One month to go to two glorious weeks of cruising!
The countdown is starting to get very close! In about one month, I’ll be boarding the Celebrity Millennium for 15 nights of cruising through the Panama Canal. This will be my first time doing this itinerary. I’ve always been fascinated by the Panama Canal and can’t wait to see how the process works in person. What am I doing to get prepared? My main goal for this week is to get to know the ports and excursions that are offered.
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Excursions & Ports
The trip seemed far away for so long and now it’s almost here. We’ll be making stops in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. I’ve been using Celebrity Cruises' online advanced search for shore and land excursions. You can search by duration, activity type, and activity level. I use the duration search filter a lot as depending on the port. Depending on the location, I’ll typically pick the more strenuous option as that typically goes well with my love of adventure.
Adventure in Puerto Vallarta
In a city port, sometimes I’ll want the longest possible excursion to soak in every minute of the tour or other times, prefer more of the highlights and then time to walk around and explore the city on my own. There are a lot of excursions to go through and I wish the options could be filtered even more, including one by restrictions (weight, health, age). What type of excursions do you normally do?
Too many to pick from? Ask the experts.
On a previous cruise, when I was trying to figure out which excursion to do for St. Petersburg, Russia, it was a daunting task and I probably changed it three times as I wanted to make the most out of our one day in Russia. I also wanted to make sure it was right for me. And in this case, I wanted to see the Hermitage museum but not spend all day there. We ended up changing it once again when we got on the ship and talked to a specialist at the cruise excursion desk. It ended up being the perfect day, seeing a lot of highlights of the city.
Aerial Tram in Costa Rica
I would definitely recommend attending the information sessions once you get onboard as the first hand experience was exactly what we needed to find the perfect fit. What I think is missing is if Celebrity would show past guests’ ratings of particular excursions to find the right tour for me as everyone is looking for something different.
Join a Roll Call
I also like to join the Roll Call for my sailing date on different websites. A “Roll Call” is a place where you can find other people sailing on your same voyage. This is a great way to get insight from other travelers and what they think about a certain excursion as well as meet new people, gather information, and ask questions. Check out these websites that have sailing Roll Calls. Many cruise lines have their own as well.
Ok, I’m off to start my research and planning!
FreshCruiser Tip: Never too early to start researching ports and excursions.