Pre cruise Miami hotel

[klhage89]

Family of 7 will be cruising over Christmas. We will be flying into Fort Lauderdale but cruising with Carnival out of Miami. Have already purchased faster to the fun. Can someone suggest a hotel, probably in Miami, for our one day pre cruise stay. We already have transportation to Miami, however, we will need transportation to the port from the hotel. Thank you for your time!

[CruiserBruce]

Come on over to the Florida Departures board, here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=495

 

The easiest way to the port from your hotel will most likely be a cab.

[Marie51]

There are several hotel near the Port of Miami and these include Intercontinental, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Holiday Inn, Doubletree. These will be a short ride to the pier by cab but I doubt 7 can fit in one cab so you'll need two.

[cb at sea]

A cab is cheap and fast....the above mentioned hotels are great. Shuttles require waiting...and waiting..and waiting. Call a cab.

[Lacaena]

My vote is for the Intercontinental. I just got a great deal on Last Minute Travel (hope I can say that). It was an opaque rate so it needs to be reverse engineered but it was well worth the trouble. My fiancé and I have stayed there several times in the past and it's a good hotel in a great location. From there you can walk to Bayside which is a nice little outdoor shopping area/mall. There is also a pharmacy and liquor store within walking distance if I recall correctly.

 

 

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[Keith1010]

CruiserBruce has it right. We get this question often on the Florida Departures Board.

 

Since I post often there I will also respond here.

 

For the size of the family I would recommend Hampton Inn.

 

You would need two rooms.

 

The hotel booking will include a nice breakfast.

 

And you are in walking distance of many restaurants stores and a nice area.

 

Keith

[klhage89]

Thank you for your input. Have never been in the Miami area and were at a loss of where to stay. Thanks again!

[Marie51]

Thank you for your input. Have never been in the Miami area and were at a loss of where to stay. Thanks again!

 

Yes, you will need 2 rooms for 7 people. If you stay at Intercontinental or Holiday Inn you can walk to Bayside.

 

http://www.baysidemarketplace.com

[calisilent]

My vote is for the Intercontinental. I just got a great deal on Last Minute Travel (hope I can say that). It was an opaque rate so it needs to be reverse engineered but it was well worth the trouble. My fiancé and I have stayed there several times in the past and it's a good hotel in a great location. From there you can walk to Bayside which is a nice little outdoor shopping area/mall. There is also a pharmacy and liquor store within walking distance if I recall correctly.

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

 

Could you explain what reverse engineered means? I would be interested in the Intercontinental.

[Lacaena]

Sure! On websites that have opaque rates (where they tell you the rate but not the name of the hotel until you book) you can figure out what hotel it is through a series of steps. This is what I was calling reverse engineering. This isn't fool proof but I find that I have a really high accuracy rate and it's pretty simple! Here is an article on it with step by step instructions: http://www.mymoneyblog.com/finding-the-hotel-name-on-hotwire-com-before-purchase.html

 

I find the opaque rates on last minute travel are even easier to do. You just pull up the trip advisor list of hotels for that city and scroll through them until you find a rough match for number of reviews and stars. From there LMT will tell you how many of the reviews were excellent, good, fair, etc. if that matches trip advisor then that's your hotel (in all likelihood).

 

Good luck!

 

 

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[Hope89]

We stayed at the inter continental and loved it. They don't have a shuttle to port but a taxi cost us about 10 dollars. Lots of restaurants and pharmacy within walking distance.