We sailed a partial transit of the Panama Canal on the Carnival Pride in April 2022. This is a review of our experience plus some tips for a Panama Canal Partial Transit on a Carnival Cruise.
The Panama Canal is truly a unique experience in the world of cruising. This 100 year old piece of equipment is still working and is quite the modern marvel. (Yes, it is an episode of the show.)
Before we get started with our experience, we booked this cruise specifically for this one day. We were sure we could and would enjoy the rest of the days Carnival had planned for the cruise, but they weren’t important. This was the day.
Want to start at the beginning of our review of this cruise? Check out Embarkation on the Carnival Pride in Tampa
That meant we planned to spend however much of the day was taken up by the Panama Canal, actively engaged in the experience.
We booked an aft-facing balcony and that is where 90% of the pictures in this post come from. There were many benefits of being able to experience the canal from our own room and our own balcony, but the Carnival Pride was a good ship for the Panama Canal. The Carnival Pride has many outdoor low-level decks that went around or most of the way around the ship. These Promenade Decks make a great spot to view the passage through the canal and to get up close and personal with the people and machinery as you go through the locks. The ship also has a couple of decks in the front where you can watch and a large open deck around the back.
Many people on board were not as actively engaged in the experience as we were, but my hope is that you can use our experience of the Panama Canal Cruise on Carnival to help you plan your day.
Our experience through the Panama Canal on the Carnival Pride:
7:00: Room Service
We decided to start our day with room service to get us up and moving. And have coffee. Coffee is very important. Once the food and coffee arrived, we turned on the front of the ship camera on the TV and opened our curtains. We could immediately see ships behind us in the dim haze of the early morning.
7:20 There’s a jungle out there!
We headed out onto the balcony and started enjoying the scenes of sunrise over the rainforest with our coffee and pastries. If we had it to do over again, one of us would have run upstairs for some omelets or burritos, but we were not exactly sure what time we would make it to the beginning of the canal.
It was absolutely beautiful early in the morning over the jungle. The sun was rising and the jungle had this deep fog over it. We don’t often catch the sunrise on a cruise, but this one was worth it!
8:00 Local Commentary
A local guide came on over the announcements (in the halls, not the rooms) telling a little about the history of the canal and what we were looking at. He was not always the most engaging guide, but his nuggets of information were interesting when we could hear them. We couldn’t hear them on our balcony so we missed most of them.
8:10 The Bridge
The first sign we were really making it somewhere was the bridge. Once we made it under the bridge, the waterway kept getting smaller and smaller until we were finally in the canal.
9:10 The first sight of the walls & mules!
Prior to this cruise we had read and watched several things about the history of the Panama Canal. This gave us insight into what we were viewing as we went, but I was also very fascinated by the mechanical mules that are attached to each ship as it goes through the canal.
9:30 Closing of lock #1
On the journey to Gatun lake, we were being raised to the level of the lake in the mountains. As soon as the first lock closed, we began to feel the ship rising. The doors were getting lower and lower behind us. We were not sure if we would truly feel the ship being raised and lowered, but it was obvious that we were pretty quickly moving to the height of the door to the lock.
10:00 Closing of lock #2
After lock #2 closed, I decided to run downstairs to see what it looked like from the 3rd deck, which mostly wraps around the entire ship on the Carnival Pride. I ran down the aft stairwell and there were a few people hanging out on the side of the ship. We were approaching the guard tower. I was able to see the wall and the mules up close. There were people on the decks above me who asked a question or two of the men standing at the guard tower. They were above me where I was standing on deck 3. The walls of the canal were so close I could have easily reached out and touched them. I watched for a few minutes and took some pictures. On my way back in I walked to the other side of the promenade deck and accidentally found myself in a crew smoking area. I snapped a couple of quick pictures and walked briskly back up to the room.
10:20 Guard tower
I made it back to the room as the back of the ship was going past the guard tower and from there we were quickly in the lake.
10:35 Closing of lock #3
The last lock closed and we again felt open waters around us. We sort of coasted into the lake and then found ourselves a spot to pause for a rest before we went back through.
11:00 Gatun Lake
What struck us the most about Gatun Lake was how normal it looked. It just looks like any other lake here in the United States. There were some small islands with trees on them. The sides of the lake were covered in trees. Unless there was a giant container ship sailing by you hardly noticed you were somewhere so exotic as a lake in the middle of an isthmus in the middle of a canal that was built 100 years ago to connect the two major oceans of the world.
11:30 Pizza is always open for lunch!
Since we never ate a full breakfast and we are full breakfast people, we were starved by lunch time. We headed up to lunch around 11:30 and we assumed the only things open with lunch food would be the pizza and deli, but they seemed to open up the main food line a few minutes early. That was actually one thing we really liked about the buffet on this sailing – they seemed to actually take the itinerary of the ship in consideration and the buffet seemed to open outside of normal Carnival buffet times when needed. We already had it in our heads that we wanted pizza though, so we grabbed our pizza, wandered around for a minute looking for a table with a view and finally sat down to eat.
12:00 T-Shirt Deck Sale
It actually started at like 9:00 in the morning and at that time there was a line snaked around the pool for people to purchase their Panama Canal t-shirts instead of actually looking at the Panama Canal. But as we paused on anchor in the middle of the lake after lunch, we did buy a t-shirt. We walked around the front of the ship and checked out the lake, but it was noon and the ship wasn’t moving. The Panama Canal is actually pretty close to the equator. We’ve sailed all around the Caribbean, but this was the furthest south we have every been. And it was hot. So we went back to find some air conditioning and get off our feet because we had been standing all morning to watch the canal.
12:30 When does this whole thing start up again?
No part of the timing of the day was on the Hub App – this was really our biggest complaint. The announcements in the dining room the night before mentioned we would start going through the canal around 7:30. We asked out waiter and he said around 9:30. But we had no idea when we would go back through.
1:00 Nap time?
After sitting in the room for a few minutes, we decided it would probably be a few minutes and we would be able to see it coming anyway. That’s the nice thing about watching everything from the back of the ship. You have time to be prepared.
3:00 Um…I think we’re moving!
We were both relaxing in the cool air, when I looked out the window and realized the scenery outside had changed and realized we were starting to move. We slowly gathered ourselves and our camera equipment back up and stepped back out into the sweltering Panamanian heat. The stagnant, hot air really made one appreciate how challenging it would have been to work there. We at least could step back into our air conditioning when we got hot, but the workers could not.
3:30 Back into the walls of the locks
We slowly started gliding back into the correct channel (there is an arrow pointing to the correct side) and back through the canal. Our mules were reattached and we were headed back towards the open ocean!
3:45 Closing of lock #1
We were now being dropped down instead of raised up. Again, you could very much feel the water level dropping and the walls getting closer and closer to us as we lowered more to their level.
4:15 Closing of lock #2
The oppressive heat was starting to get to us by this time of the afternoon and we spent our time alternating between standing outside on the balcony under an umbrella (yes, like a rain umbrella but that sun was brutal) and sitting on the bed inside the air conditioned room watching.
4:45 Closing of lock #3
Finally the last lock closed behind us. The two ships we could see in the canal were high above us. It is so dramatic how far each lock raises and lowers the ships. We watched as the ship behind us continued its progress through the locks and being lowered as we sailed back out into the gradually more opening of the space around us.
5:15 Out of the walls
Once we were out of the walls, we started discussing how long of a day it had been and what we wanted to do with our couple of hours before our 8:15 dining time. Pool? Hot tub? Nap?
5:30 Back under the bridge
Once we slid under that last bridge we felt like we were back out into the ocean and the experience was really over. It had lasted the length of an entire work day and we were more tired than if we had been at work. We had been actively standing, watching, shepherding our cameras the entire day and it was exhausting work!
6:00 Pool to cool down?
When we got up to the Serenity deck we could still see the land and bridge fading into the distance. We soaked our tired feet in the lukewarm water of the hot tub and watched it finally fade into the distance.
Tips for cruising the Panama Canal on Carnival:
Turn on the camera channel on your tv.
Flip through the channels on the tv. Carnival has several live camera channels (in general, not just on the Panama Canal sailings). One of those is a front facing camera. Turn this on first thing in the morning to help you figure out what is going on. This is great if you want to come back to your room to rest or cool off at any point during the day. You can watch the camera view to make sure you are not going to miss anything you find important. (This has nothing to do with the Panama Canal, but there is also a camera trained on the main pool 24/7. Check this out early in the cruise if you have strong feelings about being on the camera anyone in the ship can see!)
Looking for more general Panama Canal Partial Transit Tips? Check out these Panama Canal Tips!
Make good room choices.
If you want to be able to watch anything from your room, this is not a cruise for a guaranteed stateroom. The aft balcony was amazing because we were able to stay on our own balcony with all our own things, space, camera batteries, fridge full of water and bathroom. But the aft balconies are always more expensive. If you get a regular balcony, make sure you get one on the right or starboard side of the ship. First of all, this is the side that is in the middle so you can see the other ships going the opposite direction. Secondly, the sun was on the left (port) in both directions. Because we went one direction in the morning and back in the afternoon, the left side of the ship was hot and in the sun both times. Don’t get a balcony on the port side.
Make sure you know what time you will get started
There was no information on the Hub App about the timing of the day. The maitre’d made an announcement in the show at dinner and we heard other information around the ship as well. Ask people. Most of the crew has done this before. See what they say.
Get up early
Your particular sailing might not get started so early, but you don’t want to sleep in and miss anything. Plan for an early morning – and maybe hope for it. It got hot by the afternoon.
Be prepared to be hot.
We were prepared for it to be hot. I like it hot. But it was hotter than I was expecting. Dress accordingly and drink plenty of water and wear plenty of sunscreen.
Plan your viewing location
Different places on the ship would have afforded very different views. Scout out the best viewing locations ahead of time. Remember crowds will ebb and flow throughout the day.
Make the most of it
Going through the Panama Canal is truly a once in a lifetime experience. It is one of the marvels of the modern world and is amazing how many lives were consumed in the building of it and how well it has held up and continued to work in the century since its completion. This is not the day to be in the pool or at the bar. You don’t have to spend the entire day actively consumed by the canal like we did, but spend some quality time marveling at its mechanics.
What to read next:
Panama Canal Partial Transit Tips
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Why you should take a Caribbean cruise in the winter
What to do on sea days on a Carnival Cruise
