CHOOSE YOUR CRUISE

     Panama Canal cruises are almost always part of a multiple-destination cruise that include Caribbean and/or Pacific coast ports.  However, you can do a partial transit where your cruise ship sails to Colon (see map), The ships that are doing a partial transit will usually lock through Gatun Locks and turn around in the lake, locking back down Gatun Locks and then stopping at the Cristobal pier.  After some shore excursion opportunities which could include a land day trip into the tropical rainforests, your cruise ship backtracks to the Caribbean.
     Cruises that offer Colon don't necessarily go through any of the Canal. I know Carnival uses this facility for its' stops in Colon.

     The full transit is where you completely pass through the Panama Canal, from the Atlantic to the Pacific - or the reverse. You visit ports on both coasts. While this passage could be part of a New York to San Francisco cruise - or even a round-the-world cruise, most cruises pass through the Panama Canal departing from Fort Lauderdale or San Juan and calling at a number of Caribbean Islands like Aruba and Cartagena, Columbia before ending the voyage in Los Angeles or San Francisco. It combines the full transit of the Canal, including the Gatun Locks, Gaillard Cut, Centennial Bridge, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks, under the Bridge of the Americas and on to Panama City with a second day in Panama at Fuerte Amador. This extra day gives travelers time to explore Panama further with excursions such as riding the Panama Canal Railway, exploring a rainforest, visiting an authentic Embera Indian village or touring bustling Panama City.

     Since 2005, I had already been on several partial Panama cruises.  As a former "Yooper" (i.e., Upper Michigan native) I crossed many times through the Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan/Canada locks.  And also experienced The Kiel Canal (in Germany known as the Nord-Ostsee Kanal).  Truthfully, passage through locks don't interest me that much.  Once you see how they work--you've seen them all.  Well--almost!  I was persuaded by my friend that this would be his favorite cruise.. "inspiring, emotional, beautiful and a tribute to the determination and vision of the human race in engineering." Of course.. this was a guy talking! My favorite cruises are to islands, cities, and countries to be inspired by people, history, culture and architecture. I knew that we were going to have many hours of looking at barren banks of the waterway.  Thus, I planned my itinerary.. I was going to lose at least 7 pounds that I gained from our last 9 cruises (in one year!) before we got to the West Coast.  I signed up the first day with the ship's Physical Fitness Trainer for the Burn Fat Fast Program.   And it was costly... but I figured not as costly as some of my casino investments!  More on this later...   

How It Works

     Some interesting facts: despite how it may look on a map, the Canal runs northwest toward the Atlantic Ocean, and southeast toward the Pacific Ocean. It is 51 miles in length with locks, gates and dams.  It's nearly 8,000 miles shorter to traverse the Canal than to go around South America.  You will pass through and over the Isthmus of Panama from the Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean in less than twelve hours experiencing the Gatun Locks, Gaillard Cut, the Centennial Bridge, Pedro Miguel Locks, Miraflores Locks and Bridge of Americas, before you get to Panama City.  Between the Caribbean and the Pacific, a ship is lifted 85ft, and then lowered again by 31ft.

     Ships are guided through the canal by towing locomotives (mules), although they move under their own power. Each transit takes between 8 to 12 hours, and costs the cruise lines a significant amount of money. The vessels are charged according to various measurements: displacement of water, type of cargo, weight of cargo, etc., (too complicated to mention here).  For example; a toll of $141,344.91 was charged to the cruise ship Crown Princess.  In 2008 the Disney Magic paid a record $331,200 dollars for just one transit of the canal.  Ships can schedule a time for transit through the Canal as they have priority.  
     Not all ships can cruise through the Canal because of size or other constraints.  Yet, today the Canal offers passage to approximately 14,000 ships a year. Princess passengers have two vessels specifically built for Panama Canal cruising (Coral Princess and Island Princess) as do Holland America, Celebrity, Crystal, Oceania, and Regent. The sides of these ships just barely clear the massive locks that use an average of 52 million gallons of water in each chamber as they eventually lift and lower vessels as they pass from the Caribbean to the Pacific during the transit. The current project to widen the canal and increase it with the third set of locks is costing somewhere around $1.6 billion and is due to be finished by 2014.
 

 HISTORY

     The construction of the Panama Canal was started in 1882 by the French with a workforce of over 10,000 men but the project failed due to financial problems and the deaths of over 22,000 workers. The United States took over the project in 1904, and the Canal was opened on 15th August 1914 reducing the number of nautical miles between San Francisco and New York by 7,900!  It was owned and operated by the USA until noon on 31 December 1999 when Panama assumed full responsibility for the administration, operation and maintenance of the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone. 

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