Celebrity Canal Boat Tours

We are on the Reflection in February - stopping at Colon on Friday February 2nd from 8 AM to 5 PM. I would love to do a Canal Tour by boat - actually going through a few of the locks.

Celebrity offers the following:

Board a local ferry and venture into the Panama Canal to experience the unforgettable sensation of crossing between two oceans in one day. Cruise through the Culebra Cut, the biggest structural challenge of the canal. Feel the waters slowly rise and fall as your captain navigates the massive lock system. Spend your day inspired by one of the greatest engineering feats in history.

Cost is $169. Price is not the issue. Not a fan of cruise line tours.

I already reached out to Roberto from Robtads. Gave me a whole mess of tours that are interesting but none that actually cruise through the locks.

Has anyone done the Celebrity tour? If so - what was your opinion?

I've tried to search for actual boat tours but have come up empty handed. Have any of you done one or found one?

The canal has been high up on my bucket list since I missed out on an additional B2B on the Jewel a few years ago. Work got in the way. If I manage to at least do a few locks - I can move the PC crossing lower down on my very, very long list!

The primary company that provides the partial Canal transits to the general public is also the same operator that provides to the cruise ships. There is not an overabundance of tour operators supplying partial Canal transits. When there are cruise ships in port all of their assets are given over to the cruise lines. The short answer is you will get the same tour if you were able to book it privately, you just will have to book it through the cruise line.

Other than the fact it can turn into a long day as no one can accurately predict what the ship traffic at the Canal will bring on any given day, most comments are positive about the tour.

We took that tour, through Princess, but I don't think it makes a difference which cruise line offers the tour because the tour operator is the same.

After we went through the first set of locks we got off the ship and took a looooong bus ride to a dock about half way through the canal. We then boarded a smaller boat to sail the rest of the canal, going through the locks into the Pacific. This was very nice because we got to see the locks "up close and personal" and actually got to touch the walls of a lock as the boat was being lifted in the lock. After the last lock, we sailed to another dock and then another bus ride back to the Princess ship which was docked at a Panama port whose name I don't recall. Overall a long day but worth it IMO. The rest of the people who didn't take this excursion were "stuck" on the ship because they were not allowed off the ship at the Panamanian port due to security reasons.