nukester

[nukester]

Doing Panama Canal in Jan on Jewel of the seas.......Anyone have suggestions for Canal i.e. stay on ship or tour.......Preference is to see the canal so it looks like staying on and going thru is best... ALso anyone ever been on Jewel....Menus available for 10 day.

Thanks

john

[TEXASMUNK]

You will enter Gatun Locks around 6-7 am. Several hours later you will anchor in Gatun Lake, only those passengers on RCI tours can disembark. The tours are met in a private yacht club with no access to public transportation, taxi's etc. NOT within walking distance of any populated areas.

 

If you stay on, several hours later the hsip will go back through the locks and you will dock and wait for the tours to return later in the day. There is a port shopping are wher eyou dock. It is recommended you NOT venture into the town area, it is a working port and NOT a tourist friendly area.

 

You might want to consider: Taking the ferry ride through the rest of the canal. Buses will take to further up the canal, you will board a ferry boat and continue through the canal, be matched up with several other ships and go through the pacific side locks then dock, board buses for the ride back to the Ship.

 

Or..

 

Take the train to Panama City, makes for an interesting "tourist" kinda day.

 

Note, it is HOT and HUMID in Panama 365 days a year so you will hear people "complain" about it being HOT and HUMID...DUH! :-)

 

The ferry ride gives you a true perspective on the difficulty of building the canal. We have done it before and will do it again. A memorable day.

[wrp96]

If you are really interested in the Canal, then take the Panama Canal by Ferry tour. After the ship has gone through the Gatun Locks, you tender off the ship and are bussed to meet the ferry. You then continue the rest of the way through the canal by ferry. It's a long day, but you truly get to see the entire canal including the navigation signals, etc.

[mamacat3]

Come join the M&M thread!!

[cb at sea]

We saw all we needed/wanted to see of the canal from the ship! While you're in the lake, waiting to turn around and head back, a good number of the passengers will be off the ship, meaning that the ship itself will have few crowds! Makes for a lovely (albeit, hot) day!!! If you do stay on the ship, by roaming around, and seeing the canal passage from different perspectives, you'll get the full flavor! View from canal level on deck 4 or 5 (or wherever the promenade is!!) Do that on both sides of the ship! Check out the canal from the bow and stern--each area will give you a totally different "feel" for this amazing engineering feat!

It's really not necessary to pay money for an excursion (and they all last at least 5-8 hours!!!! Waaay too long!) When you begin to enter the canal, a navigator will be onboard, on the PA system giving you all the info you'll ever need about the canal, it's operation, it's history...everything!

When the ship does the return back to the pier, that's when the excursions will meet back up with the ship.

[wrp96]

If you stay on the ship, all you see is one set of locks. The canal is much, much more than a set of locks.