Outhaul

Thanks so much! During the pandemic and my early days on TikTok, I followed Captain Kate as she navigated the entire pandemic crises. As much as anything it taught me a whole lot about the "non hotel" part of a cruise ship. How much fun to catch up with her. If she's still driving the Beyond this coming January, I'll put on my best fan boy face and deliver a salute.

This is perfect! Thanks. How great to learn from someone who has done the same thing our captain will be doing. It makes total sense and sounds like a great day. We'll need to see if one of the tours provides a worthwhile dockside experience. I can't imagine we'll ever have the opportunity to do a canal transit, so we want to take as mush as possible away with us.

Thanks for managing expectations. As we are on the Beyond, it is what it is. We may book a shore excursion to see if we can a little more close up and personal with the older locks.

Thanks so much. Perfect information, which makes sense. Definitely a partial transit, based of bookending stops at Cartagena and Aruba. It sounds like excursioners get to experience the Aqua Clara(?) lock transit into Gatun, but miss the return trip.

Question for anyone who has done the ONE-DAY PANAMA/COLON DESTINATION with Celebrity: We are BOOKED ON Celebrity Beyond's 11-day in January 2025.The description of what happens during Panama's Day 5 is very sketchy. The itinerary only mentions that the canal is a marvel of engineering and that the ship will be docked in Colon for 4 hours for great shopping. We cannot find an indication where the ship is located or doing when not docked in Colon. Also, there are excursions offered which run as long as 8 hours. This implies passengers are taken off the ship while it is not docked. It also may imply that we would miss some shipboard experiences or sights while on an excursion. Grateful for any information to unscramble our brains. Any sorry for the lengthy screed.

Wondering about availability and breadth of cellphone and broadband service from any cruisers with recent Alaska experience. We're planning our first CruiseTour for next summer. Verizonwireless (our provider) states it has 4G LTE coverage in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau (which we would sort of expect). But it also claims coverage along the entire "Denali" corridor from Fairbanks through Anchorage and on to Whittier, along with Skagway, and Ketchikan, where the cruise portion docks. Relatives and friends are already on our case about "reachability". We're wondering whether we can depend on our phones to send/receive texts and voicemail; or if we need to sign up for onboard WiFi with whichever carrier we end up using. Any thoughts or comments gratefully received.