Park, Stay, Cruise Options for Brooklyn Cruise Terminal

[JamieLogical]

We've been trying to persuade my parents to come on their first MSC sailing with us out of Red Hook next April. They have previously cruised three times, all out of the Manhattan Cruise terminal. For their first two cruises, they drove up to Rochester, NY from DuBois, PA (central PA right off the 80) and we all drove together to Manhattan and paid to park one car. That's a LOT of extra drive time for them, since it's a 4 hour drive to Rochester and then a 5.5 hour drive to NYC. So the last time they cruised with us, we all drove to NJ the day before and stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Ridgefield Park. At that time, that hotel was offering a park, stay, cruise deal where you got the hotel for the night, could leave your car for the week, and they offered a shuttle service to and from the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. It does not appear that the hotel offers this package any longer.

 

We are trying to find something similar for them for the April sailing out of Brooklyn. Even if it was a stay and park situation and they had to figure out some other means of transport to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, they would prefer that to having to drive through the city themselves and pay $450 to park (it's a 10-day cruise).

 

Does anyone have any recommendations? They did fine managing to drive to the hotel in Newark, but I do worry about my dad (who will be 82 by then) trying to deal with real NYC traffic to get himself to the cruise terminal. He is also just super cheap and can't fathom paying $450 for parking.

[princeton123211]

16 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

We are trying to find something similar for them for the April sailing out of Brooklyn. Even if it was a stay and park situation and they had to figure out some other means of transport to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, they would prefer that to having to drive through the city themselves and pay $450 to park (it's a 10-day cruise).

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but you won't find anything with a stay and park in NYC including Manhattan or Brooklyn. Any of those that I have heard of or read about on these boards has been in New Jersey (which isn't particularly convenient or helpful for Brooklyn Cruise Terminal). 

 

17 minutes ago, JamieLogical said:

Does anyone have any recommendations? They did fine managing to drive to the hotel in Newark, but I do worry about my dad (who will be 82 by then) trying to deal with real NYC traffic to get himself to the cruise terminal. He is also just super cheap and can't fathom paying $450 for parking.

Have they considered taking the train? You can take Amtrak's Keystone Service from Altoona, PA, a little more than an hour drive from DuBois) directly into midtown Manhattan's Penn Station. The cost is about $60 per person in advance and I have to think that parking in Altoona for the week would be inexpensive. You can also do this from Harrisburg which would be a little bit of a longer drive. 

 

You MAY be able to do a little bit better than $450 + hotel costs. Probably not much better but at least they wouldn't have to do much driving at all. 

[JamieLogical]

20 minutes ago, princeton123211 said:

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but you won't find anything with a stay and park in NYC including Manhattan or Brooklyn. Any of those that I have heard of or read about on these boards has been in New Jersey (which isn't particularly convenient or helpful for Brooklyn Cruise Terminal). 

 

Have they considered taking the train? You can take Amtrak's Keystone Service from Altoona, PA, a little more than an hour drive from DuBois) directly into midtown Manhattan's Penn Station. The cost is about $60 per person in advance and I have to think that parking in Altoona for the week would be inexpensive. You can also do this from Harrisburg which would be a little bit of a longer drive. 

 

You MAY be able to do a little bit better than $450 + hotel costs. Probably not much better but at least they wouldn't have to do much driving at all. 

 

Thanks for the tip about the train! It looks like that might be doable, but for the return trip, the train leaves at 10:50am, which might be a little tight for them. They would definitely need to book a hotel in the NYC area and then do some sort of ground transportation from Penn Station to the hotel and from the hotel to the cruise port. I'll chat with them about it and see how they feel. The Altoona Amtrak site mentions a fee for overnight parking, but doesn't say how much that fee is. I assume it is far less than $45/day!

[princeton123211]

1 minute ago, JamieLogical said:

I assume it is far less than $45/day

If they're charging and getting $45 a day for parking in Altoona, I'm in the wrong business...

 

That being said I don't think its going to be a dramatic overall savings-- but it might be worth it if they save $100 overall and then don't actually have to do the driving (which at 82 would be much more valuable to me). 

[JamieLogical]

Right now, I am leaning toward driving down to them the night before the cruise, leaving bright and early the morning of the cruise, and driving everyone in my car. We could split the cost of parking and avoid a night in a hotel, so that would probably make my dad happy. The challenge really is that my husband and I still work for a living and are trying to minimize our time off work. The cruise goes from a Thursday through a Sunday. Driving down after work on Wednesday wouldn't be too big a deal, as we could get there by 9:00pm or so. It's the driving my parents home and then driving ourselves home all in one day on Sunday to be at work on Monday that I find daunting.