Seven days in Mexico. The parking bill is $161.
Both Los Angeles-area terminals charge $23 a day to leave a car, so a week at sea costs $161 in parking before you burn a gallon of gas. Fourteen nights cost $322. Same car, same driveway, twice the bill.
Short version first. Find your terminal on the booking confirmation, because San Pedro and Long Beach are 8 miles apart and neither is a walk-up. Then take a flat per-vehicle quote for the round trip and divide it by 23. That's how many days of parking your transfer costs, and it decides the question faster than any opinion. We run flat-rate transfers to both terminals, so we're not neutral, but the arithmetic doesn't care who drives you.
Which cruise terminal do you leave from?
Two ports, two cities, two operators.
The Port of Los Angeles runs the cruise terminal in San Pedro, a harbor neighborhood inside the City of Los Angeles. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal is owned and operated by Carnival Corporation and sits beside the Queen Mary. Eight miles of harbor and freeway separate them.
Your paperwork settles it. The port publishes the trick on its cruise terminal page: seaport codes match airport codes, so Los Angeles reads US LAX and Long Beach reads US LGB. LGB means the Queen Mary. LAX means San Pedro. Nothing at all means you call the cruise line, not the driver.
San Pedro and Long Beach are two separate terminals 8 miles apart. Your booking confirmation names one, and the itinerary's seaport code settles it: Los Angeles reads US LAX, Long Beach reads US LGB. Carnival sails from Long Beach beside the Queen Mary.
Past that, don't trust anyone's line list, including ours. Ships get reassigned.
San Pedro vs Long Beach, side by side
| San Pedro | Long Beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal | Los Angeles World Cruise Center, Port of Los Angeles | Long Beach Cruise Terminal, owned by Carnival Corporation |
| Where | Berths 91-93, 100 Swinford St, San Pedro (Harbor Blvd and Swinford) | Long Beach waterfront, next to the Queen Mary |
| Drive from Anaheim | 35-50 min | 25-40 min |
| Drive from Irvine | 45-65 min | 35-50 min |
| Parking | $23/day max standard, $40 oversized. First hour free, then $2/hour | $23/day. 0-30 min free, 31-59 min $4, 1-2 hours $8 |
| Garage limit | Surface lots, 2,560 secured spaces, courtesy shuttle to the terminal | 7'0" ceiling. Oversized vehicles must park off-site |
| Freeway access | Direct from the I-110 | I-710 into the waterfront |
Drive times are ours, from running these routes. Typical, not promises.
The parking math nobody does
Both land on the same daily number. San Pedro charges $23 a day for a standard vehicle, $40 for anything that eats two spaces, after a free first hour and $2 an hour beyond. Long Beach is $23 a day with the first half hour free. Both rates are published on the port sites. Plenty of older posts still quote $22, so check the date on whatever you're reading, this page included. Rates here were checked in October 2026.
Run it by trip length:
- 3-day cruise: $69 in parking.
- 7-day cruise: $161.
- 14-day cruise: $322.
Parking is the only cost on this trip that multiplies, because every night at sea adds $23 to a car sitting in a lot.
Then add what the rate card leaves out: fuel for a 60 to 80 mile round trip, the toll 73 if the 5 is jammed through Laguna, and at San Pedro a free shuttle from the lot that still costs twenty minutes of unloading, waiting and riding with your own bags.
So divide. Take a round-trip quote, divide by 23, and compare that to your cruise length. Bigger number, the car is cheaper and nobody hunts for a space at 6am. Smaller, park, and spend the difference on board. Either way it works without knowing a single transfer price, including ours.
Weekend cruise, park. Two-week repositioning, book the car. The seven-day Mexico run is the one worth pricing, because the two answers land close and convenience gets a vote. For the market structure, what a private transfer costs breaks it down by vehicle type.
There's a third answer, and it's the one the binary misses. Hotels within a couple of miles of both terminals sell park-and-cruise packages: a night before the sailing, parking for the week, and a shuttle to the ship. The catches are real. The shuttle often runs one way, the minimum stay is one night, and your car sits in a hotel lot, not a secured port lot. Ask three questions before you book one: is the return shuttle included, is the rate per car or per room, and what happens if the ship comes back a day late.
Getting there from Orange County
Two routes do most of the work. From Anaheim, Buena Park and the Disneyland strip, it's the 5 north to the 710 south for Long Beach, or the 5 to the 91 to the 110 for San Pedro. From Irvine, Newport and south county, it's the 405 north to the 110 south, the same road that ends at the port's front door.
- Anaheim or the Disney resort area to San Pedro: 35-50 minutes.
- Irvine to San Pedro: 45-65 minutes.
- Newport Beach to San Pedro: 55-75 minutes.
- Anaheim to Long Beach: 25-40 minutes.
Add 15 to 25 minutes in weekday rush hour. The 405 to the 110 is the one that bites. There's no second way into San Pedro, so a crash at that merge puts every car behind it in the same line.
A 9am sailaway out of San Pedro, worked backward. Curb at 7, plus fifteen minutes of cushion on top of the drive: Anaheim leaves 5:55 to 6:10, Irvine 5:40 to 6:00, Newport 5:30 to 5:50. Sailing from Long Beach instead, Anaheim goes 6:05 to 6:20 and Irvine 5:55 to 6:10, because that's the shorter run. Holiday weekend, add half an hour. The ship doesn't care about the 110, and the gangway has no grace period for optimism.
Pairing a park day with the sailing? Our Disneyland transfers cover pickup logistics, and choosing an airport for a Disneyland trip is worth reading before you book flights.
Embarkation morning: what the car changes
Both terminals take luggage at the curb: you pull up, a porter takes the bags, and you walk in with a carry-on.
What changes is everything before the curb. Parked car: drive, find the lot entrance off Swinford, unload, wait for the shuttle, ride over with your own bags because the porter isn't in the lot. Long Beach is a structure instead, which means a ramp, a level, a space, a walk, and a mental note about which pillar.
A transfer is a driveway and a curb. No lot shuttle, no circling a structure with a roof box, no hunting for the car the morning you get off a ship with no patience.
We run one vehicle, the Suburban we run: six seats, four to six suitcases. That's the constraint to check before you book anything, ours included. Six adults with two bags is a different trip from six adults with six. Party of seven, we're the wrong call and we'll say so.
Don't count on an early bag drop. The port says bags can't be stored at the terminal, so arriving four hours early means standing there holding them.
The return trip is the part people forget
Ships arrive early. Passengers don't get off early. Disembarkation starts when customs clears the ship and runs by deck or group, and that elevator lobby is the closest thing to a scrum you'll see all week.
So the curb at 8:15 is a few thousand people, a line of shuttles, and every rideshare driver in Long Beach summoned to one block. Your ride home is 25 to 40 miles into Orange County, the request drivers quietly decline when surge is high. The app doesn't say nobody wants the trip. It quotes a number and then the driver cancels twice.
A pre-booked car changes the shape of that morning. We track the ship's arrival rather than the itinerary's estimate, so a ship that docks at 6:40 instead of 7:00 moves the pickup with it. You walk off, find the car, get in.
Two questions to ask before you book a transfer
Ask any operator these and the weak quotes eliminate themselves.
- Is the rate flat or metered, and is it the same coming home? A flat per-vehicle rate for the whole round trip is the only version that lets you do the parking math honestly. A one-way quote plus an estimate for the return is how people end up paying for waiting time.
- What happens if the ship is late, and how much luggage actually fits? Get both answers before you pay, because the morning it matters is the morning you can't negotiate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Parking is $23 a day at both terminals, so a 7-day cruise costs $161 and a 14-day cruise costs $322. Divide a flat round-trip quote by 23 to see how many days of parking it equals. Short cruises usually favor parking, longer ones usually favor the car.
The Port of Los Angeles puts the cruise terminal about 30 miles from Disneyland. That's typically 35 to 50 minutes from the Anaheim resort area, and 15 to 25 minutes longer in weekday rush hour.
Long Beach. It's owned and operated by Carnival Corporation and sits beside the Queen Mary, 25 to 40 minutes from Anaheim. San Pedro is a separate port 8 miles away and isn't a substitute if you misread the address.
$23 a day for a standard vehicle and $40 for oversized, with the first hour free and $2 an hour after that. Parking Concepts manages the port's cruise lots: 2,560 secured spaces across them, plus a courtesy shuttle to the terminal.
Only if it clears the 7'0" ceiling, and an oversized vehicle that needs more than one space isn't allowed in the structure at all. Check your own vehicle's height with the roof loaded, because a roof box changes the number.
San Pedro is 35 to 50 minutes from Anaheim and 45 to 65 from Irvine. Long Beach is 25 to 40 from Anaheim. Rush hour adds 15 to 25 minutes, and the 405 to the 110 is the stretch that decides it.
Cruise lines assign check-in windows during online check-in, so start there. Our rule of thumb is to be at the curb two hours before sailaway, and to add 30 minutes on a big ship or a holiday weekend.
Get the terminal question out of the way
Tell us the ship and the date and we'll confirm which terminal it leaves from, then quote the round trip as one flat number per vehicle. One Suburban, six seats, four to six suitcases, and a driver who has done the 110 on a Saturday morning more times than he'd like.
Call (714) 936-5055 or request a quote. The pickup itself is on our cruise transfer page. If the cruise is bolted onto a park visit or a flight, start with the airport and work backward.