Baltimore Cruise Port Rental Car Guide (Cruise Maryland Terminal)

Cruise Maryland Terminal, 2001 East McComas Street, Baltimore, MD 21230; Royal Caribbean still calls it the South Locust Point Cruise Terminal. Type either name into a map — you’ll reach the same gate.

Cruise Maryland lists two ships: Carnival Pride, year-round, and Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas, which leaves after its October 2026 sailings and is reported back from May 29 to Oct 16, 2027; Carnival Miracle is due in November 2027.

That schedule matters for the car. The desks downtown keep office hours, not ship hours — nothing we read changes them on a sailing day.

No official bus, light-rail or water-taxi route reaches the terminal, so the last leg from downtown is a cab. That holds whichever desk you choose, not just the far ones.

So the car has two jobs here: getting you from a desk, and getting back to one before you board.

Two companies cover the neighborhoods near the harbor — and neither keeps cruise hours.

Avis and Budget share two counters, one in the Lombard Street garage downtown and one at 4900 Boston Street, with the same hours at both. Enterprise lists ten Baltimore branches and none of them downtown or in Locust Point — Fells Point, about 3.4 miles out, and Reservoir Hill, about 5.7, are the nearest.

“Free Pickup” on an Avis page and “Pick-Up Service Available” on an Enterprise one are branch services, not cruise shuttles. None of the four mentions the terminal, so call before you count on a ride.

Hertz has one city desk we could find, on Reisterstown Road — weekdays 8 to 5, shut at weekends. Sixt shows nothing outside BWI.

Skip any search result for Avis on West Fayette Street; it closed in August 2025, and the after-cruise page has the detail.

Try Sunday at 12:30. Fells Point never opened, and the other three city desks have 90 minutes left.

Saturday is tighter than it looks — Avis and Budget close at 1 PM and Enterprise Fells Point at noon.

Weekdays are easier: every city desk opens at 8 and shuts at 6, which suits a morning pick-up and nothing after dinner.

Past those hours BWI is the only answer on our list. Avis there runs 6 AM to 11 PM and Hertz until 11:59 PM, about 12 miles from the terminal by our routing.

Collecting the morning you dock? The after-cruise page sets these hours against the ship’s arrival.

Cruise Maryland charges $25 a day per vehicle since April 1, 2026 (its passenger page says “$25.00 Per Night”); RVs pay $40 a night under 30 feet and $50 over.

Cruise Maryland’s own FAQ still says $20, and Royal Caribbean’s page about $15; both predate the April 2026 rise. Go by the April notice, not the older pages.

You pay by credit card on arrival (Visa, MasterCard, Discover on the passenger page) and there are no reservations. The Maryland Port Administration lists more than 1,538 spaces.

At $25 a night, a 7-night cruise is $175 in the terminal lot, or $200 if all eight calendar days are billed, our arithmetic; a rental returned before the cruise costs nothing while you sail.

Keep the rental through the cruise and you’d pay twice — the daily rate and the lot. Hand it back.

Driving your own car to the ship is a different sum, and our Baltimore parking page covers the lot and what’s near it.

Maryland charges 11.5% sales and use tax on short-term passenger-car rentals (its general sales tax is 6%). The calculators on these pages apply it to the rate, the fees and any car seat.

Since July 1, 2025 rental companies also pay a 3.5% excise tax on the value of each rental car when they title it; it isn’t a line on your contract, and the state’s pages don’t say whether it reaches the rate. A 2026 bill to repeal it got a hearing in February; we found no sign it passed.

So the 3.5% is the company’s tax, not yours. If a counter shows it as a line, ask what it is.

BWI stacks its own charges on top, and the only number we found for either comes from a consultant’s survey. The airport page works through both.

Washington’s airports sit in Virginia and Philadelphia’s in Pennsylvania, so a car from either carries that state’s tax, not Maryland’s — the Philadelphia one-way prices it.

The Fort McHenry Tunnel (I-95) and the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel (I-895) charge $3 with a Maryland E-ZPass, $4 with another state’s E-ZPass or Pay-By-Plate, and $6 by video toll.

MDTA’s table doesn’t mark the tunnels as one-direction, so we count a toll each way.

The direction you arrive from decides if you meet one. Drive up from BWI or Washington and you leave I-95 at Exit 55, Key Highway, before the Fort McHenry Tunnel; the airport page has the turn.

From the north the port sends you through the tunnel itself, and the Philadelphia drive adds Delaware’s plaza, plus the JFK Highway on the way home — it charges northbound only.

Run one tunnel trip through Enterprise’s TollPass and it’s $4.95 plus the $6 video rate, $10.95 a trip, our arithmetic — against $4 on your own out-of-state E-ZPass.

Bring the transponder if you own one — Enterprise’s terms say its own plan’s charges stop when you use yours; ask Avis, Budget or Hertz at the counter.

A 2024 CBS Baltimore report said Maryland toll increases were expected to start in 2027, amounts not yet known. That’s a news report, not a toll schedule, so the rates above are what MDTA charges today.

A cheaper rate at a desk that shuts at 1 PM on Saturday buys you a cab to BWI, not a saving. Settle the hours first — then compare totals with Maryland’s tax in.