Which Ship To Select

[Len3]

My husband and I want to take a full transit cruise. I'd appreciate thoughts and ideas on which cruise ship to take and best time of year to do this cruise.:rolleyes:

[Len3]

I really need some help on this one. Can any past cruisers make some suggestions? Should we take a "partial transit" or a "full transit"? What ship, etc.

[wwinfl91]

We did a full transit from the west coast to the east coast a couple of years ago on HAL's Veendam. A full transit does both sets of locks where partial transit does either the east or west coast locks and spends time in the lake.

 

Generally to take a full transit you will be actually taking a repositioning cruise either from the west to the Caribbean or the other way. Ships usually do this in March, April and May from East to West and again in the fall West to East. The reason is ships spend the summer doing the Alaskan routes and the Winter in the Caribbean.

 

You are looking at a 14-17 day cruise to do the full transit. There are a few other ships that occasionally do full transit cruises usually as part of a world cruise.

 

Hopefully this will help. If you have more questions about our cruise fire away and I will try to answer.

 

Someday I want to do another full transit this time from East to West.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[Nitemare]

Len:

 

Without knowing anything about you, folks will all vote for their own favorite ships. Tell us a little about yourself, what other cruises have you taken/enjoyed, what age group are you, how active are you, etc.

 

In other words, the same questions a Travel Agent would ask to help you pick the right cruise.

 

With the partial transits, you leave/return from the same port so you don't have to worry about one-way airfare, so you can save a bundle that way.

[edste]

If you decide to do the full transit cruise check with Jet Blue airlines. They were about 33% cheaper than what Princess quoted us. Edna

[SailAways]

We are presently researching the Panama Canal cruises for May/April 2007.

We would not select a fall cruisie due to hurricane season threats.

 

So far, we have prices from Princess and HAL. We are leaning towards Princess because of the Princess Choice Dining option rather than the regimented Traditional Dining.

 

I believe the NCL Sun will have a Panama cruise in 2007, but so far, have not been able to find the information.

NCL would be our first choice, as we have sailed it before, and loved the Freestyle dining and dress codes.

 

We are going with a full transit - 15 to 17 days. This is a once in a lifetime event for us, so we want to do all of the locks, and see the entire area.

 

Good luck in your search - we will be watching these boards all year to see what others have to offer too.

[spicy1]

Has anyone done the Panama Canal on The Coral Princess? I really need some info on it for my next cruise.

[travelaway]

We did a full transit East to West in Nov. 3 yrs. ago on Celebrity Infinity and it was great. I am going Feb. 2007 on partial transit out of Miami on RCCL. This is travel with people not on the 1st. cruise, we didn't want to travel to ports in Mexico as we have not enjoyed those ports in the past. We will be in Aruba 2 days, which we really like. I'm looking forward to just cruising Lake Gatun.