PUERTO VALLARTA, Jalisco, Sept. 15, 2026 — Navigator of the Seas docked at Pier 2 on Tuesday with 3,645 passengers.
The vessel also carried 1,267 crew members. It arrived from Mazatlán and was scheduled to leave for Los Angeles at 6 p.m.
We verified the call against the federal port authority’s September calendar and reporting from the ship’s stop in Mazatlán one day earlier.
A one-ship day in the North Hotel Zone
Tuesday’s arrival was Puerto Vallarta’s only scheduled cruise call of the day. That limited port activity to one occupied berth rather than a simultaneous arrival involving several ships.
Pier 2 is inside the maritime terminal along Boulevard Francisco Medina Ascencio in the North Hotel Zone. When Navigator of the Seas opened Puerto Vallarta’s September cruise schedule on Sept. 1, our review documented Gate 11 as the return entrance for Pier 2 passengers.
The terminal’s services include authorized taxis, tour guides and excursion sellers. Those operators are among the businesses closest to passenger movement during an 11-hour port call.
The reported passenger total represents people aboard the ship. Authorities did not publish a separate count of passengers who went ashore Tuesday or an estimate of their local spending.
Headcount closely matches the Mazatlán stop
Navigator of the Seas visited Mazatlán on Monday before continuing south to Puerto Vallarta.
A report from the Mazatlán call, citing information released there, listed 3,647 passengers and 1,266 crew members.
That count differs from the Puerto Vallarta report by two passengers and one crew member. Neither report explained the change. PVDN is using the locally reported figure of 3,645 passengers for Tuesday’s Vallarta call.
Third cruise arrival of September
Navigator of the Seas made the month’s first call on Sept. 1. Carnival Panorama followed on Sept. 10, when more than 4,000 passengers arrived at Pier 3.
Those calls and Tuesday’s return by Navigator of the Seas account for the first three arrivals on the September calendar. The port authority lists eight cruise calls for the month and states that the schedule remains subject to change.
Vallarta cruise traffic remains below national growth
The arrival came as Puerto Vallarta’s cruise passenger count remained nearly flat compared with the national market.
Puerto Vallarta received 294,865 cruise passengers during the first seven months of 2026, according to the federal Tourism Ministry’s January-through-July cruise report. That was 0.6% below the 296,566 passengers recorded during the same period of 2025.
Ship calls fell from 93 to 88, a 5.4% decline.
Across Mexico, cruise traffic moved in the opposite direction. The country received 7.45 million passengers through July, up 16.2% from the same period last year. Cruise calls increased 11.9% to 2,045.
The federal data placed Puerto Vallarta’s average at 3,351 passengers per call, up 5.1% from 2025. Tuesday’s reported count was 294 passengers above that average.
