Advice needed on excursion- Carnival or Mario

[starchild traveler]

Hello all,

 

I have been reading many reviews, but I still can't decide which excursion to book in Panama. My husband and I will be on the Carnival Liberty on 8/4/07. :confused:

 

I have it narrowed down to 3 choices:

 

1) Carnival's Panama City Tour

2) Carnival's Panama Canal Tour

3) Mario's Indian Village/Gatan Locks/Waterfall (CL007)

 

We definitely want to see the canal, but I'm not sure if we want to spend our whole day on the ferry. I am really interested in Mario's tour. I am concerned about getting back to the ship on time (7-4 in port) and feeling too rushed at the locks. Has anyone taken this tour with Mario recently? The Panama City tour also seems to have a lot of variety. Please help!:o

 

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated to help out an indecisive traveler- thanks!

[Randy & Kathy]

Hello all,

 

I have been reading many reviews, but I still can't decide which excursion to book in Panama. My husband and I will be on the Carnival Liberty on 8/4/07. :confused:

 

I have it narrowed down to 3 choices:

 

1) Carnival's Panama City Tour

2) Carnival's Panama Canal Tour

3) Mario's Indian Village/Gatan Locks/Waterfall (CL007)

 

We definitely want to see the canal, but I'm not sure if we want to spend our whole day on the ferry. I am really interested in Mario's tour. I am concerned about getting back to the ship on time (7-4 in port) and feeling too rushed at the locks. Has anyone taken this tour with Mario recently? The Panama City tour also seems to have a lot of variety. Please help!:o

 

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated to help out an indecisive traveler- thanks!

 

Last Nov. my DW and I took Mario's CL007 tour and just loved it. Each place that the tour took us was different, but so special. We had an ample amount of time at each stop to see what we wanted to, then we were on our way again. We got back to the dock at the same time as the other tour buses and it was easily 30 minutes prior to the ship's scheduled departure, we did not feel rushed at all. The staff, Lori and Ricardo, were just the best and were wonderful to us all. Don't worry about the time, let them do that, just look at the wonderful scenery, take pictures and enjoy. This is a place that we had never been to before and this trip left us with a wonderful collection of memories of Panama.

Below my signature is a smugmug link, click on that and you will find a sample of some of the pictures that we took while there. Just think, next month that could be you in those pictures. Good luck with your decision.

Randy

[starchild traveler]

Hi Randy,

 

Thanks for sharing your experience and photographs with me. They look amazing! I'm glad to hear that you had such an enjoyable trip with Mario. I noticed that you also went on the okeydokey tour in Costa Rica. I have just booked that same tour with Charlie.

 

Thanks again for your help,

Kristen

[Vernoncruise]

Hi, Kristin, we are on the same sailing! We booked the okie dokie tour in Costa Rica (without the zipline). We also are on a My Friend Mario tour in Panama. I originally booked the all day one with the waterfall, but then changed to the rainforest, Panama Canal, and fort when I emailed Mario regarding time concerns (at his suggestion). I'm still sort of quesitoning our decision, as feedback from the Carnival Panama City tour has also been good...

[starchild traveler]

Hi Jackie and Jim,

 

It's nice to "meet" someone from our ship. I'm getting really excited! I e-mailed Mario late last night (actually early this morning). I mentioned my time concerns as well. We'll see what he has to say. I didn't really check into the rainforest tour with him because I really was intrigued by the Indian village. It's a hard choice, then again choices are always hard for me. But, even my husband agrees that they all sound good. Like you, I have read good things about the Panama City tour through Carnival. Well...I'll see what Mario says...

 

Kristen

[tammyp1]

We were on the Carnival Liberty in June and did the Mario Indian Village, and Panama Canal Gatun Locks tour. Do not use Mario. The ship was scheduled to leave at 4:00 and we were required to be back by 3:30. Mario got us back to the ship at 3:55. After a day of lies, stress, and wasted time, we got to see the Gatun Locks for approximately 3 minutes. There was even another Mario bus that got back later than us. Fortunately Carnival held the ship otherwise those folks would be flying home. Mind you Carnival did not hold the ship for Mario. Mario was just lucky. I'm going to post much more detail about our excursion on these boards so everyone knows.

[starchild traveler]

Thanks for posting this! Sounds like everyone does make their ship, but I'm not sure we want to "just" make it or count on the fact that Carnival will leave late. Perhaps I should stick to debating my first two options. Too bad because the tour really does sound wonderful!

[cruiser620]

Hello all,

 

I have been reading many reviews, but I still can't decide which excursion to book in Panama. My husband and I will be on the Carnival Liberty on 8/4/07. :confused:

 

I have it narrowed down to 3 choices:

 

1) Carnival's Panama City Tour

2) Carnival's Panama Canal Tour

3) Mario's Indian Village/Gatan Locks/Waterfall (CL007)

 

We definitely want to see the canal, but I'm not sure if we want to spend our whole day on the ferry. I am really interested in Mario's tour. I am concerned about getting back to the ship on time (7-4 in port) and feeling too rushed at the locks. Has anyone taken this tour with Mario recently? The Panama City tour also seems to have a lot of variety. Please help!:o

 

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated to help out an indecisive traveler- thanks!

 

We just returned from Panama, and I had considered the same tours that you mentioned. I really wanted to do the Mario tour, but after reading several postings about no time at the locks and the stress and worry about getting back late, I finally decided to do the Carnival Panama City tour. I don't know whether I made the right decision, but I can answer any questions you might have about the Panama City tour.

[annej]

Starchild - we chose the Panama City Tour through the ship. I was thinking about Mario, but the "timing" made me a little nervous. We chose the City Tour as it seemed to offer the most variety and "history" which my husband was most interested in.

 

My husband and I are on the August 4th sailing, maybe we will meet on board

 

Anne

[starchild traveler]

Thanks everyone for your replies. This is board has been so helpful! Cruiser 620- what were the highlights on the Panama City tour? I think I will be booking this one soon.

[bspeakin]

Our family will also be on the 8/4 sailing & we are unsure what to do in Panama. Guess we better decide soon!

Hope to meet you on the ship.

[cruiser620]

Thanks everyone for your replies. This is board has been so helpful! Cruiser 620- what were the highlights on the Panama City tour? I think I will be booking this one soon.

 

Here's the review I posted in another place:

 

Our Panama City tour was kind of a bummer because of the student demonstration, so I don't know if I can really evaluate it fairly. We went to the Gatun Locks first, and I thought it was really interesting. Seeing the canal is the main reason to go to Panama. We were let off the bus and told to return in 45 minutes. There is a viewing area where we watched a ship go through. Then we left for the drive to Panama City. The scenerary along the way was very similar to what we had seen the previous day in Costa Rica. There were cement block homes with metal roofs and bars on the windows. It took almost 2 hours to reach Panama City. First we drove through the old colonial city which is largely made up of decaying buildings that are being renovated. We got off the bus and the guide took us in a church and then we walked to the town square and looked at some other buildings from the outside. We had a little bit of time to shop in a small store and use their restrooms. We also went to another area with a monument near the French Embassy. From here you could view the Pacific and the Bridge of the Americas and also see the highrise office buildings in new Panama City. This part of the tour was okay, but nothing really exciting. I'm not sure what I really expected. I mean it's not like visiting a European City where you see all kinds of interesting old buildings. We did not have any free time to walk around and explore on our own, which I really would have preferred to do. There were a lot of indiginous (sp?) people selling handmade items, but we weren't given much opportunity to look at them. When we got back on the bus to drive to a restaurant for lunch, we got stuck in traffic and just sat and sat on the city street. None of the cars could move in any direction. The guide talked to someone who told him that students were having a demonstration and the streets were blocked. Our driver drove down the wrong side of a street trying to get around the gridlock, but every way he tried to go was also blocked. On one street we could see people in the middle of the street holding a banner. We sat on the bus for over an hour -- it might have even been an hour and a half. By this time everyone was really hungry and having "bathroom issues". By the time we made it to the restaurant, it was very late. The food was okay -- nothing special. You could choose between beef or chicken and they both had some kind of brown gravy on them. We had to eat really quickly and the guide said we'd do a "drive by" of the other things that were supposed to be on the tour. We made one more stop at some ruins of the old destroyed Panama City and were briefly allowed off the bus to take photos. Then it was back on the bus for the almost 2 hour ride back to the ship. We arrived back about 1/2 hour after the scheduled departure time, but lots of buses arrived after us.

 

Obviously, this tour would have been better if we weren't stuck in traffic so long. I'm not sure what all we missed seeing. I know someone else posted something about a museum, but we didn't go there. I picked this tour because we had already done beach and jungle things at the other ports and I thought a city tour would be something different and I could also say I visited the Atlantic and Pacific in a couple of hours. Other than the canal, though, there really wasn't all that much to see, and we didn't have much independent time.

[WendyCn]

We will be arriving on the Liberty in November & back when I booked the cruise, I also booked the Indian Village with Mario. After reading some of the posts about Mario & getting back so late, I emailed Mario & asked to change this shore excursion for one that returns to the ship earlier even though I really wanted to see the Indian Village. Mario was more than happy to accommodate us & changed the tour. He asked me if I was a CC member & I told him that we were. A couple of days later I received an email from him. He is aware of CC members concerns and told me that one way that they are addressing those concerns for Liberty passengers is that they will be offering two tours to the Indian Village - one with the waterfall & one without it. The one without will return to the ship by 2:00. So, this is the one we have chosen as I really wanted to see the Indian Village. If you'd like me to forward Mario's email to you regarding how they are addressing our concerns, let me know & I'd be more than happy to do so. When cruising to Bermuda, we saw 6 people who didn't make it to the ship in time & believe me, I would NOT want that to happen to me. I respect Mario for listening to our concerns and doing what he can to ensure that we enjoy our stay in Panama.

[emporess]

We took the Mario CL007 Tour in July 2007. It was the best tour of our Carnival Liberty Cruise. Lori and Elvis were our guides and were superb. We were ON TIME and they are so well aware of this issue. Mario keeps track of the ship's sponsored tours and knows their approximate arrival back to the port. Time is not an issue. In fact, they are so precise you have no need to worry.

 

We first went to the Gatun Locks for about 45 minutes. A ship was going through so the timing was perfect. Once you see the locks in action, you get the idea of it. I didn't feel it was too short of time to stay there.

 

When I booked I didn't realize that hiking to the rainforest would be such an event! Make sure to wear shoes/clothes that can get muddy and won't fall off of your feet. I was quite nervous as sometimes the mud got up to my knees and I'm not at all coordinated. My DH kept giving me dirty looks! But, when we reached the waterfall it was the most beautiful sight. The kids and my DH swam while I took some pictures. Unfortunately, we had to hike all the way back! It was somewhat difficult and the men on the tour were so helpful as well as Elvis. He carried my bag with my video camera and other things. I would do the hike again even though it was muddy and challenging. We then went to the Indian Village for lunch, dancing and shopping. Lori kept saying that we were going "National Geographic". Well, that meant that the women of the village don't wear tops. The boys (14 and 11) were in shock. This made our visit very authentic and, of course, memorable.

My opinion is that you should definately book this tour. It has a little bit of everything and the little extras that Mario includes just make this excursion a once in a lifetime memory. Mario brought us some warmed snacks in the morning and then on the way back to the ship we had some fruit and cookies. They also provide soft drinks and beer. You won't be disappointed. I have done many excursions and this truly was awesome.

[ragma]

We are booked on Liberty 4-12-08 My quesion is on the excursion for the Pananma canal...do they have wheelchair access for a scooter chair?

My DH cannot walk long distances. and I would book it if I knew he could get on and off with no problems..or we could bring his walker..Scooter would be better for him..Thanks for all the help..we have been reading the boards. This is our first cruise and I want DH to enjoy it too.:o

[cruiser620]

I don't think any of the buses or vans have access for bringing a scooter chair onboard. Also, at the locks I remember we had to climb a lot of steps to reach the viewing platform. I did not see any elevators. Remember that when you are not in the U.S. there are not laws regarding accessibility. Since you have so much time before your cruise, maybe you can search online for a canal email address or snail mail address that you can send your question to

[ragma]

Thanks, I got news for you even in the US they are not so happy to complie with handicapp rules..But thanks I will look into it futher. He cannot climb in and out of our children's above ground pools so I doubt we will be able to go on that excursion...thanks for your help:o