Panama Canal…things disappear?

[janetcbl]

We are booked (and paid for) the full transit of the Panama Canal, from LA to Ft. Lauderdale January 3rd, and when I checked today, Leon ( Corininto) Nicaragua,  had completely disappeared from the itinerary….leaving four sea days in a row. Anyone else have this, notice this or know why? Curious….
 

[Mich3554]

14 minutes ago, janetcbl said:

We are booked (and paid for) the full transit of the Panama Canal, from LA to Ft. Lauderdale January 3rd, and when I checked today, Leon ( Corininto) Nicaragua,  had completely disappeared from the itinerary….leaving four sea days in a row. Anyone else have this, notice this or know why? Curious….
 

Nicaragua disappeared from the itinerary last year too on this cruise.  

[junglejane]

I just posted about this on our roll call for the Oct. 24 full transit. I booked my shore excursions on August 8, and booked one of the included tours in Leon. I just logged on to book dining reservations and saw that Leon had disappeared from Day 11. Weirdly, it still shows my confirmed tour on my calendar. A while back Cartagena had disappeared and then reappeared. This is a bit annoying because this cruise is already very heavy on sea days and few ports (6 ports in 18 days -- 5 if Leon is dropped).

[Australia08]

58 minutes ago, janetcbl said:

We are booked (and paid for) the full transit of the Panama Canal, from LA to Ft. Lauderdale January 3rd, and when I checked today, Leon ( Corininto) Nicaragua,  had completely disappeared from the itinerary….leaving four sea days in a row. Anyone else have this, notice this or know why? Curious….
 

We did Panama Canal November 2021 and they canceled Leon then. They said it was because of political problems. I don’t know that any of the cruises have stopped there in the last few years. I’m surprised they still publish it as a stop. 

[BigBee51]

Leon Nicaragua has disappeared from our Oct cruise

[OneSixtyToOne]

Nicaragua has been deemed too politically unstable. Many cruise lines have stopped going there.

The US State Department has issued a travel advisory to “reconsider travel.”

Edited August 15, 2023 by OneSixtyToOne

[Squawkman]

And it disappeared from the January 3, 2024 sailing as well.

[sfocruiser]

Given all the pacific Mexican ports you would think they would add one of those in replacement. rather than add another sea day

[molymoo]

Leon was removed from our December FLL to LA Panama cruise and all I thought was "good riddance" ... not a place I was anxious to spend time in and was happy to have another sea day!  The Panama Canal cruises have lots of sea days ... if you don't like them probably best to reconsider the itinerary.

 

[DrKoob]

All cruise lines are currently having to deal with problems on any Panama Canal voyage. The drought in Panama has made the water levels horribly low. This means fewer ships can pass through on a daily basis and that many ships will have to wait, even though scheduled. The current wait when I checked last night was 165 ships. So if your cruise will go through the Canal, you may have changes. Google "Low Water in Panama Canal," or "Panama Canal slowdown" and see.

[Squawkman]

FWIW, I just received an email from Viking regarding our Panama cruise leaving 1/3/24 - here’s the crux of the issue:

 

The Nicaraguan government has yet to rescind the cruise ship ban introduced as a COVID measure in 2021. All indications are that this ban will remain in place for the 2023 and 2024 season. We will therefore spend a day at sea instead of visiting León (Corinto), Nicaragua.

[junglejane]

18 minutes ago, Squawkman said:

FWIW, I just received an email from Viking regarding our Panama cruise leaving 1/3/24 - here’s the crux of the issue:

 

The Nicaraguan government has yet to rescind the cruise ship ban introduced as a COVID measure in 2021. All indications are that this ban will remain in place for the 2023 and 2024 season. We will therefore spend a day at sea instead of visiting León (Corinto), Nicaragua.

We just got that same email for our 10/24/2023 cruise.

[sfocruiser]

Same for the 12/17 sailing.

[Romocruiser]

I received my email this morning.  It would have been nice to visit Nicaragua — probably the only time in my life that a visit might be possible.  But I agree with others who commented that other ports  should be possible.  Perhaps an over night in Costa Rica or other port in Mexico.  I dont mind sea days, but there sure a whole lot of them on this cruise.  

[janetcbl]

36 minutes ago, Squawkman said:

FWIW, I just received an email from Viking regarding our Panama cruise leaving 1/3/24 - here’s the crux of the issue:

 

The Nicaraguan government has yet to rescind the cruise ship ban introduced as a COVID measure in 2021. All indications are that this ban will remain in place for the 2023 and 2024 season. We will therefore spend a day at sea instead of visiting León (Corinto), Nicaragua.

Same here….we are on the same cruise.

[Baron Barracuda]

Is the PC logjam only impacting ships moving Eastward  from the Pacific to the Atlantic?  We're scheduled to board the Star in LA in three months after she repositions Westward from Florida.  Hope drought conditions don't worsen causing further disruptions.

[Glueharbour71]

We’re doing the LA to Miami on March 1st and received the email today about the changes. I can understand why they cancel Nicaragua but why not replace it with 2 nights at one of the other stops? This cruise doesn’t need more days at sea in my opinion. 

[PasadenaDave]

Hmm, with the suggestions of adding a port stop, it causes me to think…..have port’s become full due to cruise popularity to the point that capacity has been reached?

[chaunceyb]

4 hours ago, janetcbl said:

Same here….we are on the same cruise.

You can't say "covid" on the FB Viking Ocean Travelers page - they removed my post saying it was a violation - the pandemic has made people cuckoo cuckoo😅

[janetcbl]

43 minutes ago, chaunceyb said:

You can't say "covid" on the FB Viking Ocean Travelers page - they removed my post saying it was a violation - the pandemic has made people cuckoo cuckoo😅

Good grief! Your mention was a direct quote from a Viking email….

Edited August 17, 2023 by janetcbl

[chaunceyb]

16 hours ago, janetcbl said:

Good grief! Your mention was a direct quote from a Viking email….

After they removed my post, I posted "....does anyone know why Viking canceled the Leon port stop?", and the Administrator deleted that post also! I opted out of the Viking FB page - in addition to this issue, most of the posts on that page are passenger photos of the places they visit and little content or photos about the ship or river boats.

Edited August 17, 2023 by chaunceyb

[Meander Ingwa]

There are several FB Viking pages sponsored by travelers rather than corporate 

[ericosmith]

Having had a port stop there a number of years back, I would be happy to skip it.  Not a country I ever want to visit again.  

[Ray4Fun]

On 8/15/2023 at 5:30 PM, OneSixtyToOne said:

Nicaragua has been deemed too politically unstable. Many cruise lines have stopped going there.

The US State Department has issued a travel advisory to “reconsider travel.”

 

 

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/nicaragua-travel-advisory.html

 

Maybe just maybe Vikikg is protecting us from drama? Looks like it. 

[CCWineLover]

We did this itinerary way back in March of 2022.

No Nicaragua then either.  Funny thing - no one seemed as upset as this group is.  

Yes - this cruise has a lot of sea days and it was made even more by "missing" Leon.  It sort of never was there in the first place.  Probably Viking should just "Remove it" but when I asked, they said that they carefully state any and all ports and be eliminated or changed at any time - which is no doubt true.

We left Costa Rica for LA and had lots of sea days.  Sadly, a passenger health emergency caused the ship to make a middle of the night drop off in Puerto Vallarta, thus having us arrive in Cabo around dinner time.  People could go ashore for 1-2 hours but all excursions cancelled.  We bowed out, as the view from where we anchored and the sunset was spectacular.  So by the time we got to LA, we had perhaps 7 straight sea days and just one stop from Panama.

 

Central America/Mexico is not really a highlight of these cruises - it is the Panama Canal.  Our thought is that it is almost like a repositioning cruise.  Fortunately our expectations had been set low enough ahead of time.  Having expectations too high or wrong seems to be the cause of most people's angst, understandably so.  Traveling these days is full of unmet expectations, so we've adjusted ours downwards on all trips - else you might as well not travel 🙂