Port Everglades unveiled plans to give its largest cruise terminal an extreme makeover as it prepares to receive the largest cruise ship in the world.

Port Everglades Director Phillip Allen announced Wednesday at the annual Cruise Shipping Miami Conference in Miami that they will triple the size of Cruise Terminal 18 in time for the arrival of Royal Caribbean International’s 5,400-passenger Oasis of the Seas.

“There may be bigger terminals that service two ships at the same time, but Terminal 18 is being constructed specifically to handle one giant Oasis class ship at a time. Guests will be treated to the Oasis experience as soon as they enter the terminal,” Allen says.

Terminal 18 was already the largest of Port Everglades’ 12 cruise terminals with 67,500 square feet of interior space. When construction is completed in November 2009, the terminal will have 240 thousand square feet of space on two floors.

In the new Terminal 18, guests will debark and embark through entirely different sections of the building, permitting the simultaneous debarking of guests from the ship while embarking guests are processed and seated inside the terminal waiting to board the ship. The goal is that once the ship is cleared for embarkation, the transition for guests to go from curbside to the ship can be completed in 15 minutes. For those leaving the ship, there will be 22 booths for U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to process guests after their cruise.

The terminal will also be equipped with two new “switch-back” passenger loading bridges which will replace the current telescoping bridges. The “switch-back” bridges will provide cruise ship passengers an easy transition from the terminal to the ship.

Since welcoming its first cruise ship in 1931, Port Everglades has grown to be the third busiest cruise port in the world with more than 3 million passengers expected this year.

The $75 million expansion of Cruise Terminal 18 at Port Everglades is starting to take shape. Yesterday construction workers hoisted into place one of the world’s largest tilt wall sections, a 324,000-pound concrete section that will serve as the main entrance for the terminal. The expansion of Terminal 18 is being done to accommodate the world’s largest cruise ships currently being built by Royal Caribbean International. When the expansion is completed in November 2009, it will increase the terminal’s interior space from 67,500 square feet to a total of 240,000 square feet making it the largest cruise terminal in the world that can serve one ship at a time.

Port Everglades is set to become the world’s top cruise port by 2011 with Royal Caribbean International homeporting its two new 5,400-passenger Oasis-class vessels at the South Florida cruise port. Each Oasis-class ship is projected to generate approximately 584,000 passenger movements annually at Port Everglades. The first of the 220,000-gross-registered-ton ships, Oasis of the Seas, is scheduled to begin sailing year-round from Port Everglades in fall 2009, with the second sister-ship, Allure of the Seas, to begin year-round sailings one year later.

Currently, the Port of Miami is the busiest port in the world followed by Port Canaveral and Port Everglades.

Here’s some food for thought: Port Everglades broke their own two-year-old world record on Saturday, January 3, 2009 when 49,234 cruise passengers on 11 cruise ships sailed in and out of the south Florida cruise port in a single day. The last record was set on December 23, 2006, with 47,229 passengers. The port said if all 11 cruise ships lined up bow to stern it would have stretched 9,869 feet or the equivalent of nearly 31 football fields. That is enough cruise passengers to fill 105 747 jumbo jets, and the equivalent of approximately one-third the population of Hollywood, Florida. Just imagine what it is going to be like when the Oasis-class ships are in port!