Start with which terminal you're sailing from
New York has two, and they're nowhere near each other. The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal is at 72 Bowne Street in Red Hook, out on the Upper Bay, and it handles Cunard's Queen Mary 2 along with Celebrity and Royal Caribbean ships. The Manhattan Cruise Terminal is at 711 12th Avenue on the West Side, up in the 40s and 50s along the Hudson. Check your booking before you book a room, because the two are a full crossing of the harbor apart.
The thing nobody tells you: neither terminal has a subway station at its door. The Manhattan terminal's own directions send you to Columbus Circle and then a walk south and west along 8th Avenue. The Brooklyn terminal wants you on the 2, 3, 4, 5, N or R to Borough Hall, then the B61 bus from Atlantic Avenue at Court Street, then four blocks on foot. Both are perfectly doable with a backpack. Neither is fun with two checked bags and a boarding window.
So the real question isn't which terminal you're closest to. It's where a car can pick you up easily on the morning of.
Why we think downtown works for both
We're at 17 John Street, in the Financial District, and Lower Manhattan splits the difference. Red Hook is straight across the bottom of the harbor from here. The West Side terminal is a run up the highway with the traffic mostly going the other way at that hour. You are not crossing town in either direction at 10am, which is the thing that eats an hour and your nerves.
There's a second argument for downtown that has nothing to do with the terminals. The day before a cruise is usually a half day, and this end of the island is the part of New York you can see on foot. The Staten Island Ferry runs free from Whitehall Terminal and gives you the Statue of Liberty from the water without a ticket. The Brooklyn Bridge walkway starts a few minutes from our door. If you only have an afternoon, you'll get more out of it here than out by either pier, where there's honestly not much around.
What to look for in the room itself
Pre-cruise nights have a particular shape: you arrive with everything you own, you repack, and you leave early. So the room matters more than usual.
Space to open two suitcases at once is the first thing. Our suites are apartments rather than hotel rooms, with a full kitchen, which mainly means you can make coffee at 6am without waiting on anybody. We also have a laundry room on site, which is the argument for the night after a cruise as much as the night before. Ten days of laundry is easier to deal with before a flight home than after one.
If you're travelling as a family or a group, we don't have connecting rooms. What we do have is two and three bedroom suites, which for a party of six or nine is the simpler answer anyway: one door, one kitchen, everyone in the same place when the car comes.
Timing the morning
Leave earlier than feels reasonable. Red Hook has one main road in and several thousand people using it at the same time on an embarkation morning. The West Side terminal has the West Side Highway, which behaves however it feels like behaving.
A few practical notes we give guests:
- Give a driver the street address, not the terminal name. 72 Bowne Street for Brooklyn, 711 12th Avenue for Manhattan. Red Hook in particular confuses GPS.
- Cruise lines usually assign a boarding window. Showing up hours before it doesn't get you on the ship faster, but showing up after it can cost you.
- If you're flying in the day before, that's the right call. There is no version of a same-day flight to a same-day sailing that doesn't involve worrying about it the whole way.
The night after, too
Disembarkation dumps you back at the pier at breakfast time with a flight that probably isn't until the evening. A room downtown for that last night, or even just somewhere to land, turns a bad day into a good one. That's the stay where the laundry room and the kitchen earn their keep.
Know before you go
We're a block from the Fulton Street station, which is on the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J and Z. That's your route to Borough Hall for the Brooklyn bus connection, and it's how you'd get to a Midtown show the night before without paying for a cab.