Vol. I, No. 37 · San Francisco — Monday, September 14, 2026 · Price: same berth, different year

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BY MAXINE DOLAN, CITY DESK

Ruby Princess is 951 feet long, carries up to 3,080 passengers, and is scheduled to call at San Francisco’s cruise pier more than any other ship in the fleet, two years running. The Port of San Francisco’s published schedule lists 89 cruise-ship calls at the city’s cruise terminals this year. Thirty-three of them, 37 percent, are Ruby Princess. The season isn’t over, and a published schedule is a plan, not a completed voyage.

San Francisco’s cruise calendar looks like a rotating cast. Twenty-five different ships are scheduled to call this year, sailing under lines from Princess to Norwegian to Holland America to Virgin. The traffic itself is narrower. Just two ships, Ruby Princess and Carnival’s Luminosa, account for 55 of the 89 calls. That is 62 percent of the whole season, more than the other 23 vessels combined. Next year’s published schedule runs the same pattern almost exactly: 31 of 89 calls, 35 percent, again Ruby Princess.

Every call Ruby Princess makes, this year and next, is what the port calls a “full turn.” The ship arrives, drops its passengers, loads a new set, and leaves the same day. Thirty-one of her 33 calls this year berth at Pier 27, the other two at Pier 35 South. Either way, Pier 27 is less a stop on her route than a home port, the place most of her cruises start and end. In winter she runs turnarounds to Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas. In summer she shifts north, sailing out of San Francisco to Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, with a handful of longer voyages reaching Hawaii. Twenty-two of Luminosa’s calls follow the same full-turn pattern, on a similar rotating Mexican Riviera and Pacific Northwest schedule.

Zoom out from the ship to the cruise line, and the concentration only deepens. Eight different vessels sail under the Princess Cruises flag into San Francisco this year: Ruby, Royal, Emerald, Island, Grand, Coral, Discovery and Star Princess. Together they account for 45 of the 89 calls, just over half the season. Next year the share holds again, 44 of 89.

Confidence is high on the counts. Both schedules are the port’s own published berth assignments, re-summed live tonight against the file’s own totals. The caveat is that a berth schedule is a plan, not a completed voyage. A handful of calls, especially late in each year, could still shift or cancel before departure. Nothing in the file explains why Princess Cruises leans on San Francisco this heavily rather than larger West Coast cruise ports like Los Angeles or San Diego. That answer would need Princess’s own scheduling logic, which the port’s schedule does not carry.

Barring changes, Ruby Princess will pull up to Pier 27 again next year, thirty-one more times, and the passengers changing over each time will be forgiven for thinking they have found San Francisco’s cruise ship.