Cruises From Norfolk

The building is the Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center, 1 Waterside Drive, on the Nauticus campus beside the battleship Wisconsin. Nauticus operates it, per its own July 2025 release, and Visit Norfolk calls it the home of “Virginia’s only cruise ship program.”

The City of Norfolk opened it on April 7, 2007, per Wikipedia. Cruise Industry News put it at $36 million and 80,000 square feet at the time. Visit Norfolk puts the recent upgrade at $12 million. In its first phase, CruiseHive reported, it added an enclosed, air-conditioned second floor seating up to 600 and a sloped walkway down to the luggage hall.

It’s a small port with one big tenant. Visit Norfolk counts nearly 250,000 cruise passenger visits in 2023. Everyone on the schedule apart from Carnival is calling here — a day in port, not a departure.

Every card below opens our page for that port, with its shore-excursion guide underneath where we have one. The six-day sailings stay with the Bahamas and Bermuda — the Eastern Caribbean and Atlantic Canada take eight or nine days from here.

Read these as common stops, not promises — the stops on any sailing depend on the ship and the season. Check your own itinerary before you plan a port day around one.

Two sailings aren’t carded. Freedom’s 15-day repositioning from Port Canaveral calls at Aruba, Curaçao, Grenada, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Maarten and St. Thomas on its way here, per Visit Norfolk. It ends in Norfolk, though — you can’t board it here. Sunshine’s May 2027 Transatlantic lists Greenock, Dover, Belfast, Sydney and Cork, with no end port shown on the page we read.

Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center, 1 Waterside Drive, Norfolk, Virginia 23510.

You’ll also see it called the Peter G. Decker Jr. Half Moone Center, or just the Half Moone Cruise Terminal. It’s the same building either way.

Look for the battleship. The Wisconsin arrived at Nauticus on December 7, 2000, per Wikipedia — you can’t miss her from Waterside Drive.

Visit Norfolk is plain about timing: “We advise passengers not to arrive before their scheduled check-in time.” The City of Norfolk adds that you should follow your cruise line’s guidance for check-in.

Taxis, Uber and private cars drop off on Waterside Drive just past the terminal, in front of Town Point Park, per Visit Norfolk. The bus and shuttle lane is closed to personal vehicles. Terminal porters take the bags from arriving cabs. Drivers with disability plates or tags can enter the loop.

For a wheelchair, Visit Norfolk names Scootaround (888-441-7575), which delivers to the ADA drop-off lane. Documents are another matter — it sends you to your cruise line’s own FAQs, and that’s the page to trust.

Off the ship, you’re directed to the baggage hall, where porters have the luggage organized, and you clear customs there, per the City of Norfolk. Then it’s the Cedar Grove shuttle back to the lot — or the Waterside Drive pick-up.

Whoever’s collecting you should wait in the MacArthur Center garage, not at the curb, until you call after customs. Visit Norfolk’s cell-phone-lot flyer gives two hours free there.

The flyer warns they may be asked to drive around the block if the pick-up zone is full. If you leave something on board, Carnival’s representative is on 954-319-7745 — but only on days Carnival Sunshine is in port.

The city’s cruise lot is Cedar Grove, 1000 Monticello Avenue, at $15.00 a day for passenger vehicles, vans up to 15 passengers included, per the City of Norfolk. It’s about 1.5 miles from the terminal by the city’s count, too far to walk with bags. A free shuttle runs to the terminal. Your luggage is checked at the lot and taken to the ship.

You pay on entry, in cash or by most major cards, and there’s no reserved parking, per Visit Norfolk. The two official pages disagree on the opening time. Visit Norfolk says 9:30 AM, norfolk.gov 10 AM — aim for the later one.

Norfolk International is the airport you want. Visit Norfolk’s cruise FAQ puts it 10.8 miles from the terminal, about a 20-minute car ride — its transportation page says 15 minutes to downtown. Our own routing comes out at about 7.4 road miles.

Plan on 20 minutes plus traffic, not 15.

For a cab, the curb is the plan. ORF names seven taxi companies and prints a phone number for each, but no fares, and we couldn’t find an official city meter rate. CruiseHive’s figure is about $25. The full taxi list and our fare arithmetic are on the airport page.

Uber and Lyft wait outside Arrivals near Door 3, per ORF. Nine rental companies have desks on Level 1. Visit Norfolk says there are none at the terminal — so a rental only makes sense if you’re dropping it in town or paying Cedar Grove for the week.

There’s no transit shortcut. No Hampton Roads Transit bus enters the airport, per VisaVerge, and The Tide light rail ends at Newtown Road, not the airport.

We found no shuttle company with a published fare to the terminal, and Carnival’s airport-transfer page lists no Norfolk price.

Two other airports work if the fare is right — CruiseHive puts Newport News/Williamsburg (PHF) about 36 miles out, at least an hour, and Richmond (RIC) nearly 90 miles and 1.5 to 2 hours. Our routing makes PHF about 29 road miles.

Amtrak’s Norfolk station is at 280 Park Avenue, on the Northeast Regional to Richmond, Washington and on toward Boston.

The Tide’s 11 stations run from EVMC Fort Norfolk to Newtown Road through downtown, with MacArthur Square, Civic Plaza and Harbor Park among them, at $2.00 a ride. No official page names the stop nearest the terminal. Downtown, Visit Norfolk lists FRED — a free, battery-powered shuttle.

The Elizabeth River Ferry links Portsmouth’s High Street and North Landing with Harbor Park. HRT says a new Waterside dock is under construction, with a temporary schedule from September 8, 2026.

Nauticus and the battleship Wisconsin are next door. Cruise passengers get buy-one-get-one-free admission online or on site, per Visit Norfolk. On port-call days, Visit Norfolk’s schedule lists Cruise Norfolk Market Days at Nauticus.

Carnival’s own Norfolk page points you further: Colonial Williamsburg, Olde Towne Portsmouth, the beaches and a botanical garden. Portsmouth is the easy one — Wikipedia calls the Elizabeth River Ferry a $2 crossing from downtown.