Don't make this mistake when traveling to your embarkation port
Missing your cruise ship at embarkation is every cruiser's nightmare, and it almost became reality for two experienced cruise travelers. A combination of rental car returns, Miami traffic, and one ill-timed stop for lunch nearly resulted in a missed sailing on Carnival Celebration.
TravelHost's Come Cruise With Me Editor in Chief Daniel Kline and his travel agent partner, Postcard Travel Planning's Dennis Post, recently shared their close call and the lesson every cruiser needs to learn about port arrival timing in the video below.
A full transcript follows below.
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A cautionary tale about timing
Transcript:
Dan Kline: Hello there cruisers. I am Dan Kline, editor-in-chief of Travel Host and The Street. Next to me is Dennis Post. He is my travel agent partner from PostCard Travel Planning. We are on, just barely on Carnival Celebrations.
Dennis Post: Exactly.
Kline: So, we did something yesterday that we recommend against. Now, kind of it couldn't be avoided. Dennis picked me up at Port Canaveral.
I was on a Royal Caribbean Star of the Seas. We'll talk about that in another video. We had to get all the way to Miami, but we wanted to make a little stop, visit my house, which is about an hour and a half from Port Canaveral, and we decided we would go get some lunch. What was the mistake we made?
Post: Ha! Stopping at Panera. Getting something to eat.
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Kline: Yeah. So here's the problem. Carnival Celebration was leaving at 3:30. Decks up at 2:30. We were driving a rental car Dennis had to return. And what you can't predict in Miami is what traffic is going to be. So we hit this wall of absolute traffic. We're looking at the minutes tick by and we're literally going through- I'm googling what happens if you leave your rental car in a parking garage.
Because, you know, we were going to call Avis and say, "Hey, we need to leave our car for eight more days." And we were debating, do we? Do we tell the people traveling with us, just go on without us? I got off, got on the ship at about 145. Dennis, you made it by what, ten minutes right around?
Post: Yeah, 10, 15 minutes. We had to go drop it off in downtown Miami. Not to mention traffic getting out of the port in downtown Miami. It's only two miles, less than two miles from the port, but the traffic was atrocious.
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Kline: So the lesson here, and this has nothing to do with Carnival, Royal Caribbean, any specific cruise line.
No matter what cruise you're on, be close to the port a couple hours before you have to be there. Go have breakfast. Go have a cup of coffee at a Starbucks. Now, again, it is very typical to get from Port Canaveral to Miami on different cruise lines. There's no transfers for that. My only real option was an expensive Uber or Dennis.
But we should have figured out: maybe stop by the house and say hello. Don't spend about 45 minutes getting some breakfast that almost caused us to miss the ship.
I am Dan Kline. He is Dennis Post. Come cruise with us soon.
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Make a free appointment with Come Cruise With Me's Travel Agent Partner, Postcard Travel, or email Amy Post at amypost@postcardtravelplanning.com or call or text her at 386-383-2472.
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This story was originally published May 31, 2026 at 4:22 AM.