Greetings everyone!
I recently found Cruise Critic and have really been enjoying reading up on everyone's experience and feedback on the Panama Canal. We are looking at doing a full transit repositioning cruise with Royal Caribbean from November 21 – December 5, from Los Angeles to Miami. I had a couple of important questions I was hoping to get some feedback on before we booked.
Should November be avoided because of heavy rain? I read that November is the rainiest month of the year for Panama and was wondering if anyone had done any late November cruises that could possibly speak to this. If it did rain, was it still an enjoyable experience? Is it much like Florida where it rains and then it's sunny pretty quickly after? Has anyone been on the canal and seen it rain the entire time? This is a once and a lifetime experience and we're trying to time it with our daughter's Thanksgiving break.
We would love to try to do a balcony but what would be recommended as far as which side of the ship to be on if we wanted to see the land as we came into the ports of all the cities? This is a newbie question I'm sure, but does the port side mean that in general, that's where the land will be in most cases? We don't want to be docked at the other ports along the cruise and be facing the ocean - we'd prefer to face the land.
Does anyone have any tips for first-time cruising for our daughter's first cruise at 8 years old being this long?
Thank you all in advance.
