New York Cruise Port: Manhattan's Pier 88

New York’s cruise ships dock at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, Piers 88 and 90 on the Hudson River at the western edge of Midtown, and two blocks south along the waterfront the aircraft carrier Intrepid is moored as a museum, with the Space Shuttle Enterprise on her flight deck.

Piers 88 and 90 on the Hudson River

The Manhattan Cruise Terminal stretches along Twelfth Avenue between West 46th and West 54th Streets, with Pier 88 at 48th Street and Pier 90 at 52nd, in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown. Norwegian Cruise Line and Carnival are among the lines that use it, on sailings to Bermuda, the Caribbean, Canada and New England. Disembarking passengers collect their bags and clear customs on the street level, and the terminal has no bag storage. The nearest subway is the C and E trains at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue, about 15 minutes’ walk east, and the M50 crosstown bus stops a block away; Times Square is about 20 minutes’ walk.

The aircraft carrier Intrepid at Pier 86

The Intrepid Museum fills an aircraft carrier moored at Pier 86, at West 46th Street, two blocks south of the cruise terminal. The Intrepid was launched in 1943, fought in the Second World War, served off Vietnam and recovered Mercury and Gemini space capsules for NASA, and has been a museum since 1982. Her flight deck is lined with aircraft, among them the A-12, the Cold War spy plane that came before the SR-71 Blackbird, and the British Airways Concorde on the pier holds the most flying hours of the 20 ever built. The submarine Growler, which carried nuclear cruise missiles on deterrent patrols, is moored alongside.

At the stern of the flight deck, the Space Shuttle Pavilion holds the Enterprise, the orbiter NASA built for approach and landing tests in 1977, which came to the Intrepid by barge in 2012. The museum opens daily at 10am and closes at 5pm, or 6pm at weekends from April to September, with last entry an hour before closing, and an Intrepid ticket is about $38 for an adult. It has no bag check and doesn’t allow suitcases on board, only small lockers for handbags.

Circle Line harbor cruises from Pier 83

Circle Line, sailing from Manhattan since 1945, runs its sightseeing boats from Pier 83 at West 42nd Street, a few minutes’ walk south of the Intrepid. The shortest trip is about an hour, down the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty and back; the Landmarks cruise covers more of the harbor in 90 minutes, and the full Best of NYC cruise circles the whole of Manhattan in two and a half hours, up the Harlem River and under the George Washington Bridge.

Luggage storage near the Manhattan Cruise Terminal

The Manhattan Cruise Terminal has no lockers or left-luggage office, so bags come off the ship and out onto Twelfth Avenue with their owners. With the Intrepid turning suitcases away at the gangway, the practical move is a luggage storage point in the blocks of Hell’s Kitchen east of the piers, around Eighth Avenue, on the way to the subway.

Taxis from the piers reach LaGuardia in about 30 minutes

From the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, a taxi reaches LaGuardia Airport in about 30 minutes outside rush hour, at roughly $40 to $60. For JFK, yellow cabs charge a flat $70 to or from anywhere in Manhattan, plus tolls and surcharges, and the ride takes about an hour; alternatively, take a taxi to Penn Station, then the Long Island Rail Road to Jamaica and the AirTrain to the terminals. Allow extra time on weekday afternoons, when a $5 rush-hour surcharge applies from 4pm to 8pm and the traffic out of Midtown slows.