Cruise ships are moored at the Port of Miami. South Florida’s busy fall and winter cruise seasons are about to begin, but the players won’t be quite the same.
For the first time in many years, for example, Port Everglades has no ships making short Bahamas cruises. Discovery Cruises made its last run to Freeport earlier this month. Bahamas Celebration Cruise Line moved its operations to Palm Beach last year.
On top of that, the Fort Lauderdale port has lost some of the ships that used to stay year-round. Neither Princess Cruises’ Emerald Princess nor the Celebrity Solstice, which both stayed for all of 2010, returned to Port Everglades this past summer. Instead, both ships went to Europe, where profits are higher.
Even the huge influx of ships wintering here from Europe and Alaska will arrive via different routes. Whereas nearly all ships based in Europe during the summer used to come directly to South Florida in the fall, some now schedule New England-Canada Maritime cruises out of New York or Boston before heading south. And with the proliferation of other domestic embarkation ports, some ships now make other ports their winter bases.
