The famous names on the guide's list
Every celebrity homes cruise sells you names along with the view. Some of those names are solid history and others belong to owners who sold up long ago. A few, reviewers suspect, were never quite true. This guide sorts the documented ones island by island and says which boat lets you look longest.
How the names reach you
On the big boats from Bayside the famous owners arrive over the loudspeaker. Bayride's guide talks the whole way in English and Spanish and, by many reviewers' accounts, plays a song for each well-known house as the boat comes level with it. Fiesta's sunset narration runs along similar lines, with music between the stories. Thriller's speedboat has commentary too, but at its pace a house is named and gone within seconds. On the private boats the captain does the talking, and reviewers of MYA and 1 Life describe captains who share local knowledge and change the route to suit the group.
Treat what you hear as entertainment built on some history. Some Bayride reviewers found a few of the celebrity claims hard to believe, and every script lags behind the property market. Houses on these islands sell often, and a name can stay in the commentary long after the owner has moved on. The sections below stick to people that Wikipedia lists for each island. That is a firmer record than a microphone, though it still says nothing about who is home on the day you sail.
Star Island's long roll of names
Star Island carries more famous names than anywhere else in the bay. Wikipedia lists Gloria and Emilio Estefan among the island's residents, along with Shaquille O'Neal, Sean Combs, Enrique Iglesias, Don Johnson, Rosie O'Donnell, Rick Ross and the Brazilian entertainer Xuxa. Guides tend to lead with the Estefans, and Shaquille O'Neal and Sean Combs turn up in the listings that sell these cruises. The list mixes present and past owners without dates, which is the trouble with any celebrity map of Miami. A person can stay on it for a house that has been home to someone else for years.
The island itself, dredged from the bay and reached by a single guarded bridge, has a page of its own in Star Island from the water.
Palm Island and Al Capone
The most reliable name in the bay belongs to a gangster. In 1928 Al Capone bought a Palm Island house. He returned to it after his release from prison and died there in 1947. That story cannot go out of date, which is why guides lean on it when other names are shaky. The house is still a private home, and you see it from the water like everything else on the trip.
Wikipedia's list of Palm Island residents also takes in Barbara Walters and Nick Nolte, and the record producer Scott Storch appears on it as well. Palm is joined by a bridge to Hibiscus Island next door, and from a passing boat the two can blur into one long stretch of seawall. If it matters to you which island you are looking at, ask the guide during a pause in the music.
Fisher Island across the channel
Fisher Island sits off the southern tip of Miami Beach, cut off from it by the Government Cut shipping channel, and nobody drives there. It has no road or causeway, only a private ferry, and guests need security clearance to land. Wikipedia names Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf among its residents, and Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts among its former ones. Boats pass it at a distance, so the famous names here attach to the island as a whole rather than to a door you can pick out. The double-deckers from Bayside and the Thriller speedboat both go by it, and the islands of Biscayne Bay shows where it falls on each route.
Two famous addresses off the water
Two places that come up in conversation never appear from the deck. The Versace mansion stands on Ocean Drive, facing the beach rather than the bay, so it is a stop on land. Of our six tours only Sunny Miami's city tour and cruise, from ~$60 per person, takes you there, by van, before the boat part of the day. Its catch is the clock, since traffic eats into the stops and lunch is not included.
Further north, Indian Creek Village is a gated island often nicknamed the "Billionaire Bunker". It lies off the routes of all six cruises we compare, and we leave its owners out of this guide for the same reason we hedge everyone else's. 1 Life's boats do leave from a dock on Indian Creek, the waterway, but the listing sends them toward Sunset Islands and Star Island instead.
Which boat gets closest
The big double-deckers carry well over a hundred people and hold to the deeper water, so each house slides by some way off and at a steady pace. Thriller's speedboat is smaller but rarely slows, which makes it a ride first and a house tour second. Speedboat, big boat or yacht? sets the styles side by side. For a slower, nearer pass you want a private boat whose captain can throttle back along a seawall.
MYA's private charter, from ~$199 per boat, lets you build two hours around the houses you care about, with the captain ($50 an hour) and fuel ($50) paid at the dock on top. 1 Life's 25-foot boat, from ~$125 per boat, sells a 2-hour option built around celebrity houses and Star Island, with the same fees. What a celebrity homes cruise costs does the per-head arithmetic for both.
Viator also sells Bruschi's two-hour private boat at ~$52 per person, priced by group size, plus a $70 captain fee. Its catch is practical. There is no toilet on board and you do not choose your captain. The lead traveler also signs a charter agreement before the boat leaves its yard on the Miami River, where there is no parking on site.
Slow down where you want to
On MYA's sightseeing charter you tell the captain which seawalls to idle past and which to skip, for up to ten guests from ~$199 per boat. The captain and fuel are paid at the dock, and cancellation is free up to 24 hours before.
Looking without intruding
Every house on these islands is somebody's home, and the people on the lawn are not part of the tour. Wave if they wave. Keep the zoom on the architecture rather than on faces, and do not ask a private captain to hover off a terrace where a family is plainly trying to have a quiet afternoon. No tour lands on any of these islands, and nobody should try to reach a private dock from the water or from the road.
A name on the commentary is a story about a house, not an address book. Enjoy it in that spirit and you will not be disappointed when the guide's favorite singer turns out to have sold up.
Photographing the mansions covers the camera side of this, and day cruise or sunset cruise? explains why daylight shows the facades better than the golden hour does.