Cruises From San Francisco

San Francisco's cruise scene runs out of one primary terminal, but the passenger picture is smaller than the port's own list of visiting lines suggests. The James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27 — opened in 2014, with 12 megawatts of shore power on tap, among the largest shore-power capacities of any terminal covered we cover — hosts the city's two genuine homeport lines: Princess Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line, confirmed directly on the Port of San Francisco's own site. A longer list of other lines call at Pier 27, or at the port's two secondary facilities (Pier 35 and Piers 30/32), as a stop on a longer itinerary rather than a home base.

Unlike Galveston or New Orleans, the port's own site is explicit that there's no temporary or overnight parking anywhere at the terminal itself — every parking option here is off-site. And in a first for this system, the two closest off-site options include one where two different sources name the exact same garage, at the exact same address, two different things — disclosed rather than resolved below.

San Francisco runs three genuinely different programs rather than one list. Princess's Alaska sailing and Carnival Luminosa's Alaska season both call at a similar core of Southeast Alaska ports. A separate Mexico season, split between Princess's longer Mexican Riviera run and Carnival's shorter Baja hop, reaches further south. And a shorter California Coast itinerary stays close to home, down to Los Angeles and San Diego. As with every hub we cover, most of the destinations below don't yet have a dedicated destination page or excursion guide on this site — the two exceptions are Los Angeles and San Diego, which link to their own full embarkation-port guides, since both of those pages now exist.

Common, not guaranteed — the actual stops on any sailing depend on the line, the ship, and which program you've booked, so check your specific itinerary rather than assuming from the pattern below.

Not covered above: Princess's seasonal 15-night Hawaii sailing on Ruby Princess (October 2026-April 2027, confirmed on Princess's own 2024 season announcement) is real but rests on a single longer itinerary rather than the repeatable regional pattern above — Hawaii gets its own dedicated treatment elsewhere we cover rather than a card here. Tracy Arm, on Carnival Luminosa's Alaska itinerary, is scenic cruising only with no disembarkation, matching the same exclusion logic used for scenic-only stops at other ports we cover.

One port authority, three facilities, but one does almost all the work. Pier 27 — the James R. Herman Cruise Terminal — is where Princess and Carnival homeport and where most San Francisco sailings depart. Piers 35 and 30/32 are secondary facilities the port's own site names for occasional or larger-vessel calls, without a fixed line assignment published for either — check your own boarding documents if your sailing isn't a standard Princess or Carnival departure.

No on-site or overnight parking exists at Pier 27 itself — confirmed directly on the Port of San Francisco's own site. Every option here is off-site, and the closer of the two turns up this port's own genuine oddity: two different sources name the same building, at the same address, as two different operators. Review periodically

Two named options, one naming conflict, and rates that only partly agree between sources — that comparison gets the full page it deserves.

SFO serves the port, but it's not a short hop — plan for city traffic and a real drive, not just the mileage.