Panama Canal is one of the seven wonders of the world. We went through the old canal locks, Gatun Lock with Island Princess cruise ship in 2012. We were amazed. Now, we re-visited the canal and went through new locks, Agua Clara Locks with the larger ship, Caribbean Princess which is the first major cruise line operating partial transits of the canal at Atlantic entrance in 2017. Caribbean Princess’ beam is 118 feet that is 12 feet wider than maximum allowed for the old canal locks.

The Agua Clara locks have three chambers. Each chamber is 180 feet wide, 1400 feet long, and 60 feet deep. The chambers are designed to rise the ships from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake and the opposite way going toward the Atlantic. It took approximately 40 minutes for the ship to go through each chamber, a total time is two hour from enter the locks to exit the locks.

We got up 4:00 am to get the best location at front of the ship at deck 15 to take photos. It was still dark. When the ship approached the locks around 5:00 am, we took photos of both locks, Agua Clara Locks (new locks) on the port side and Gatun Locks (old locks) on the starboard side. Wow. It was exciting. Panama charged the Caribbean Princess approximately $47,000 just to go through the locks.