Celebrity excursions - Colon, Panama

We are on the Ultimate Caribbean Cruise with Celebrity starting March 12th. Wondering what advise you all can provide on their excursions in Colon, Panama. My DH would says he would like to do the Locks but I know him and he does not want too much detail on the engineering of it all, more an "overview" of the workings. The City Tour says that it is "Strenuous" on the physical activity level, not sure what that would mean on a non-adventurous tour.

Any info past visitors that have done any of these tours would be much appreciated.

While not having read the tour description, when we did the city excursion there was about a half to three fourths of a mile of very leisure walking. Don't if that is the same one or not but it was not strenuous and if you did not want to do the walk you could just stay with the bus.

Again as far as visiting the locks. I really don't know what exactly the tour you are considering encompasses, but when I visited the locks it certainly was more overview and not overly technical.

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We are on the Ultimate Caribbean Cruise with Celebrity starting March 12th. Wondering what advise you all can provide on their excursions in Colon, Panama. My DH would says he would like to do the Locks but I know him and he does not want too much detail on the engineering of it all, more an "overview" of the workings. The City Tour says that it is "Strenuous" on the physical activity level, not sure what that would mean on a non-adventurous tour.

Any info past visitors that have done any of these tours would be much appreciated.

Had time to sift through X's shore excursions and I think the tour you are referring to is Panama City Tour and Miraflores Locks as it its listed as strenuous. The city portion of the tour is basically what we experienced which is the walking portion in the Casco Antiguo (sometimes referred to Casco Viejo, Colonial Panama or San Felipe district). The walking is in and around the Plaza Francia and Las Bovedas which is mostly flat, there are some stairs involved.

At the Miraflores Locks depending on where the bus discharges passengers, a substantial flight of stairs may be involved as well. I believe they tend to overestimate the activity level on many of these excursions since they are catering to people that may have an extremely varied abilities. Again, the engineering detail is more in the overview category.

Thank you for your time and feedback.

We were on the Jan 29 Reflection cruise that included the Panama Canal "Wonders of Engineering Cruise" - It was a disaster. As usual we had to arrive half an hour in the theater before getting led to the buses. It took a while to load the bus, then a 45 minute drive to the ferry. The buses arrived at the locks two hours before the pilots. We were very lucky to be one of only two buses that offloaded passengers onto the ferry before a Canal agent stopped anyone more getting on the ferry until the pilots arrived. Everyone on the rest of the buses (approximately 10 buses) were kept on the busses until people started complaining they needed bathrooms. The 1 bathroom was quite a distance away and with that many people - it was an hour wait. Those who couldn't wait were using the " lawn"! One man fell and was bleeding - no first aid kit available. People were kept on the busses or allowed only to stand right next to the buses. I watched tour guides on the ferry throw drinks to other tour guides on land - but passengers standing next to the buses nearby got nothing. The food for lunch arrived when we did -on an old truck that probably did not have refrigeration. It too was forced to wait two hours before the food could be loaded on the ferry. We were afraid to eat it. The transit itself was very interesting - we went through two locks with a tanker following us. We saw the entrance to the new canal. Celebrity does not have control of the pilots or the actual time of the transit. However, there needs to be better coordination of the wait time in an area with bathroom facilities and beverages. I would only sign up for this trip if you have a lot of patience, want to be treated like a prisoner, and have really good kidneys.