 minutes, a $25 daily maximum, $30 for overnight hotel guests, and $10 with restaurant validation, operated by LAZ Parking. The Queen Mary's own hours and parking page, for the same lot on the same day, lists free to 10 minutes, $15 from 11 to 59 minutes, a $25 visitor maximum, $39 per night for overnight guests, and $15 with dining validation. The daily maximum agrees at $25. Nothing else does, and the overnight figure differs by nine dollars a night. We are not going to adjudicate that for you. The honest guidance is to assume the higher number when you budget and to confirm at check-in, because the gap between $30 and $39 compounds if you are leaving the car for a week. Now the package. The Stay and Cruise offer includes an overnight stay in a historic stateroom, complimentary luggage service, and a $25 food and beverage credit, and it explicitly does not include parking. The Queen Mary instead points you at a separate long-term cruise parking product that is arranged online before your trip, with reservations described as available January through June 2026, and says that if that is unavailable, extended parking may be available at the Carnival garage next to the terminal at its own rate. One more line worth catching: the special offers page's package terms note a facilities fee of $23 per night. Whatever the room rate looks like, add that before you compare a Queen Mary night against a mainland hotel. The upshot is that the Queen Mary is a strong choice for the walk and the experience, and a genuinely complicated one for the car. Book the room and the parking as two separate decisions, and price the long-term parking product against simply paying the garage's flat $23 per day.

• Two official sources publish different Queen Mary Lot rates on the same day; budget the higher one.
• Both agree on a $25 daily maximum for visitors.
• Overnight guest parking is listed at $30 by the City and $39 by the Queen Mary.
• The Stay and Cruise package does not include parking during your cruise.
• Long-term cruise parking is a separate online booking, with availability described as January through June 2026.
• The special offers page's terms carry a $23 per night facilities fee.

The City figures come from parklb.com's Queen Mary Lot page and the property's figures from queenmary.com's hours and parking page, both read on August 8, 2026. The package inclusions, the exclusion of parking and the separate long-term parking product are from queenmary.com's cruise travel and special offers pages.

At most cruise ports the off-site calculation is simple: an independent lot charges less than the official garage and runs a free shuttle, and you trade a few minutes of ride time for real money. Long Beach breaks that pattern, and the break is the shuttle. Cruise Parking Long Beach, at 500 East 1st Street, publishes daily rates starting around $11.99 to $12.99 depending on your dates, roughly half the garage. It is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with around 90 standard spaces. And its own site states that shuttle service is unavailable at this time. It puts itself at three miles from the terminal. A rideshare each way eats a meaningful share of what you saved, and on embarkation morning it adds a variable you do not control. The public downtown lots are worse on this axis. A parking aggregator listing six facilities near the terminal showed them at 1.8 to 2.2 miles out with walk times of 37 to 49 minutes, and starting rates that ranged from $5.99 to $21.45. Note that spread. The same lot at 401 East 1st Street appeared at $21.45 on one listing and $6.24 on another the same day, which tells you these are dynamic starting prices rather than posted rates, and that the cheap number you see in a search result may not be the number you pay. None of them advertise a cruise shuttle. Hotel packages are where the off-site logic recovers, because a hotel that includes parking is also a hotel that has a reason to get you to the ship. The Cove Hotel at 200 East Willow Street publishes a park-and-cruise package covering one night of accommodation, free parking for up to seven nights while you are away, and transportation to and from the Long Beach Cruise Terminal. It does not publish a rate on the package page, advertising instead a seasonal promotion of up to 25 percent off, so you price it by asking. Run the comparison properly: the package price minus what you would have paid for a pre-cruise hotel room anyway, against seven or eight days of garage parking at $23. On a week-long sailing that comparison is often closer than people expect, and the package wins on the morning logistics regardless.

• Cruise Parking Long Beach: from about $11.99 per day, three miles out, and no shuttle currently.
• Downtown lots sit 1.8 to 2.2 miles away with 37 to 49 minute walks and no cruise shuttle.
• Aggregator starting rates are dynamic; one lot showed $21.45 and $6.24 the same day.
• The Cove Hotel package covers one night, up to seven nights of parking, and transport both ways.
• Compare the package against the room you would have booked anyway, not against zero.
• Any lot without a shuttle means two rideshares, one of them on embarkation morning.

Rates, distance and the shuttle-unavailable statement are from cruiseparkinglongbeach.com; the six downtown lots, their distances and starting rates from SpotHero's Carnival Cruise Terminal listing; the package inclusions and address from covelongbeach.com. All read on the date in the sources below.

Southern California has two cruise ports about 25 minutes apart, they are frequently confused, and the confusion is expensive because there is no recovering from it on a sailing morning. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal at 231 Windsor Way is Carnival's, in the dome beside the Queen Mary. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal in San Pedro is the Port of Los Angeles facility, and its parking is run by Parking Concepts at 100 Swinford Street. They are different ports, different freeway exits, and different check-in halls, and a ship at one will not wait for a passenger sitting in the other's parking lot. The tell is on your cruise documents. If they say Long Beach, you want Windsor Way and the 710. If they say Los Angeles, San Pedro, or the Long Beach Cruise Terminal, you want the 110 and Harbor Boulevard. Do not navigate by cruise line, and do not navigate by the phrase Los Angeles alone, because a great many Long Beach sailings are marketed as departing from Los Angeles. It is worth knowing what the other lot charges, because the comparison is instructive rather than because you should use it. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal lot gives you the first hour free, charges $2 for each hour after, and caps at $23 per day, the same daily ceiling as the Long Beach garage. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and works on a pay-upon-exit basis rather than a reservation. The meaningful difference is vehicles: Parking Concepts describes the facility as oversize vehicle friendly with no height restriction, which is precisely the accommodation Long Beach's seven-foot garage does not offer. That is a genuine structural difference between the two ports, and if you sail regularly from Southern California in a tall vehicle it is worth factoring into which itineraries you choose. It is not, however, a workaround. Parking at San Pedro for a Long Beach sailing leaves your car 25 minutes and one rideshare away from your ship at both ends of the trip.

• Long Beach Cruise Terminal: 231 Windsor Way, off the 710, Carnival's dome by the Queen Mary.
• Long Beach Cruise Terminal: 100 Swinford Street, San Pedro, off the 110 at Harbor Boulevard.
• Read the port name on your cruise documents, not the marketing city.
• San Pedro's lot: first hour free, $2 per hour after, $23 daily maximum, pay on exit.
• San Pedro accepts oversized vehicles with no height restriction; Long Beach does not.
• Parking at the wrong port costs you a rideshare in each direction and a lot of nerve.

The Long Beach Cruise Terminal lot's rates, hours, pay-on-exit operation and oversize-friendly description are from Parking Concepts' own facility page, and the Long Beach terminal address from the directions page in the sources below.

The road geometry at Long Beach is kinder than at most cruise ports, and that is the quiet advantage of sailing from here. The 710 freeway runs south and ends at the Long Beach port facility, and from there directional signs take you to the cruise terminal. Coming from the north, take the 405 south to the 710 south and follow it to the end. Coming from the south, take the I-5 north to the 405 north, then the 710 south until it ends. There is no long causeway, no single island artery carrying every car to every terminal, and no bridge to be raised at the wrong moment. Airports work in your favor too. The terminal sits roughly 23 miles from Los Angeles International, and Long Beach Airport is substantially closer, about five miles out, which is why LGB is worth checking on price even when it looks like the smaller option. A short airport transfer is worth real money on a cruise morning, and the gap between a five-mile drive and a 23-mile drive across Los Angeles traffic is not five minutes, it is potentially an hour. None of which is an argument for flying in on embarkation day. A delayed flight has no recovery path when the ship sails on schedule, and the cost of a pre-cruise night is small against the cost of missing the sailing. Arrive the day before. On the morning itself, the sequence that works is unglamorous and reliable. Drive to the terminal address, not to your parking lot, and unload the luggage at the curb where the porters are. Then park. Because the garage is at the terminal address rather than a shuttle ride away, you walk back to check-in with only your carry-on, which is the whole argument for the on-site garage over anything cheaper and further out. If you are using an off-site lot or a hotel package instead, build the transfer into your arrival time rather than your boarding time, and remember that on this port's off-site options that transfer is more often a rideshare you summon than a shuttle that is waiting.

• From the north: 405 south to 710 south, follow it to the end and take the terminal signs.
• From the south: I-5 north to 405 north, then 710 south to the end.
• Roughly 23 miles from LAX; Long Beach Airport is about five miles out.
• Price LGB against LAX. On a cruise morning the shorter drive is worth real money.
• Do not fly in on embarkation day regardless of which airport you choose.
• Drop luggage at the terminal curb first, then park and walk back with your carry-on.

The freeway directions from north and south and the distance from Los Angeles International were read on the Long Beach cruise terminal directions page, and the terminal address confirmed against the terminal information page, both on the date in the sources below.