Live well. Eat well. Travel well.

Summer day trip to Bimini from Ft Lauderdale

Pre-departure

• Booked Monday for Wednesday departure. Balearia Carribbean have “mondayblues” offer when you purchase your tickets on Monday, you can get a discount. (Currently this promotion is discontinued. I suggest to constantly check https://www.baleariacaribbean.com/en/offers/ for up to date offers.)
  • Normally a ticket including taxes and fees is $225 per adult for economy and $275 per adult for economy premium (aka first class).
  • We opted to do Premium given we are only doing a daytrip. With the discount, we ended up paying $241.42 per person. I thought it was a good deal given (1) you get to board and get off the ship first, (2) snacks consisting of a small sandwich with grapes, carrots & celery sticks, cookie, and a slice of choco cake, (3) beverage of choice wither coffee, water, & juice.

Departure from Ft. Lauderdale

• Left Miami Beach around 6:20 AM, arrived at the Ft. Lauderdale port parking garage right beside terminal 21 around 7:00 AM. Once you walk to the checkin building you will go through a security check (metal detector + xray machine) similar to airports.
• You then go upstairs where you can get your boarding pass (if you haven’t printed them) and a wristband. Tip: print boarding pass ahead to go directly in the waiting area, otherwise you’ll be in line to get them printed.
• The wristbands are color coded. That day for Premium day trip, it was a light teal.

• After being in line for a few minutes, we had our passport checked, wristbands put on, and boarding pass printed. We were directed to sit in the premium waiting area and didn’t get to board until about 8:45 AM. The ship left at 9:07 AM.
• Premium was half empty. Maybe about 120 seats and I believe there were more or less 50 of us.

• Snacks and bev service started 15 minutes after leaving the port. Everybody in Premium got the same snack consisting of a sandwich, grapes, carrots, celery sticks, cookie, and a small piece of chocolate cake. You have the choice of either water, soda, juice, or coffee.
• You can also order more with the service crew at an additional cost. In our trip we saw some who ordered beers, mimosas, champagne.

• There’s also an opportunity to buy duty free, excursion, or day pass at the hilton resorts world during the ferry ride. It closes anout half hour before reaching the destination.

Arrival in Bimini

• We arrived a little after 11:00 AM but were not allowed to get off until customs clear the ferry… that took almost an hour!
• When we got cleared, those who are day trippers with either green (premium) and blue (economy) wristbands are asked to get off the first.
• We had to walk across the port and go through the customs building. Those who are day trippers didn’t need to show passport. We were boarded a tram to take us to Resorts World and the town where you can rent golf carts.

• We opted to tour the island and not get stuck in the resort so we rented golf carts for $80 cash. 12:30 PM – 5:00 PM.

• Super easy to navigate the island and the time was more than enough for us. Roads are narrow and you drive on the left side of the road.
  • 🛺 Fisherman’s Village, Shipwreck, Radio Beach, Bailey Town, Alice Town
  • 🍽️ Conch, Bahamian Lobster, Fried Grouper, Grilled Shrimp, Bimini Bread
  • 🍹Bahama Mama, Coconut Water, Knockout Punch, Kalik Mango & Gold beers

• Returned to the pickup spot 30 minutes early hoping we’d be able to shop but that was not the case since there was a power outage that occurred and shops closed earlier than usual.