BillB48

Can't be of much help in choosing a cruise line, haven't been on HAL and my NCL experience is not recent. However, I did enjoy NCL when we cruised with them. Totally agree with Turtles about going through the original locks if this is your first transit. Another thing I would let influence my decision is whether or not the ship stops in Panama in addition to the transit. I think that a port stop is a plus to either let you see some more of the Canal or other items of interest in Panama. Some itineraries make the port call before the transit and some after the transit. Either IMO is good.

MeHeartC. summed up what the Sky's Canal cruise entails well. I'll just go into a little more detail and hopefully provide a little better understanding. The Sky will arrive at the Atlantic entrance to the Canal, normally a little before dawn. The ship will travel the next 7 miles to reach Gatun Locks. You will lock up the three chambers of Gatun Locks to the level of Gatun Lake. Once in Gatun Lake the ship will sail a short distance to the Gatun Lake Anchorage. At this point you will tender off the ship and board a bus for the trip to the Pacific side to meet your excursion vessel. This part of the your excursion may operate in one of two ways... leave from Ft. Amador, sail the Pacific entrance, under the Bridge of Americas, lock through Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Locks and then sail through Gaillard (Culebra) Cut, disembarking at Gamboa. This portion of the excursion can operate in reverse which is equally satisfying. After disembarking your excursion vessel you will return to Colon by bus. Ditto on it can be a long day! IMO it is worth it, in fact this excursion gives you a unique opportunity to experience passing through the locks from two different points of view. One, on your ship at Gatun Locks and a completely different perspective from the excursion vessel at Miraflores and Pedro Miguel. Your ship will seem to almost overwhelm the lock at Gatun and the locks will seem to overpower you on the Pacific side.

Have not heard even a whisper, hopefully that is good news. Of course this is the off season for cruise ships so maybe this time has been used to get the whatever is needed to make the facility operational.

You certainly will have had one of the best viewing positions to see the Canal when you transit. Never the less it may be interesting to see some of the Canal operation from a shore side perspective. Since it is only a half day tour you are looking at, I wouldn't think a stop at the locks would take up much more than 90 minutes or thereabouts. Things I would be on the lookout for points of interest in a City tour would be a visit to el Casco Antiguo, which is the old walled city which was built after Henry Morgan destroyed Old Panama. The ruins of Old Panama (Panama Viejo) is also something that would be of interest as well.

From the looks of it there are a number of cruisers that enjoy the trip down the river and you can add me to that list. The trip up the river is great as well, the down side of the trip up is the end of the cruise is too near! Enjoyed the trip a number of times and never get tired of it. Besides you can't beat a sailaway that lasts 8 hours!

Depends a lot on just where in Panama City you start from. For example if you are starting from the Casco Antiguo (terry&mike referred to as Old Town), 25 minutes a good estimate. Coming from the airport maybe put on another 25. There is a Radisson on the mainland portion of Ft. Amador, which I have stayed at when it was a Country Inns and Suites. It was decent. I was just looking at a facility called The Beach House on one of the islands at the end of the Causeway in Ft. Amador. That one is practically within walking distance of the cruise port terminal. That's new since I was last there. Beyond that Panama has any number of hotels to fit most everyone's taste and budget.

A stop in Colon, then just disregard the portion that deals with transporting you to the Pacific side after you reach Gatun Lake. You still will be transported by bus from the pier to the Pacific side, but everything else remains the same. If you are interested in seeing the Canal this is the best of the Canal excursions. Since you will actually pass through the two locks on the Pacific side along with a passage of Gaillard Cut you will see much more of the Canal than you would with a shore side visit to any of the locks. The bus ride back and forth will provide with view of the country side as well.

From the Vision....

EM, I knew the yearbooks were on line, I just couldn't find them. I had been looking in my own yearbook for the info. Have a look here... http://gozonian.org/yearbooks/z62/image_197.html The younger... http://gozonian.org/yearbooks/z62/image_141.html

I found Jay, he was a sophomore at the time, that would have made him in the same class as mcmarya's husband. It appears the family may have left the Zone after the 1962 school year since I can't find any reference of him in the '63 or '64 yearbooks. End of the school year was always a popular time for families to relocate.

We have to... they don't make them anymore!😉 They just concluded a Panama Canal reunion this past weekend in Orlando. There were around 2000 in attendance. Some of the usual suspects at the pool.

Found her! It appears from the list of school activities listed in the '62 yearbook, she spent the entire 4 years and graduated Balboa High School. Can't say I recall her, while BHS wasn't a huge school, it was a good size. Our graduating class was just under 300 students. The student population of the BHS and Cristobal High Schools (Atlantic side) came from several groups. The largest would have been the children of Canal employees, closely followed by the dependent children of the military. The Canal Zone Schools also accepted the children of contractors that primarily provided additional support to the Canal. Minister's families would have been included in this group. To round it all out there was a significant number of Panamanian families that did not have any direct connection to the Canal were able to send their children to schools in the Canal Zone. A pretty diverse group of students passed through Canal Zone schools.

Ha! I wish!! BHS '62.

Have not used Celebrity for this excursion, but all the cruise lines use the same excursion boats and operate in the same manner. Basically this tour is offered for cruises that are making a partial transit of the Atlantic Locks or just making a port call at Colon. In the case of the partial transit cruise you will tender off the ship once you pass through the locks and reach Gatun Lake. From there you will be transported by bus to the Pacific side where you will board the excursion vessel which will take you through the original set of locks and Gaillard (Culebra) Cut. After the cruise portion of the excursion you will be bused back to Colon where you will re-board the ship. This is an excellent excursion that gives you a good look at the particularly if you are on a partial transit or just a port call at Colon. Happy to try and answer any specific questions.

If you are staying at a hotel in the Casco Antiguo I think you best bet would see what the hotel could offer.

The partial transits are great cruises and I highly recommend them, but a full transit is the best. Enjoy!

It's a small world after all! I grew up there also, went to school in the Zone and worked for the Canal. I had given the bridge commentary as well as a Canal lecture on a couple of cruises just before that "ill" wind blew in.

Yup, made perfect sense🙂. As you pointed out, the actual tolls for the transit are extracted from the taxes and fees portion. On Canal cruises the taxes and fees being as much as they are wind up being a chunk of the overall cruise price. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to any Canal cruisers! I think the biggest driver of the basic fare is whatever the cruise line believes what they can charge based on the time of year, demand and other such considerations. Basic fare prices can be all over the map, I was also looking at Celebrity (which wasn't included in my not so all encompassing survey) and they were $2800pp for an 11 day partial!! For that price I would expect to take Capt. McCue's cat home for a visit.

I came to the same basic conclusion as you did EM. So having an excuse to look at some Canal itineraries, I looked at three cruise lines and their fares. I tried comparing partials with partial and full transits of approximately the same number of days. Also I just looked at itineraries, not the number of times that itinerary was offered. Some of the itineraries were a once a season as shifting to or from Alaska and many of the itineraries were offered several times during the Canal "season." With all that in mind here is my completely unscientific, highly opinionated conclusion.😄 The cruise line I found that had the biggest difference in fares was Princess. A full transit of the original locks on the Island Princess was $1200. While the fare on ships using the new locks came in at right around $1000. There were many more full transits available on the ships that needed to use the new locks and only one full transit on a ship using the original locks. Perhaps a little supply and demand coming into play?? I also looked at NCL and Carnival. On these two lines there was less of a difference between cruises that used the original locks and those that needed to transit the new locks. The only trend I could easily spot was the original locks tended to run a little more, nothing huge, usually less than a $100pp. It used to be fairly simple to determine what the toll would be for any given ship at either of the locks. The original locks was $138 per passenger berth and $148 per passenger berth at the new locks. Now that they have returned to calculating the toll based on Panama Canal Tons it is less straight forward. In any event the price per PC Ton is higher at the new locks. One other thing that crossed my mind, is perhaps StevenUS is looking at fares on ships that have cabins for singles. I now some of the larger, newer ships that would use the new locks do have some single cabins that are not burdened with the dreaded single supplement. Maybe that is skewing fares higher at the original locks for him??

There certainly has been a lot of changes, some of them spectacularly wonderful and some not so much. I am sure you will be amazed at the transformation. IIRC wasn't the community theater at the end of the causeway called Surfside? Saw several productions there as well.

I just happened to run across this fairly recent aerial photo on FB this morning of the islands at the end of the causeway on the Pacific side at Ft. Amador where the cruise terminal pier is located. To put things in perspective to those not familiar with the area, these 3 islands sit about 4 miles offshore and are connected to the mainland by a causeway originally constructed for Canal purposes. The Canal channel is almost directly below the camera. Anyone wishing to learn a little more of these seemingly peaceful islands past, have a look at the included link. Briefly, Ft. Amador was the mainland portion and the islands were known as Ft. Grant. Ft. Grant would be the site of the coastal defense artillery for the Canal, consisting of 6" and 14" rifles along with 12" mortars all built into the islands. While the batteries and emplacements are still there, the artillery pieces were removed shortly after WW 2. Flamenco Island was home for Hawk missiles during the 60s. https://www.denix.osd.mil/cr/archives/historic/historic-structures-districts-and-landscapes-historic-contexts-archives/report-131/70_A History of Fort Amador and Fort Grant - The Former Panama Canal .pdf

I've been lured and caught😉! I presume Pacific Cruise Terminal is the "official" moniker of the new pier and terminal at Ft. Amador. In any case there is only one passenger facility for the Pacific side and it is at Ft. Amador. There hasn't been any news on the progress of the terminal, but that probably isn't unexpected since this is the off season for Canal cruises. As far as the number of excursions available, I too think that additional excursions will be added as the sailing date nears

Six years ago today the new locks for the Canal opened for their first paying customer, the MV Cosco Shipping Panama. The ship was renamed for the occasion, previously it was named Andronikos. Attached is a short video highlighting some of the major milestones in the last six years. The Canal in the past has provided English versions for events as this, but so far no English edition has been offered. Some of the major takeaways are... 46% of the vessels transiting are container ships, 22% are gas carriers, 96% of the world's maritime fleet is able to use the Canal, more than 17000 transits have been completed using the new locks and more than 50% of the total Canal tonnage and income is generated by the new locks.

Here's the trolley route, passes a variety of downtown businesses.

It's fairly easy to get to from the Colon 2000 pier, about a 20 min ride perhaps. If you are docking in Ft. Amador, the Agua Clara locks is more like 1.5 hours away. Don't have a good feel for the cost, but a starting point would probably be somewhere around $20-25/hr, depending an what you want. I would recommend engaging the cab for the complete trip. While they could drop you off, finding a cab to take you back could be a challenge.