My wife and I traveled with another couple on the Celebrity Infinity Nov 7-22 on the route through the Panama Canal. Prior to departing, we read the posts on Cruise Critic, to understand how to spend our limited time and money to best advantage. Now that we have completed the cruise, we hope our comments below help you plan for and have the best cruise experience:

1. 15 days is a long time for a working guy like me to take away from the office - the Officers and Crew of the Infinity made it a very enjoyable experience and worth the time and money we spent. I would do it again.

2. We had ports of call in Cartagena, Columbia, Colon, Panama, Panama Canal Transit, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We specifically chose not to take the Shore Excursions, intending instead to explore at our leisure. We grabbed a cab and had the taxi driver take us to well known tourist sites, monuments, downtown shopping and entertainment areas, etc. This worked well in Cartagena, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo, as they are all bigger cities. Puerto Quetzal, Puntarenas and Colon are pretty run down port only cities with very little to offer. The Shore Excursions take you far from these ports to tourist sites. While having the ship's passengers take Shore Excursions results in a nice revenue stream and low cost of mooring for the Cruise company, for people like us who preferred to explore on our own, staying on the ship for those ports of call was our choice. Staying on a 5 star resort ship with pools, restaurants, entertainment and unlimited food is a great thing if there is nothing more interesting ashore. Read more