Virginia Beach, Williamsburg and the Outer Banks Before or After a Norfolk Cruise

Every figure here is free-flow routing from 1 Waterside Drive, not a promise. Traffic isn’t in it. Read each time as the best case.

Carnival’s Norfolk page suggests Colonial Williamsburg, Olde Towne Portsmouth, the beaches and a botanical garden; next to the terminal, Nauticus gives cruise passengers two-for-one admission.

Williamsburg is the one on that list we priced by car — Portsmouth is a ferry ride, and Nauticus is next door.

Before a cruise, the return is what goes wrong, not the drive out. Enterprise Downtown closes at 6 on weekdays and at noon on Saturday, so a long day often ends at ORF instead. The hub’s checker shows who’s open.

We priced every day below from Discover Cars’ “from $55” ORF rate (Oct 2, 2026), with Virginia’s 10%, fuel at $4.15 and 30 mpg. Type your own rate into either calculator.

Colonial Williamsburg’s single-day ticket is $37.50 for adults (13 and up) and $10 for ages 6 to 12; the multiday ticket is $55 and $28. A 3% card fee and the city’s 10% admission tax on the first $10 of each ticket are added at checkout.

The Visitor Center, 101 Visitor Center Drive, charges $10 a day to park, and a free bus (WATA Route 15) leaves for the Historic Area every 15 minutes, 9 AM to 9 PM Monday to Saturday and 9 to 6 on Sunday.

So the car’s job ends at the Visitor Center lot — you ride into the Historic Area, not drive it.

On those numbers two adults come to about $158: roughly $73 for the car, $10 to park and $75 in tickets, our arithmetic before the card fee and admission tax.

Add two children aged 6 to 12 and it’s about $178 — the youth ticket is $10, not $37.50.

We didn’t price a tour bus or a shared ride to Williamsburg — nobody we read publishes one from the terminal, so the car stands alone here.

Historic Jamestowne’s park pass is $15 for anyone 16 and over, good for 7 days and for Yorktown Battlefield too; Preservation Virginia charges another $15 for the James Fort site and the Archaearium.

Jamestown Settlement’s admission page blocked us. We can’t print its price, and we won’t guess it.

Keep the two straight — Historic Jamestowne is the Park Service and Preservation Virginia site of the original fort. Jamestown Settlement is a separate museum with its own admission.

Our routing runs to the Settlement, 6.8 miles and 16 minutes from the Visitor Center — we didn’t route to Historic Jamestowne itself.

A loop from the terminal to Williamsburg, on to Jamestown and back is about 102 miles and 2 hr 31 min of driving, our routing’s legs added up.

Two adults doing both come to about $190: the car near $75, Williamsburg tickets and parking, and $30 in park passes, our arithmetic. Add James Fort and the Archaearium, Preservation Virginia’s extra $15 each, and it’s about $220.

The pass also covers Yorktown Battlefield for seven days, a bonus, not a reason to go. Skip Yorktown before a ship unless you’ve slept nearby.

The oceanfront is about 19 road miles and 28 minutes from the terminal — without traffic, by our routing.

We couldn’t read the city’s oceanfront parking rates: its parking page timed out and the tourism site’s returned an error, so check the meters when you arrive.

The car alone comes to about $66 for the day, our arithmetic — fuel for 38 miles is about $5 of that.

For an afternoon it’s the one trip here where a cab might beat the car. We don’t have a fare to prove it, so open an app and compare before you book.

We wouldn’t put the beach and Williamsburg in one day. The leg between them alone is 61.2 miles and 1 hr 22 min by our routing, so pick one.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel charges a car $16 one way off-peak and $21 at peak, whatever way you pay; peak in 2027 means Friday to Sunday from May 15 to Sept 12. Come back within 24 hours with E-ZPass and the return is $6 off-peak or $1 at peak (rates since Jan 1, 2024).

Run the sums both seasons and something odd turns up. With E-ZPass the round trip is $22 off-peak and $22 at peak — the same money, because the summer’s higher toll out comes back as a cheaper return.

Without E-ZPass it’s $32 off-peak and $42 on a summer weekend, our arithmetic.

A rental plan changes that sum again. Enterprise’s TollPass adds $4.95 for the day and Avis’s e-Toll $6.95, so the crossing bill off-peak lands near $36.95 or $38.95 if neither gets the return discount — we couldn’t confirm either way.

With your own E-ZPass the whole day is about $95, against about $105 paying both crossings in full.

Bring the transponder from home. It saves $10 off-peak and $20 on a peak weekend, our arithmetic.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills charges $10 a person 16 and over — card only, and under 16 free.

About 77 road miles and just under 2 hours each way without traffic, our routing, so it’s a full day, not an afternoon. Leave early.

Two adults come to about $102 — the car near $82 and $20 at the memorial, our arithmetic.

The Chesapeake Expressway (Route 168), the usual road toward the Outer Banks, charges $10 on summer weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day and $4 otherwise, per Wikipedia. The city’s toll page timed out on us, and we didn’t check whether our routing uses it. That toll is a footnote, not a line in our total.

North Carolina is a different state, but the car is rented in Virginia, so Virginia’s 10% is the tax on it as we read the state’s page.

A day this long can easily run past the city desks’ 6 PM close, so plan the return at ORF. Avis and Budget stay open there until 12:30 AM — the after-cruise page has the key-drop rules.

Book the car for the day out, and only that day. A rental parked overnight at a hotel pays a full day for nothing.

Pack the E-ZPass if Cape Charles is on the list, because the return discount needs it.