We choose this cruise on the advice of our travel agent purposefully to take the ferry tour excursion of the Panama Canal. Princess did a good job overall; cabin, service, food, entertainment, etc. all very acceptable. The first shore excursion disembarkation was not well done. Princess jammed hundreds of people in the theater and announced various groups without a public address system--we almost missed our excursion because of this.

Our third excursion was the one we booked the cruise for; an up-close-and-personal tour of the locks on a 400 passenger ferry. We had already gone through the new locks with the ship, very nice. But we were anxious to get on our ferry tour of the Pacific locks. We left in an 8 bus entourage, we were in bus 2. An hour into our trip to the ferry location, our bus rammed into the rear of bus 1, disabling both buses. Our driver had been following too closely. While the rest of the buses continued on, we remained in the middle of the rainforest, waiting for our "rescue" buses. During this wait, tour staff did not allow us to get off the buses, and we had no water. After approx. 45 mins. they arrived, and we continued on to the area of the ferry embarkation, where the other buses were waiting. After a short time, we were informed that the ferry captain would not arrive for 1 1/2 hours. Again, we had no water and the tour guides would not let us off the buses. A number of passengers needed to use restrooms, but were told they could not get off the buses to do so. Several male passengers, in spite of this, escorted several ladies behind trees and bushes so that they could relieve themselves. Finally, the captain arrived, at which time we were told we had to wait for tour staff to load the food and beverages aboard, which took another 30 mins. We were then allowed to board, and most of the passengers proceeded immediately to the restrooms. The tour staff had both men and women waiting in the male restroom line, the womens' was quite long. Females were asked to walk past up to 3 men standing at urinals a few feet away, while they used the single stall. It was appalling, to say the least. I finally asked the tour staff to ask us men to step aside while the ladies used the men's and women's facilities to alleviate the lines, but they would not.

Finally we were underway to the locks. After a long trip to the locks, the clearance to enter the first lock was given quite promptly; it was already twilight. By the time we cleared the last lock, it was pitch dark. Our remaining ferry trip to where our buses were located was traversed in total darkness, and it was a quiet 1 hr. bus ride back to the ship. The total time from the time we left the ship till our return at 9:30 p.m. was 10 hours. We were 4 hours late. The main reason for our Princess trip was to tour the Panama Canal locks up close. It was disappointing that this excursion didn't deliver. Read more