Panama Canal Trip Report: Day 7 Part 1 Going Through the Canal

Day 7 Part 1:  Sailing Through the Panama Canal

 If you would like to start this trip report from the beginning, click here.

Note: I do not feel right posting pictures of fellow cruisers who have not given me permission to use them on the blog, so I will blur out the faces of people in the background of my photos. I’m sorry if it looks funny, but I want to respect their privacy.

Also, anytime you see red text, it is a link to either product information or another one of my blog posts that gives more detailed information about that topic.

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You can see this day’s Navigator by clicking here: Navigator Day 7

Once again, I am going to have to divide day 7 into 2 posts because of the enormous amount of pictures I took on this historic day.  In case you missed the first part of my trip report, we were going to be the first passenger vessel through the new locks of the Panama Canal!  I knew that DCL would have some special things planned for such an event and I was right.  This was such an incredible day and I was thrilled to have a front row seat and so honored to have been a part of it.

Today the Navigator was the full length 6 page document just like in the good old days.  In addition to the Navigator, we were given a little booklet with a lot of good information about the Canal.  Here are the pages that would fit in my scanner:

If you unfolded the booklet completely, there was a large map of the entire Canal.

Okay, so let’s get started!  The Navigator, as well as Captain Robert, had given us this schedule the day before:

Entering Agua Clara Locks: 7:30 am

Clearing Agua Clara Locks: 10:00 am

Passing Gamboa: 11:20 am  (Gamboa is a small town built to house Canal employees)

Clearing Gamboa: 12:10 pm

Entering Cocoli Locks: 2:10 pm

Clearing Cocoli Locks: 4:40 pm

I do not like to wake up early while on vacation (or anytime for that matter), so I got up about 6:30 with the plan to be up on deck 10 by 7:00.  I knew there would be people staking out spots hours before that, but that’s just not my style.  I was going to sleep as late as possible and then just go with the flow.  It ended up working out just fine.

When I woke up I looked out the window and saw this:

 It was about 6:45, and we were scheduled to enter the first lock at 7:30.  I knew we were close because of the tug boat.

My husband and I quickly got ready.  The plan was to leave the girls sleeping while we went up to deck 10 for a few hours.  We told them to text us if they needed anything.  We got up to deck 10 and it looked like this:

You can see the first set of locks in front of us with a container ship just ahead.  It was nearly impossible to get a spot at the railing near the front of the ship at this point, which I was expecting.  We managed to find an okay spot right where I took this picture.  I talked to a woman who said she got up there at 5:45 am and the front of the ship was already full.  One person told her that they had been there since 4:30 am.  WHAT???  The people up there were very protective of their spots, too.  I stayed far, far away from that.  I learned after a while that there were not nearly as many people at the back of the ship, which has much better views anyway.  Except for the short period of time that we were entering the very first lock, you could see the exact same thing off the back of the ship as you could see in the front of the ship, which you will see in a bit.

For the next 2.5 hours, we walked all over the ship and checked out the different view points.

Tug boats assisted us the enter time we were in the locks:

At one point my husband went up to the front of the ship and got this picture:

Those buildings in the distance are the older locks that smaller ships still use and that the Wonder used to go through:

I finally ventured near the front of the ship and discovered that the area behind the plexiglass was not too bad.  There were tables with coffee, tea and pastries:

I think this was a mimosa/bloody mary cart:

This is the very first lock that we would enter:

There were lots of people watching our ship:

Those green things are the gates that open and close to create the lock chambers.  The slide on wheels.  There are 2 gates separating each lock, but only one is used at a time.  The second one is there so that the Canal can still operate if a gate needs maintenance.

Another view of the gates:

Here you can see inside of one and also get a sense of scale with those men standing next to it:

These are the water basins which hold the water that flows in and out of the locks to raise & lower the ships.  Unlike the old locks, the new locks reuse the same water which is stored in these basins.

We walked to the back of the ship to see the first gate slide closed behind us.

The funnel vision often showed the bridge view today:

You can barely see some other ships going through the old locks.  I think there was a Norwegian cruise ship over there.

There were lots of characters wandering around deck 10 today.

Here are some pictures that I took when we walked around to the port side of the ship:

Here you can see just how much room there is between the ship and the side of the locks.  In the old locks, there were only a few inches but here there was quite a bit of space.

Santa was also walking around checking out the canal.  I kind of wish I had hung around and heard this conversation.

We went to the back of the ship again where we could see the water level on the gate and tell that the lock chamber had filled up.  There were also cars driving across the top of the gate.

Now we had moved into the second chamber and the gate was closing behind us:

Here is a shot of the next set of gates and water basins:

A lot of the workers were taking pictures:

DCL did a great job of taking care of the guests and making sure we were well nourished.

By now the second gate was almost closed behind us:

This appears to be the control tower for the Agua Clara locks:

We went back to the front of the ship where you can see that we are in the last lock chamber before heading into Lake Gatun.  Once the water finished rising, the gate that you can see would open up and we would sail into the lake.

The jungles surrounding us were beautiful.  These pictures don’t really do it justice.

Next we went down to deck 4 to get a different vantage point.  Here is a better view of just how much distance is between the ship and the side of the locks:

A crew member was passing out cold washcloths:

It looks like at this point we went back up to deck 10:

There were lots of people watching us from this viewing area:

While I’m thinking about it, there are 2 things I want to tell you about.  First, there was a narrator onboard named Edwin Paulk who was narrating our canal passage.  I’m not sure if he got on the ship just for the day in Panama or if he was with us the entire voyage.  I meant to ask but forgot.  You could hear him on one of the TV channels from 6:00 am to 4:00 pm.  It seems like we sometimes heard him over the PA system as well, but I can’t remember if all of his narration was broadcast over the PA system, or just parts of it.  Second, it was printed in the Navigator that you could get your passport stamped by Panamanian Immigration authorities if you brought it to the Port Adventures desk between 9:30 and 2:00.  I wanted to do this but totally forgot.

We went back up to the front of the ship for a while.

Around this time we noticed that it was about 9:30 and Cabanas would be closing at 10:00.  So, we headed back down to the rooms to get the girls and take them to breakfast.  On the way we passed the new concierge lounge that was just added during the dry dock.  We have sailed concierge on the Wonder twice in the past, but both times were before this lounge existed.  I really wished I could have popped my head in there to take a look.  The concierge hosts were Rodrigo and Glen, both of whom we have had before and liked.

The girls were awake and watching TV.  While they got dressed, I checked out the view from our window:

In this picture you can see that we are sailing out of the final chamber and entering Lake Gatun:

Apparently everyone else on the ship realized that Cabanas was about to close too because it was PACKED.  We put our game faces on and forged ahead.  It wasn’t pretty, but we survived.

Now that we were through the first set of locks and wouldn’t be entering the next set for several hours, we decided to hit the pool.  We went back to the room to change and somehow Greg had managed to clean both of our rooms in the 30 minutes that we were eating breakfast.  We hadn’t even seen him in the hall when we were leaving.  How do they do that???

The girls jumped in the pool and I walked around to take some more pictures of our entrance into Lake Gatun.  This was about 10:40 am.  Here are the Agua Clara locks behind us:

There were lots and lots of ships around:

The scenery started to get really pretty so I parked myself at a table by the windows on deck 9 and just watched it go by.  It was amazing how close to the shore we were considering we were in a huge ship:

These navigation markers are scattered throughout the canal zone and help to guide the ships.  When the 2 markers are aligned, they know that they need to turn.

Here are some more navigation markers in the distance:

The jungles were so lush and dense.  I looked for wildlife but didn’t see any.

These photos give you a perspective for how close the ship was to the shore:

We passed another huge ship:

There were no movies on funnel vision today.  The screen would periodically switch between a bridge view and our schedule.

We had been at the pool for about 2 hours by now and we were ready for lunch.  This was mine:

My husband went into Cabanas to get a plate.  They had sushi today.

He took my camera inside Cabanas to photograph it for me:

We shared a plate of desserts which weren’t that great.  We noticed a huge difference in the quality of desserts between Cabanas and the main dining rooms.

The ice cream flavors today were blueberry and pina colada, although the pina colada changed to banana at some point during the day.

About this time we were passing the town of Gamboa, which is the head of the dredging operations for the canal so there was a lot of dredging equipment.  Please excuse the crab claw.

I believe this is the town of Gamboa:

This is where the Chagres River empties into Lake Gatun:

In the foreground you can see the bridge that provides the only road access to Gamboa:

The sky started to look threatening about this time:

While I was taking pictures I noticed a camera on the side of the ship.  I have read that there are cameras all over the sides of the ship that will detect anything going overboard and sound an alarm on the bridge.

This was by far the most crowded I saw the Goofy pool during the entire cruise.

Captain Hook and Smee were out and about:

At 1:00 they held an event called “Swim Through the Panama Canal” that wasn’t listed in the Navigator.  If we hadn’t already been at the pool, we would have missed it.  I am curious as to why it wasn’t listed in the Navigator.  Basically, they cleared everyone out of the pool and had everyone line up and take turns swimming from one end of the pool to the other.  That way we could all actually say that we had “swam” through the Panama Canal.  I heard someone say that in the past, they had taken a cup of canal water and dumped it in the pool to make it a bit more authentic.  If they did that this time, I didn’t see it or hear about it.

There were so many people there that the line was insanely long.  The girls were not interested and wanted to go back to the rooms, so we sent them back.  My husband and I wanted to do it, so we stayed.  This is part of the line that wrapped all the way around the pool area:

Pluto watched for a bit:

I didn’t want to go stand in the sun because I wasn’t wearing sunscreen, so my husband waited in the line for us while I stood in the shade.  I took some pictures of the scenery while I waited.  At this time we were entering the Culebra Cut, which is an artificial valley that cuts through the Continental Divide and was one of the great engineering feats of its time.

When my husband got near the front of the line, I joined him.  Here we are about to take our turn.

Now it was our turn!

When we finished it was 1:45 and my camera battery was about to die.  We decided to back to the room for a little while so I could charge my camera before we entered the Cocoli locks.  We were scheduled to enter them about 2:10, but it was clear that we were behind schedule.

In Part 2, the weather changes and a very special guest boards the ship!

Up Next:  Day 7 Part 2 Going Through the Canal

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