When to book a Panama Canal partial transit?

[doublin9]

We want to go the first week of February, 2013 for a partial transit to the canal. The prices now are higher than they were a few months ago! Should we book now or wait to see if they go down at the last minute? Of course, in hindsight, the trip should have been booked months ago. (:

[CruiserBruce]

If you look around the boards, you will find this type of question asked almost daily...

 

Summary: You can always wait until the last minute, if:

 

Type, location and level of cabin doesn't really matter to you,

 

You understand that the ship may sell out and there won't be cabins available, thus you don't have a cruise to go on, and

 

Realize savings on late booked cruises may be totally eaten up by higher late booked airfares.

 

Some people take the chance, while others have preferences for level, type and location of cabin, and assure themselves of having a cruise by booking early. By the way, most cruise lines will get you the new, lower fare if you book early, and the fare goes down prior to final payment.

 

By the way, if fares are going up, it indicates there is demand for the cruise. Thus a last minute sale is much less likely. And Canal cruises are expensive, as the ships pay huge fees to go through the Canal.

[Keith1010]

I would book it sooner rather than later.

 

To enjoy the canal you want to spend as much time outdoors on the open decks.

 

Keith

[GradUT]

In October 2009, we decided to go on a partial transit Panama Canal cruise. We wanted to book for February, but all the balcony cabins on the ships sailing that month were already taken. Because we really wanted a balcony for a Panama Canal cruise (even a partial transit one), we had to go in April. This was fine, but just a whole lot hotter/humid than it would have been in February.

 

Since you may soon run into the same problem as we did (and for all the reasons given by Keith and Bruce), I would book now.

[doublin9]

Thanks all for your suggestions. We just booked and are very excited about the trip! We're also booking the Royal for next November in a week or so. Don't want to get skunked again!

[SSG978]

Along with one other couple, we're interested in a cruise out of either Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, with a partial transit of the Panama Canal. The problem is we have to go during the early summer. However, in search the boards and cruise sites, it appears that the lines don't head down there during this period of the calendar. Is this so? If so, why?

 

Thanks,

SSG978

 

p.s. we've all cruised together several times to the Caribbean and Alaska.

[CruiserBruce]

The Canal cruise season is late September to mid May. No cruise ship I have heard of goes in the summer.

 

The beginning and end of the cruise "season" is determined by repositioning of ships= to/from the Alaska season, to/from the Caribbean season. Crusiing in between has to do mostly with the saturation of the Caribbean market in the winter months.

 

Not cruising the Canal in summer may have to do with weather. First, very high heat, not just in the Canal, but in the Caribbean and the Pacific sides. Additionally June starts the hurricane season. Hurricanes don't affect the Canal much, but both the Pacific and Caribbean are affected greatly by hurricanes in this time frame.

[BillB48]

The partial transit season generally is from November through April. As far as I am aware of, only Princess and HAL are offering that cruise. During the May til November period these lines will have ships in Alaska or over in Europe. Even Celebrity and RCI who are not doing partial transits at this time will abandon the longer Caribbean cruises to a some degree during this time frame as well.

[tropicbird]

Just a note about the weather in Panama, as some potential misinformation was noted in a couple of previous posts. It is a misnomer that it is hotter in Panama during the summer than other times of the year. This is probably beacuse many of the posters live in higher latitudes and presume that the seasonality we enjoy is replicated in other areas.

 

Panama is only 8-10 degrees north of the equator, solidly in the tropics. One thing about the tropics (one of the defining features in fact) is that the average seasonal temperature change is less than the average daily temperature range. In short, the weather is about the same year round. June through August are actually cooler than March-May (the "hottest" time of the year for, say, Colon), but the difference is 1 degree C, and the only reason this is the case is that there tends to be less cloud cover in the Pacific coastal "dry season" that runs from mid-December to April-ish.

 

So weather is not the reason that the Canal touring season is what it is, it is, as noted earlier, because during the summer the ships that might be assigned canal routes are instead in Europe and Alaska. The winter season has a surplus of ships in the Caribbean and allows for more cruises outside of the standard 7-night "milk runs" to the Eastern or Western Caribbean.