"Pacific Cruise Terminal" - Panama City

[kochleffel]

I need help understanding the itinerary for a Panama Canal cruise that I've booked. It's a one-way cruise from Miami to Fuerte Amador. (Either you fly back from Panama, or you book it B2B with a one-way in the other direction.)

 

The itinerary shows Panama City, Pacific Cruise Terminal, as a port of call for the next-to-last day. The day after that, disembarkation is at Fuerte Amador. Are they the same place, or...? NCL offers no excursions for Panama City on that next-to-last day.

 

[dmwnc1959]

Someone asked this exact same question recently over on the Panama forum... hope this helps.

 

 

[kochleffel]

5 minutes ago, dmwnc1959 said:

Someone asked this exact same question recently over on the Panama forum... hope this helps.

 

 

 

Thank you. The thread started in 2023, and the most recent post bumped it up after the last time I checked. From other posts, I think that more has been completed at Fuerte Amador but it's all still rather up in the air and likely to change by the time I'm there. This sort of thing is annoying and it feels like NCL is being coy about it.

 

[dmwnc1959]

1 minute ago, kochleffel said:

 

Thank you. The thread started in 2023, and the most recent post bumped it up after the last time I checked. From other posts, I think that more has been completed at Fuerte Amador but it's all still rather up in the air and likely to change by the time I'm there. This sort of thing is annoying and it feels like NCL is being coy about it.

 

Panama City, Panama doesn't actually have a cruise terminal in town, the only one that they do have is where everybody docks and that's in Fuerte Amador. There was some comment I believe in the other thread saying that you could not disembark early though a ship is staying overnight? Even though NCL may not offer tours, look at Viator, they'll have plenty of options. I've done some research with them and their tours and pricing seems fair. 

[njhorseman]

5 minutes ago, kochleffel said:

 

Thank you. The thread started in 2023, and the most recent post bumped it up after the last time I checked. From other posts, I think that more has been completed at Fuerte Amador but it's all still rather up in the air and likely to change by the time I'm there. This sort of thing is annoying and it feels like NCL is being coy about it.

 

Here's a different thread where I had provided an answer to a similar question just yesterday:

I'm not sure why you think NCL is being coy. It's no different than their describing Port Canaveral as Orlando or Civitavecchia as Rome. It's a common practice in the cruise industry to use the nearest recognizable city's name in conjunction with the name of the actual cruise port where the ship will be docking.

[kochleffel]

6 minutes ago, njhorseman said:

Here's a different thread where I had provided an answer to a similar question just yesterday:

Thank you.

 

6 minutes ago, njhorseman said:

I'm not sure why you think NCL is being coy. It's no different than their describing Port Canaveral as Orlando or Civitavecchia as Rome. It's a common practice in the cruise industry to use the nearest recognizable city's name in conjunction with the name of the actual cruise port where the ship will be docking.

Which is also somewhat dishonest, but the information is usually not concealed. In this case they are also using the name of a terminal that appears not to exist. Where a ship overnights at a port, cruise lines usually just say that.

Edited May 30 by kochleffel

[njhorseman]

21 minutes ago, kochleffel said:

Which is also somewhat dishonest, but the information is usually not concealed. In this case they are also using the name of a terminal that appears not to exist. Where a ship overnights at a port, cruise lines usually just say that.

The Pacific Cruise Terminal does exist. It's in Fuerte Amador a few miles from Panama City and it's where you'll be docked.

I don't see NCL being intentionally deceptive here...it's just bad wording on their part. Sort of like the nonsense about disembarkation/embarkation times they had (maybe still do ) on their website giving a two hour time frame when that was intended to apply only to embarkation at the start of the cruise and final disembarkation at the end. The wording made it sound like it also applied to port calls.

[kochleffel]

28 minutes ago, njhorseman said:

I don't see NCL being intentionally deceptive here...it's just bad wording on their part. Sort of like the nonsense about disembarkation/embarkation times they had (maybe still do ) on their website giving a two hour time frame when that was intended to apply only to embarkation at the start of the cruise and final disembarkation at the end. The wording made it sound like it also applied to port calls.

 

Yes - we see that confusion fairly regularly.

 

Thinking about port names: I don't consider it deceptive to write "Rome (Civitavecchia)" or "Athens (Piraeus)" since those are the ports of those cities, and people who haven't embarked from there before might not know. "Orlando (Cape Canaveral)" isn't quite the same, because Cape Canaveral is not actually the Port of Orlando. Rather, Orlando is the main airport for getting to Cape Canaveral, although I think that Melbourne is closer (fewer flights) and I would likely fly to Sanford (nonstop from where I live).

 

In this case, it would be clearer to write "Panama City (Fuerte Amador)" and label the first one as overnight and the second as disembarkation.