NautiCat63

Thanks to both Essiesmom and BillB48! That is pretty compelling proof—a picture is worth a thousand words! 🙂

Thank you BillB48! You are clearly very knowledgeable and this information really made my day! I know you cannot predict 100% but given your understanding of how the system works, your rationale makes complete sense, and it gives me a lot of confidence that we will be able to experience the original locks! Yay! By the way, your response is the most pertinent and comprehensive current information I’ve found on this topic (especially regarding Serenade OTS in particular), and I’ve done a fair amount of researching over the past week! Considering that a lot of people have similar questions, it’s odd that this wouldn’t be included somewhere on the Royal Caribbean website, but it isn’t, which makes your input that much more valuable! Thank you very much for taking the time to respond—I appreciate it so much!

We will be on the Serenade OTS in November, 2023 (11/21/23 departure). We definitely would like the experience of seeing the old historic locks since this will be our first Panama Canal cruise. I booked the cruise thinking the ship would definitely be using the old locks but now I’m not so sure. I saw a previous post saying that this ship fits through the old locks but just barely. Is it possible to know if the ship will use the old locks? Thanks in advance for any input!