Turtles06

Well, it’s March 8. Waiting for the big reveal. 😂

You don't need to leave a letter or note for the Butler. You can just have a normal conversation with him or her. Works very well. 🙂

You have been given excellent advice above by @njhorseman . You cannot get "the full experience of the Canal" from land. To get the full experience, you need to do a full transit. Even a partial transit would be better than none at all. Perhaps some visuals would help. Below is a map of the Canal, which is approximately 50 miles long. The Miraflores Locks are circled in black. If you stood on the observation deck of the Miraflores Visitor Center (the yellow building on the left in the second photo below), and if you were fortunate to have a ship come through while you were there, you'd have a view of the operation of those lock chambers, but that's about it. A small part of the Canal, and you would not have personally experienced even that. If you cannot because of time/and or money do an actual Canal cruise, I believe you could still fly to Panama, get a hotel, and book a tour on a small vessel that would take you on a partial or full transit. (Please do some research on what's available.) But, to use the title of your thread, you can't really experience the Canal from "onshore."

It would be helpful if you would be more specific. You can certainly "view" the Canal without going on a cruise, but that's all it is, a view. When you say "tour the Canal" on your own, do you mean taking a small, ferry-sized vessel through some of the locks, or do you just mean viewing the Canal (for example, from the Miraflores Visitor Center)? Very different things, and I would not deem the latter an adequate substitute for the former.

Sorry, not so for a lot of us. One of the most popular private tours in Stavanger is the Rodne Fjord Cruise, on which many of us are already booked. This is a boat tour up the Lyesfjord, and a sail past Pulpit Rock. (HAL has a similar tour that costs more than $100 more per person! I can only imagine how much more it will be if HAL has to bus people to Stavanger.) Some of us have already contacted Rodne, and they don't do any pickups (from anywhere), since their tour is a boat ride starting right near the cruise ships in Stavanger. In other words, just walk over. (If you are docked in Stavanger.) I've been checking, and one-way taxi fares to Stavanger from Somanest are about $50 US.

It would be nice, but it's a 20 minute or so drive, and just think how many buses would have to be hired to deal with a 2500-pax ship without making people wait for a really long time. And these are the cruise lines we are talking about, short on cash, cutting back everything they can and raises prices at the same time.

Please head over to the Panama Canal forum, where these tours are discussed all the time. (For purposes of reading and inquiring in that forum, it doesn't matter that this is a ship-sponsored tour, as the cruise lines use the same providers for these tours, and they are very similar.) Also, when you inquire there, please post Celebrity's title and description of the tour. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/54-panama-canal/

The Canal experts over in the Panama Canal forum all report that Colon is a fairly unsafe place and that cruise ship pax should not wander out of the immediate, gated area where the ship docks. Panama City, a real city, is on the Pacific side. Gatun Lake is not the point of the small-boat tour on a partial transit. The point is to go through locks that you haven't gone through. (And this would be especially interesting for pax on a ship that uses the new locks.)

Thanks for your reply and information! The reason I'd asked about walking off the ship is that if we do wind up in Sandnes, we won't be docked at the pier close to the town, but rather at Somaneset, which as I understand it is a few km away. I'm sure we'll need to pre-book a taxi, but what isn't clear to any of us is whether the Somaneset pier is within a commercial port, such that we'll have to take some sort of shuttle bus out of the entire port area, and to where. Thanks again!

Yes, we were on the Gem for 23 nights in Jan/Feb., and it's any two. I believe this policy is now fleet-wide. (Moderno was awful, btw, but I know some folks enjoy it. Cagneys was the best; we ate there four times. Fabulous service.)

That’s a nice itinerary — have a great cruise! We love the Gem, we were just on her for 23 days B2B Panama Canal cruises. The service in Cagney’s— dinner as well as the suite-only meals — was fabulous. And Leo the Concierge is excellent.

If you log into your reservation on line (in your NCL account) and scroll down on your Vacation Summary page, you’ll find the option that allows only one of you to buy the Unlimited upgrade. (Other ways “in” do make it seem like you both have to upgrade, but you don’t.)

It can’t, but the Getaway’s port call was for tomorrow (March 7j; see Pete’s comment 168 above.

Amber Cove web site port schedule shows the Carnival Celebration and the Getaway there tomorrow (March 7), so it seems to be a mystery why you’re skipping it. https://www.ambercove.com/Port-Schedule.aspx

Thanks so much for your kind words! We've transited the Canal three times now on the Gem, and once on the Jewel, and the bow has always been open, and open to ALL guests. (Very interesting info that @Essiesmom posted above about the Sky; I wonder if she's too small to open the bow.) FWIW: I'm pretty short and it's tough for me to see anything from the bow, especially when it's crowded. And even on the rare occasion when it's not (usually late in the day), it's still tough for me because the rail is so high and you can't get right up to it because there's a bar in front. But I did go down there on the Gem's return northbound transit last month, as the crowds were oddly sparse when we approached the Pedro Miguel Locks and then the Culebra Cut, and did my best to get some photos. Here are a couple.

Wow, pretty scary photo re that tug! Glad no one was hurt!

Thanks for that update! (Re pricing: the current price of $22 includes the service charge on the actual price of about $19. The new price that showed up in my account over the weekend is $29.50, which appears to be $25 plus the service charge. That would make the increase approx $6, or around 31%. We'll see on March 8 what it all is... 🙂 )

Thanks for the reminder that you are on the NS, scheduled for Stavanger on July 23. As I pointed out to you yesterday, the official port mooring plan for July 23 shows the NS docked IN Stavanger, and also it shows it being the only ship there that day, so I'm not sure what you are worried about. (Our situation on the Rotterdam, July 13, is quite different.) Scroll down to the mooring plans for July, click on July 23: https://www.stavangerhavn.no/en/about/documents/mooringplans/

We are booked on a Norway cruise in July aboard the HAL Rotterdam, that is scheduled to dock in Stavanger on July 13. Although HAL hasn't officially announced this yet to everyone affected, there is very good reason to believe (including from the port's official web site) that we will instead be docking at Somaneset pier in Sandnes. Many of us have a fjord cruise booked that morning out of Stavanger, and will want to get there quickly (probably by taxi). Is Somaneset a pier where we can just walk out to the street and meet a cab (pre-booked if possible), or is it a commercial port where we have to take a shuttle bus somewhere to get to the streets, cabs, etc.? And if anyone has any other information about Somaneset and Sandnes, I'd very much appreciate it, thanks!

Not sure when you heard from them, but someone else on our July 1-15 Roll Call today posted this reply from them: ”Thank you for your email. It seems like your ship is arriving in Sandnes at 08:00, our fjord cruise is departing at 10:00 from Stavanger.It takes aprx. 20 minutes driving from Sandnes to Stavanger, so you should manage this very well. There are ordinary buses between these two towns, or perhaps you can organize a taxi if there are many of you from your ship "Rotterdam" that are coming on our fjord cruise to Preikestolen."

Thanks for that information. I hope you are correct. I'm guessing, as I said earlier, that HAL started rolling things out this weekend (March 8 being the stated "launch" date), and posted the new price this weekend, but perhaps not the new menu. We should know soon.

Definitely the right mathematical call. 😊 (We’re on a 21-night cruise, so our HIA gives us one dinner in all three restaurants.)

Thanks so much for those great photos! We had a great trip as well. That was our third full transit of the Canal, and we were doing a B2B, so we turned around with the Gem in Fuerte Amador and went back through the Canal on February 7. We loved those transits as much as our first one. 😊

I appreciate what you are saying about crowds in Stavanger. But many folks are not doing HAL excursions. A number of us, for example, are booked with Rodne Fjord Tours, right there near the dock in Stavanger, for their cruise up Lysefjord, and sailing past Pulpit Rock. (HAL offers something similar but at about $100 more per person. One can only wonder how much more expensive it will be running out of Somaneset.) And lots of us were looking forward to just being able to walk right into Stavanger.

Hi Paul, interesting to learn something new. I've visited San Juan several times, including twice in the last month, and have never heard of "garitas" as transportation (to me they are the iconic sentry boxes 🙂). That said, we didn't see any golf carts running around the streets last month. Doesn't mean they weren't there, but we didn't notice them if they were . . . @DeniseAtBeach we did use Uber in San Juan. Easy and inexpensive. Enjoy your cruise!