- Port Canaveral has confirmed Cruise Terminal 4 as a shared facility for large ships targeted for completion in 2029.
- John Murray has referred to the terminal as non denominational and has based access on existing space utilisation.
- The port has operated at near-maximum capacity and has become the busiest cruise port in the world after it has surpassed the Port of Miami.
- The port has replaced a parking structure with a new €85,560,000 3,700-car garage for guests who have arrived by car.
- The port has shifted ship calls to Terminal 6 to extend construction windows and has planned no further terminals until traffic issues have resolved.
Port Canaveral has confirmed plans for Cruise Terminal 4 as a shared facility for large ships. Captain John Murray, the port’s CEO, has referred to it as a non denominational terminal that cruise lines will share on a basis that has depended on how well a line has already used its existing space.
The port has operated at near-maximum capacity across its six terminals and has surpassed the Port of Miami in annual passenger throughput last season to become the busiest cruise port in the world. The new facility has targeted completion in 2029 and has reserved access exclusively for large ships.
The port has replaced an existing parking structure with a new €85,560,000 3,700-car garage because 80 to 85pc of guests have arrived by car. The port has shifted some ship calls to Terminal 6 this summer to give construction crews longer uninterrupted work windows.
Captain John Murray shared “Everybody wants the new terminal. And I refer to it as a non denominational terminal. It’s not going to be built for any specific cruise line: you’re all going to share it. Until you’re utilising the one that you have at a much higher level, we’re not giving you more space.
We’re not building anything until we figure out the traffic first. We took a year off the completion timeline by doing that. When you’re operating big ships, you need approximately 3,500 spaces available for every terminal.
The choke point we have is that the garage we built at Cruise Terminal 3 is 1,800-plus cars, and as we put larger vessels in there, it’s not going to be big enough. We do it for one, we do it for all. You all know what each other’s contracts are, so we’re not doing that. They’re betting on the cruise industry. Each hotel brings in a quarter of a million dollars in tax revenue, property taxes, to the municipalities. When you get four of them, that’s another million dollars in tax revenue. For a city the size of Cape Canaveral, that’s a lot of income in the municipal budget.”
