Panama Canal Cruise Recommendations

Looking for recommendations please for a Panama canal cruise:

• Ideally 10-12 days
  
• Partial transit
  
• Goes to as many "new countries" I haven't been to.
  

I've seen a:

• Princess 10 day with 4 new countries (Aruba, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica)
  
• Norweign 11 day with 5 new countries (Colombia, Panama, CR, Honduras, Belieze)
  
• Norweigan 10 day with 4 new countries (Aruba, Colombia, Panama, CR)
  

Thanks !

The 10 to 12 day partial transits (Holland America also does one, has for a long time) generally stop at far south and south western Caribbean ports, like Cartagena, Costa Rica and the like. So the selection of ports that might be new to you is sort of limited to that general area.

Holland America will stop at their private island as well.

Since NCL is new to the partial transit cruises you won't find any reviews or comments on what was good or bad about the cruise. As far as choosing a particular line over the other, I think the best option is to go with a cruise line that you have taken other cruises with if you were satisfied with them. HAL and Princess have been doing partial transits for a number of years now, so it should be easy to find some cruisers' reviews of their trips to the Canal. If you don't have a particular favorite yet I would just let the date/s cabin choice and price be the deciding factor. I think you will find a similar line up of ports of call no matter which cruise line you choose.

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

Have you looked at Wind Star Cruises? We just returned from a 7 day cruise from Colon, through the canal and up the Pacific coast of Panama and Costa Rica. We flew into Panama City 3 days early to explore, had a driver take us to Colon to catch the ship and then flew home from San Jose, Costa Rica.

We were on the Wind Spirit which has only 148 passengers. I wasn't sure how I would like it but I loved the small ship! And going through the canal was amazing because you could walk from one end to the other to watch everything in a matter of minutes!

We enjoyed our Partial Transit 11 cruise on the Island Princess last month. It was fantastic. In addition to the canal and a short visit to Colon, we also visited Grand Cayman, Aruba, Columbia and Costa Rica.

We enjoyed our partial transit in January. The only excursions available were with HAL. We got off and saw our ship come back thru from the locks. Don't think I will ever forget seeing Big Z approaching. The part where we saw the new construction was much too long. No way will the new part be completed next year. Overall, would do it again. Those that took the train to the Pacific were disappointed.

If you stop in Cartagena, Lee Miles had an excellent tour. Great contact beforehand and an excellent tour. He has a good internet site. Nice area around our port after our tour.

We enjoyed our partial transit in January. The only excursions available were with HAL. We got off and saw our ship come back thru from the locks. Don't think I will ever forget seeing Big Z approaching. The part where we saw the new construction was much too long. No way will the new part be completed next year. Overall, would do it again. Those that took the train to the Pacific were disappointed.

 

If you stop in Cartagena, Lee Miles had an excellent tour. Great contact beforehand and an excellent tour. He has a good internet site. Nice area around our port after our tour.

Panama law does not allow pax off at Gatun Lake to take private excursions, or to DIY. So that is consistent across all ships doing partial transits.