No, not every city can be a cruise port {Gadling}

Dec 26th 2010 12:43AM Yes, this was a poorly researched article. Marcia is right, Savannah is likely a delightful stop-over city for a small eastern seaboard cruise line.

The economics weigh in on bunch of factors...:
1) Savannah requires a long down river trip to get to the open sea and thus, Caribean destinations. The closest to Savannah is Bermuda. A cruise ship sailing out of Savannah would have a 18 hr + disadvantage steaming towards a Craibbean port of call. .

2) Whereas, Miami and Fort Lauderdale (now the cruise ship Capital of the World ) both have short departure channels allow the newest HUGE passenger capacity cruise ships to turn south out in open ocean within 20 minutes of minutes of un-docking.


3) Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) is with 8 minutes of an international airport.

4) Both South Florida ports have excellent, high capacity passenger terminal unfrastructure in place. Building smaller but similar in Savanaha would VERY expensive for what ROI?

There is a big difference between a stop-over port and a departure port....something the AOL author seemed to be unaware of.
"Allure of the Seas" @ 5400 passemger in Savannah....ehh, not likely.

Happy New Year
Capt Ron