Carnival Sunshine at Half Moone Cruise Terminal
Everything you need for boarding Carnival Sunshine (Carnival) at Half Moone Cruise Terminal. Terminal info, parking, restaurants, hotels, and pro tips.
Historical Terminal Reference
Carnival Sunshine usually sails from Half Moone Cruise Terminal at Half Moone Cruise Terminal — this association is historical, so confirm with your cruise line. The drop-off lane, the sourced parking rate, and check-in timing are below.
When Can You Board Carnival Sunshine?
Carnival gives you an Arrival Appointment, chosen during online check-in — the time everyone in your stateroom should be at the terminal. You must be on board by the Final Boarding time printed on your boarding pass.
The arrival time on your own boarding pass is the one that governs your sailing.
Read on Carnival Cruise Line’s own site, August 11, 2026.
Email me the Carnival Sunshine boarding-day plan — pick your sailing below and we'll send your terminal, parking and boarding details now, then reminders a month out to book the hotel, two weeks out to pack, the week before you sail and the day before, whichever are still ahead of you. No newsletter.
Upcoming Sail Dates
Current sailing dates are temporarily unavailable. Use the terminal, parking, hotel, and local guidance below, and confirm your itinerary with the cruise line.
We are not showing sail dates for Carnival Sunshine right now — our Half Moone Cruise Terminal schedule is between checks, so this is a gap in what we can vouch for, not a sign the ship has stopped sailing. Your cruise line has the current dates.
Planning the rest of your port day
Parking rates, boarding windows and getting to the terminal are the same for every ship sailing from Half Moone Cruise Terminal, so they live in one place: parking at Half Moone Cruise Terminal, boarding tips and when you can board.
Historical Terminal Reference
Carnival Sunshine usually sails from here, but this terminal association is historical and may have changed. Confirm your terminal with your cruise line.
Half Moone Cruise Terminal
Drop-off: The terminal is at 1 Waterside Drive, on the downtown Norfolk waterfront, sharing its site with the Nauticus museum and the Battleship Wisconsin — aim your GPS at Nauticus and you are at the right door. Drop-off is not at that door, though. VisitNorfolk says personal vehicles and for-hire services alike drop off and collect on Waterside Drive just past the terminal, in front of Town Point Park, where there are designated drop-off signs, and that no personal vehicle or van is allowed into the bus and shuttle lane in front of the building. If you are being dropped off, your luggage is checked with porters at the terminal itself. If you are driving and leaving the car, you should not come here first at all — go to Cedar Grove.
Parking: There is no passenger parking at the terminal. Cruise parking is the City of Norfolk's Cedar Grove lot at 1000 Monticello Avenue, 1.5 miles away, which the City describes as a dedicated parking lot just for cruise passengers, fully fenced and monitored 24/7 by local law enforcement. It is $15 a day for a passenger vehicle including vans up to 15 passengers. You can pay on entry by cash or credit card, or pre-pay online, which emails you a QR code to present at the gate. Reserving a specific space is not possible — VisitNorfolk's FAQ says reserved parking is not available but that ample parking is provided — so pre-paying buys you the transaction, not a spot. The sequence matters more than the price: you park, your luggage is checked in at the lot and taken directly to the ship, and then a free shuttle drops you curbside at the terminal. ADA parking and a lift-equipped ADA shuttle are both available at Cedar Grove.
All Half Moone Cruise Terminal parking & transport options →
Check-in tips:
- Cedar Grove opens at 9:30 AM on cruise days and the first shuttle runs about 9:45 AM — arriving before that leaves you waiting outside a closed lot
- The last shuttle from Cedar Grove is 2:30 p.m., per VisitNorfolk. That is the real deadline if you are parking
- VisitNorfolk asks passengers not to arrive before their scheduled check-in time, and the City points you to your cruise line for what that time is
- Carnival's online check-in typically opens about 14 days out and is where you pick your Arrival Appointment — the earliest windows typically go first
- Checking luggage at Cedar Grove is the point of parking there; if you are dropped off instead, porters check it at the terminal
- Bags can be stored at Nauticus for $10 per bag, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday
- Cruise passengers get buy-one-get-one-free admission to Nauticus, which is the building next door
Half Moone Cruise Terminal parking & drop-off at Half Moone Cruise Terminal →
Getting to the Port
Driving & Parking at Cedar Grove
The default, and the thing to understand before you set off: you do not drive to the ship. Cruise parking is the City of Norfolk's Cedar Grove lot at 1000 Monticello Avenue, which the City calls a dedicated parking lot just for cruise passengers and places 1.5 miles from the terminal, fully fenced and monitored 24/7 by local law enforcement. You park, your luggage is checked in at the lot and taken directly to the ship, and a free shuttle drops you curbside at the terminal. It is a better arrangement than most ports manage — you arrive at check-in carrying only a day bag — but it is on the City's clock rather than yours.
Cost: $15 a day for a passenger vehicle, including vans up to 15 passengers. Payment is on entry by cash or credit card, or you can pre-pay online and be emailed a QR code that acts as your pass at the gate. Neither the City nor VisitNorfolk states whether tax is included in the $15.
From Norfolk International Airport (ORF)
ORF is 10.8 miles from the terminal, which is VisitNorfolk's own figure and the only distance any first party publishes for the trip. Reckon on a 15-25 min drive: nobody publishes an airport-to-terminal time, and VisitNorfolk's own "15 minutes" figure is airport to downtown rather than airport to pier, so the upper half of that range is the honest allowance for traffic. What makes this port awkward for fly-in passengers is not the distance but the absence of a product: Carnival names Norfolk in the list of embarkation ports where it states it does not offer airport transportation, alongside Baltimore, Jacksonville, Mobile and Charleston. So there is no transfer to buy with your cruise, and the airport's own site does not mention the cruise terminal on the pages we read. Rental counters are at the airport; a car collected there has to go back there, because there is no return desk at the pier.
Cost: Not published. There is no Carnival transfer sold here, and neither the airport nor the terminal publishes a taxi or shuttle fare, so we do not quote one.
Rideshare, taxi and drop-off
Uber, Lyft and taxis all serve downtown Norfolk, and being dropped off is a genuinely different embarkation from parking. VisitNorfolk says personal vehicles and for-hire services alike drop off and collect on Waterside Drive just past the terminal, in front of Town Point Park, where there are designated drop-off signs — no personal vehicle or van goes into the bus and shuttle lane in front of the building. Your luggage is then checked with porters at the terminal rather than at Cedar Grove, which is the trade: a shorter journey, but you carry your bags to the door.
Cost: Not published. Rideshare pricing is dynamic and no first party publishes a Norfolk terminal fare, so we do not quote one.
Walking from a downtown hotel
Genuinely the best option at this port, and worth planning for. Six downtown hotels sit within about half a mile of the terminal — the Hilton Norfolk The Main, which publishes the distance itself as 0.1 miles, and the Glass Light, the Norfolk Waterside Marriott, the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside, the Courtyard and the Residence Inn behind it. Every one of those is a walk of roughly four to twelve minutes. What none of them has is a shuttle: each of the six that addresses transportation on its own site says it does not provide shuttle service, so walking is not a fallback here, it is the plan.
Cost: Free, which is the point. Hotel parking is separate and each hotel prices it differently — see the hotels section for what each publishes.
Where can I park for a Carnival Sunshine cruise?
The sourced rate is above, in Getting to the Port.
Still weighing where to leave the car?
Nearby Restaurants
Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint
Wagyu burgers on Granby Street, open from 11am seven days a week
$d'Egg Diner Downtown
The breakfast answer — a diner and juice bar on East Main Street, open from 7:30 AM daily
$Grain
A rooftop beer garden above the Hilton with a river view and a kids' menu
$$Bonchon Norfolk
Korean fried chicken on Granby Street, open every day of the week
$$Nearby Hotels
The night-before picks are near the top of this page, or compare every hotel near Half Moone Cruise Terminal.
Local Tip
Carnival Sunshine usually sails Norfolk on roughly weekly round trips of four to eight nights, and every one of them leaves from the Half Moone Cruise Terminal at 1 Waterside Drive on the downtown waterfront. Do not drive there if you are leaving the car: cruise parking is the City of Norfolk's Cedar Grove lot at 1000 Monticello Avenue, 1.5 miles inland, at $15 a day paid on entry by cash or card, or pre-paid online for a QR code. Your luggage is checked in at the lot and goes straight to the ship, then a free shuttle drops you curbside. The lot opens at 9:30 AM on cruise days and the first shuttle is about 9:45 AM, so an early Carnival Arrival Appointment does you no good — check-in typically opens about 14 days out and the earliest windows go first, but pick one the shuttle can actually meet. Carnival Freedom takes over this deployment from May 2027.
Other Ships Sailing from Half Moone Cruise Terminal
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