Terminal A is the one PortMiami terminal whose garage carries a cruise line name and no price
Cruise Terminal A, the Royal Caribbean terminal that opened at PortMiami in 2018, is the only one of ten whose garage carries a cruise line name and no county rate. Terminal AA next door is priced by the county at $35 per day and Terminal E at $25. For Garage A it prints a link.
Almost every part of a Miami embarkation day can be read off a county page before the car leaves the driveway. A ship comes with a terminal, a terminal comes with a garage, a garage comes with a rate, and the rate multiplied by the billed days gives a total. That chain completes at most of the lettered terminals. At Cruise Terminal A the second link is blank.
Below sits everything Miami-Dade County and Royal Caribbean each publish about the building at 2000 N Cruise Blvd, what neither of them publishes, and what a driver can do with the hole that leaves. Figures below were read from county pages, from PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010 and from royalcaribbean.com in August and September 2026.
| Address Royal Caribbean prints for PortMiami | Facility Miami-Dade County pairs with that terminal | Long term rate the county publishes | Eight billed days before sales tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cruise Terminal A, 2000 N Cruise Blvd | Multi-Level Garage A, 2000 N Cruise Blvd. | No figure anywhere on the page; the entry is a link out | Not calculable from county pages |
| Cruise Terminal AA (MSC Terminal), 2200 N Cruise Blvd | Multi-Level Garage AA, 2200 N Cruise Blvd. | $35 per vehicle, per space, per day, overnight or greater | $280.00 |
| Cruise Terminal E, 1265 N Cruise Blvd | Surface Lot E, 625 Florida Way | $25 per space, per day, with a second space at $50 | $200.00 |
Two of those rows can be budgeted. The row with the Royal Caribbean name on it cannot.
Royal Caribbean prints three PortMiami addresses and Miami-Dade gives two of them to other lines
The driving directions answer on royalcaribbean.com opens with a single address, 1015 N. America Way, then says there are multiple terminals at PortMiami for Royal Caribbean Group ships and lists three: Cruise Terminal A at 2000 N Cruise Blvd, Cruise Terminal AA labelled in the line’s own text as the MSC Terminal at 2200 N Cruise Blvd, and Cruise Terminal E at 1265 N Cruise Blvd. The instruction attached to that list is to check your cruise documents to confirm which terminal your ship will be departing from, then follow the signage on arrival because it may change.
The County lists the same three buildings under different owners. Its cruise terminal page calls Terminal AA a 490,000 square foot facility opened in 2025 for MSC Cruises, the largest cruise terminal in the world, able to handle up to three ships and 36,000 passengers in one day. Terminals D and E it attributes to Carnival Cruise Line, expanded in 2018 for larger class ships. Only Terminal A is attributed to Royal Caribbean International, under its full name, The Crown of Miami.
The two lists are not in conflict once the corporate noun is read closely, because Royal Caribbean Group is a parent that covers more than one brand while The Crown of Miami is one brand’s building. For a driver the practical effect is blunt anyway. A Royal Caribbean Group booking out of Miami can land at a building the county files under MSC Cruises or Carnival Cruise Line, and the letter on the boarding pass is the only thing that settles it. How the letters are laid out on the water, and which ones sit north or south, is set out in the reference on how PortMiami organizes its lettered cruise terminals and the roads that reach them.
Three addresses, three garages, three different parking situations.
The Miami-Dade County parking entry for Garage A, line by line
On the PortMiami parking page every priced facility gets a block of dollar lines. Multi-Level Garage AA gets $20 per day short term with no overnight, $35 per day long term, an email address, a telephone number on (888) 264-1002 and a clearance note. Multi-Level Garage B, headed Garage B (Norwegian Cruise Line), gets a rate of $35 per vehicle, per space, per day effective January 1, 2025, a booking partner and a line on 800-392-1899. Garages C, D, F, G and Surface Lot E get six lines between them, from $10 short term to a lost ticket charge capped at $275.
The block headed Garage A (Royal Caribbean) contains one sentence and no dollar sign. It invites the reader to view rates online for rate information, reservation, or any other inquiries related to Garage A, and the word online is a link to an outside parking site, royalmiamiparking.com. No email address follows it. No telephone number follows it. Three garage blocks on that page point the reader elsewhere: Garage AA to an email address and (888) 264-1002, Garage B to a booking partner plus an email and 800-392-1899, and Garage A to a website. Garage A is the only one of the three that arrives without a price and without a telephone number.
The reason sits in the Miami-Dade Seaport Department’s own rule book. PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010, effective October 1, 2025, states that parking facilities that are privately owned, such as the Cruise Terminal A parking garage, may apply different rates. That single clause is the county explaining, in its own tariff, why one of its ten cruise terminals falls outside its own schedule. The full rate schedule and the eight day counting rule that governs it are worked through in the guide to what Miami-Dade County publishes about PortMiami parking and what Tariff No. 010 adds.
One terminal, one clause, one missing column.
Miami-Dade publishes Garage A to the inch and not to the dollar
The absence is narrower than it looks. Every other field the County publishes about Multi-Level Garage A is complete: street number, clearance floor by floor, disabled permit provision, staffing hours and payment rules. The one field left empty is the one a budget needs.
| Field on the Miami-Dade County parking page | What the county publishes for Multi-Level Garage A | What the same page publishes for Multi-Level Garage AA |
|---|---|---|
| Street address | 2000 N Cruise Blvd. | 2200 N Cruise Blvd. |
| First floor clearance | 7 feet 2 inches | No entry in that cell |
| Second floor clearance | 8 feet | 7 feet |
| Remaining floors clearance | 7 feet 2 inches | 7 feet |
| Long term parking rate | No figure printed | $35 per vehicle, per space, per day |
| Short term parking rate | No figure printed | $20 per day, marked no overnight |
| Contact for parking questions | None printed; a link out only | An email address and (888) 264-1002 |
| Disabled permit spaces | Available in every garage, county wide statement | Available in every garage, county wide statement |
| Attendant hours on cruise days | 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., stated for all garages | 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., stated for all garages |
Garage A carries the lowest published first floor clearance at PortMiami, 7 feet 2 inches, under Garage B at 7 feet 6 inches, Garage D at 8 feet 2 inches and Garage G at 9 feet 6 inches. It is also the only facility in that table whose second floor is taller than its first, 8 feet against 7 feet 2 inches, which matters to anyone driving a roof box up the ramp. A driver can know to the inch whether the car fits and not know within any range what the stay costs.
Height to the inch, price to nothing.
Budgeting a seven night Royal Caribbean sailing from Terminal A, as far as the figures allow
Item 710 of Terminal Tariff No. 010 applies parking rates to the day a vehicle enters the lot and to each succeeding day it remains, which turns seven nights into eight billed days. Section Two of the same tariff states that rates are exclusive of any sales tax and gives the Florida general rate as 6%. Those two rules are what convert a daily figure into a real total, and they apply to the county’s own garages.
Run them on the two Royal Caribbean Group addresses that carry a rate. Surface Lot E at $25 per space per day reaches $200.00 for eight days, or $212.00 once the 6% is added. Multi-Level Garage AA at $35 reaches $280.00, or $296.80 with tax. The spread between the two published options on the same cruise line address list is $84.80 for one identical week.
No third figure comes out of Garage A. The honest statement is that Miami-Dade County publishes the rates of the garages on either side of it and publishes nothing for the one in the middle, and that the $25 to $35 band is a fact about Terminal E and Terminal AA, not a bracket that anyone has placed around Garage A. Assuming Garage A sits inside that band is a guess wearing the clothes of a county figure.
Which makes the winner easy to declare on the published record. For a driver who wants a total before departure, Terminal E is the cheapest of the three at $200.00 plus tax, Terminal AA is the dearest at $280.00 plus tax, and Terminal A is the only one where the question cannot be answered at all from the issuer. None of the three is a choice, because the ship assigns the building. The result is not a decision but a warning about which of the three tickets comes with an unknown attached.
A metered cab from Miami International Airport is the number Terminal A can be measured against
Where the parking figure is missing, the alternative to parking still has one. According to Miami-Dade County, the distance is 7.1 miles from Miami International Airport to PortMiami, and 25.7 miles from Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. It also sets the taxi meter itself: the Board of County Commissioners adopted Resolution R-700-22 on July 19, 2022, eliminating all flat fares and putting every trip on the meter, including trips under the Airport Regional Taxicab Service programme.
| Meter component set by Miami-Dade County Resolution R-700-22 | Rate the county fixes | Applied across the 7.1 miles the port publishes |
|---|---|---|
| First one sixth of a mile | $2.95 | $2.95 |
| Each further one sixth of a mile up to 1 mile | $0.85 | $4.25 across five increments |
| Each one sixth of a mile beyond 1 mile | $0.55 | $19.80 to $20.35 across the remaining 6.1 miles |
| Waiting time | $0.40 per minute, $24 per hour | $4.00 for ten minutes held in traffic |
| Larger vehicles, sport utility vehicles and vans | 30% above the meter | $35.10 to $35.82 one way |
| Minimum fare from PortMiami or the airport | $15 | Never reached; the meter runs well past it |
A sedan on that meter runs $27.00 to $27.55 one way before any waiting charge, so a couple arriving and leaving by cab spends roughly $54.00 to $55.10 on the ground legs of the trip. Set that against $212.00 at Surface Lot E with tax and against $296.80 at Garage AA with tax. The cab wins by a factor of about four at the cheaper terminal and about five at the dearer one, on the county’s own numbers, before the missing Garage A row is even considered. The counterweight is real: the meter buys two rides and no car for the week, and it climbs at $0.40 a minute in traffic, against which the county offers the Port of Miami Tunnel, described on its own pages as a dedicated, toll free route connecting PortMiami to I-395 and the MacArthur Causeway. Comparisons that swap parking for a hotel package run on the same arithmetic and are laid out in the guide to how a Miami park and cruise hotel is priced against the county garage rate.
Drop-off and check-in at The Crown of Miami, and the three deadlines Royal Caribbean prints
One county instruction covers the kerb, and it is conditional twice over: when possible, passengers are advised to drop off their luggage prior to parking, and passengers should also be dropped off at the terminal, if possible. Storage lockers, the county adds, are not available anywhere on the port for security reasons. Terminal A itself is described as a 170,000 square foot building called The Crown of Miami for its two peaks resembling passing ships, LEED Silver certified, with an expedited security check-in area for international guests, spacious waiting areas and a drop-off luggage area.
Royal Caribbean handles the clock, and publishes three different versions of it. Its port arrival answer says guests should arrive within the arrival time slot selected during Royal App check-in, that the selected boarding time is listed on the mobile boarding pass, that early arrivals will not be able to begin boarding and late arrivals may wait for a later group. The same answer sets a limit of 90 minutes prior to port operations closing for being fully checked in and onboard, and a separate rule that check-in not completed in advance must be finalised at the pier at least two hours prior to the published sailing time. A third page states that the line requires guests to be checked in no later than 60 minutes, sometimes 90 minutes, prior to the scheduled sailing time, with a footnote that some sailings may require an earlier check-in time.
Three deadlines hung on three different clocks, and the Miami clock is the one nobody publishes. Royal Caribbean’s only worked example of port operating hours is the Port of Vancouver, which it says closes at 5:00 PM for boarding operations. For PortMiami the County publishes no equivalent closing time. The only hours it does print are parking hours, and they belong to the barrier rather than to the gangway: on cruise days all garages are open and staffed by a parking attendant from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a number on 305-347-4800 for anything outside that.
The boarding pass carries the only time that binds.
Details that settle a Terminal A arrival before the drive begins
- The address Royal Caribbean prints for Cruise Terminal A, 2000 N Cruise Blvd, is the same street number Miami-Dade County prints for Multi-Level Garage A, so the destination typed into a phone is the garage whether or not that was the intention.
- Payment rules on the county page cover cash, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and major United States traveller’s cheques, and state that debit cards are not accepted; the county FAQ shortens the same rule to cash and all major credit cards, which is the looser of the two readings.
- The county FAQ states flatly that there is no reserved parking at PortMiami, while the Garage A entry on the parking page offers reservation as one of the things the outside link handles. Two county pages, two answers, one garage.
- Free shuttle service is described twice and differently: the parking page says it runs on cruise days, and the FAQ says it runs between terminals only when a ship departs from one terminal and returns to a different one, using a departure from Terminal G and an arrival at Terminal B as its example.
- Luggage tags printed at home come inside the Guest Ticket Booklet, and Royal Caribbean says generic bag tags are available at the pier from its porters on the day of boarding, which is the fallback that costs time rather than money.
- Disabled permit holders pay standard rates by county ordinance with two hours complimentary, and full exemption is limited by Florida Statute 316.1964 to vehicles with ramps, lifts or hand controls, or to Florida disabled veteran plates issued under s. 320.084 and the sections beside it, with the veteran in the vehicle when parked.
- A cruise line with two terminals at one port is not unusual, and the split works differently at each: the pattern at the other Florida homeport is traced in the piece on which Port Canaveral terminals Royal Caribbean ships actually load from.
Five ways a Terminal A parking budget is built on a number nobody published
Reading the $25 line as the port rate. That line names Garages C, D, F, G and Surface Lot E. It is absent from that line, and from the $35 line, and from every other rate line on the page.
Treating the county’s silence as a promise of cheapness. Tariff No. 010 says a privately owned facility may apply different rates, and different is not a direction. The clause allows a figure above $35 as easily as one below $25.
Budgeting seven days for seven nights. Item 710 charges the entry day and each succeeding day, so a Saturday to Saturday sailing bills eight, worth $25 to $35 of unplanned cost at the priced garages and an unknown amount at Garage A.
Forgetting the tax line. The parking page mentions sales tax in neither direction; the tariff states rates are exclusive of it and gives the general Florida rate as 6%, which is what turns $200.00 into $212.00 and $280.00 into $296.80.
Timing the arrival against garage hours. The 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. window is when an attendant is at the barrier, not when boarding closes, and the only boarding clock Royal Caribbean names for a specific port is Vancouver at 5:00 PM.
How these Terminal A figures were checked
The figures in this guide were verified in August 2026 against the sources named in each section. One boundary belongs under every $35 figure above. That rate sits on the county’s PortMiami parking page and not in Item 710, whose only long term line is $25.00, and the 6% the tariff names covers the charges the tariff itself prices. Parking rates usually change in January, shuttle fares and cruise line transfer prices change by season, and ship schedules change weekly; check the issuer’s page before you travel. No provider paid for placement here and none can pay to appear. As of September 2026 no affiliate link is live anywhere on this site, and any that ships will be marked as sponsored and flagged in this line.
Questions Royal Caribbean passengers ask about Terminal A at the Port of Miami
Answers below come from Miami-Dade County pages, PortMiami Terminal Tariff No. 010 and royalcaribbean.com, read in August and September 2026.
Cruise Terminal A at 2000 N Cruise Blvd, which Miami-Dade County calls Royal Caribbean International’s The Crown of Miami and dates to 2018. The line’s own directions page also lists Cruise Terminal AA at 2200 N Cruise Blvd and Cruise Terminal E at 1265 N Cruise Blvd for Royal Caribbean Group ships.
No figure is published by Miami-Dade County. The entry headed Garage A (Royal Caribbean) carries a link to an outside parking site instead of a figure, and Terminal Tariff No. 010 explains that privately owned facilities such as the Cruise Terminal A parking garage may apply different rates.
Eight billed days, because item 710 of Tariff No. 010 charges the entry day and each succeeding day. That is $200.00 at Surface Lot E on the $25 line and $280.00 at Garage AA on the $35 line, or $212.00 and $296.80 once the 6% Florida sales tax is added.
At the terminal itself. Miami-Dade guidance is to drop luggage off before parking and to drop passengers at the terminal where possible. On the county terminal page, Terminal A is a 170,000 square foot building with a drop-off luggage area, spacious waiting areas and expedited security check-in for international guests.
Royal Caribbean publishes three limits: within the arrival slot chosen in Royal App check-in, fully checked in and onboard 90 minutes before port operations closing, and finalised at the pier two hours before the published sailing time if check-in was skipped. A separate page says 60 minutes, sometimes 90.
The Miami-Dade clearance table gives 7 feet 2 inches on the first floor, 8 feet on the second and 7 feet 2 inches on the remaining floors. The 8 foot deck is the only one in that table taller than the floor below it, and the county fills in every clearance cell for Garage A while printing no rate.
Royal Caribbean’s next Miami terminal arrives with a price already attached
The county’s terminal page says construction will begin on Royal Caribbean International’s Terminal G at the west end of PortMiami in summer 2025 and that the building is expected to open in 2027. Terminal G is already paired on the parking page with Multi-Level Garage G at 921 N America Way, which sits on the $25 long term line at $200.00 for eight days. The same cruise line will then hold one Miami terminal the county prices and one it does not, and the difference will have nothing to do with the ship, the fare or the passenger. It will be a question of who owns the concrete under the car.
Related guides
- PortMiami cruise terminals, northside and southside layout and how to reach them
- Every PortMiami garage rate the county publishes, and the eight day counting rule behind it
- Miami hotels with cruise parking measured against the county garage rate
- Royal Caribbean at Port Canaveral, and the terminals its ships actually load from