Port Canaveral Tops 8.6M Cruise Passengers, Overtakes Miami as World’s Busiest

It’s busier and higher than ever at Port Canaveral as the ultimate numbers are in for fiscal 12 months 2025 and it’s official: the central Florida homeport has taken over from its south Florida rival because the world’s busiest cruise port.

With greater than 8.6 million passenger actions by the port in 2025, Port Canaveral has actually reached new heights with the best ever variety of passengers within the port’s historical past. This edges previous PortMiami’s 8.5 million friends.

“Incomes this distinction is a direct reflection of our ongoing dedication and targeted efforts to be the most effective port doable, offering a high-quality expertise for all cruise friends crusing from our Port,” mentioned Port Canaveral CEO Captain John Murray. 

“With because of our hard-working groups and the boldness we’ve earned from the cruise traces, this milestone underscores our dedication to supporting our cruise companions’ enterprise progress.”

Port Canaveral is presently homeporting 18 ships throughout 7 cruise traces, with greater than 1,000 sailings scheduled yearly.

This contains a number of the latest ships and largest ships in numerous fleets, together with Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas and Disney Cruise Line’s Disney Treasure, each of which supply 7-night sailings from Port Canaveral.

The 2025 numbers are a major 13% enhance from 2024’s totals, when Port Canaveral welcomed 7.6 million passengers and 911 cruise ships. As compared, PortMiami grew solely by 4.02% from 2024 to 2025.

Port Rising with Demand

As a substitute of ready for amenities to turn into outdated and overcrowded, Port Canaveral has been shrewdly investing in updates, new amenities, added parking, and way more.

The Port Canaveral Benefit is a $912 million plan for 5 years’ value of improvement. This may embody expansions on two current terminals, a very new seventh cruise terminal campus, and the most recent in know-how to make sure easy processing for each embarking and debarking friends.

The port additionally affords the aptitude to refuel with liquefied pure gasoline (LNG), giving cruise traces the chance for greener choices which are in excessive demand to guard maritime environments.

These enhancements will maintain all friends crusing easily, irrespective of which ship or cruise line they take pleasure in most.

Crusing from Port Canaveral

Along with Disney Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean, Port Canaveral is the homeport for ships from Carnival Cruise Line, MSC Cruises, Princess Cruises, Celeb Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Line.

Visitors crusing from the House Coast can take pleasure in all the things from brief weekend sailings to epic Caribbean explorations of 10+ nights. Moreover, the comfort of Port Canaveral lets friends organize back-to-back and even side-to-side sailings with ease.

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From personal island locations within the Bahamas to fashionable Caribbean highlights corresponding to Jamaica, Cozumel, Grand Turk, San Juan and the Dominican Republic to the Virgin Islands (British and US!), ships from Port Canaveral are crusing there.

Much more in depth itineraries embody the coveted Aruba-Bonaire-Curacao “ABC” sailings, extremely wanted by keen friends, in addition to Panama Canal voyages.

With so many ships homeported from Port Canaveral, friends even have choices for much more elite sailings. This contains transatlantic cruises and repositioning sailings as completely different ships are shuffled to new deployments, together with transferring to Europe or Alaska at completely different instances of 12 months.

Port Canaveral’s comfort is particularly fashionable with cruise vacationers. Whereas the homeport is simply an hour east of Orlando for friends who fly to their cruise trip, the port can be insanely fashionable with drive-in friends.

Actually, roughly 75% of the friends who sail from Port Canaveral drive to the terminals. Port Canaveral is simply three hours from Miami, 7-8 hours from Atlanta, and 6.5 hours from Charleston.

The port’s clear signage, designated parking areas, and environment friendly, pleasant workers make it simple to drive in with out the identical visitors snarls, one-way streets, and different challenges some homeports face.

Port Canaveral Tops 8.6M Cruise Passengers, Overtakes Miami as World’s Busiest