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!