Generally speaking, without checking every line, cruise lines have almost universally banned smoking in cabins and in verandas. A few still allow limited smoking in casinos but even that is slowly but surely being eliminated. Most lines today permit smoking only in limited outdoor areas that are generally isolated and easy to avoid. A few, like Silversea, have cigar lounges but again easy to avoid.

The majority of full transits of the Panama Canal are during the shoulder/changeover months of March-April and September-October as the lines move from the Caribbean to Alaska and the Alaska to Caribbean. There are more 14+ day cruises that go from Florida to California in early to late spring or California to Florida in early to late fall than can be easily examined here. Unfortunately most mass market lines, except for the occasional sale, really don’t offer much in relief for the solo cruiser. That said relatively speaking the shoulder/changeover cruises are about the least expensive full transits as you can find. A few lines, and it would take a search to find, run full transits during the Christmas and New Years time frame. Since there are so few and it is the holiday season these cruises can be fairly expensive. Might suggest Silversea as they often have the lowest solo cruiser supplement, around 25%, on selected cruises.

While we have 25 years of cruising experience most of that has been on Holland America and now for the last seven years on Silversea so I can only speak of our experience and my general understanding of other lines. We’ve only done a partial transit of the Panama Canal and while I’d love to do a full transit I haven’t been able to find one that works for us from both timing and cost. Still on the bucket list.

Our partial transit of the Panama Canal was on Celebrity in March. Living in south central Texas we weren’t bothered in the least by the heat and humidity though cruise friends from Portland, Oregon thought it was oppressive. We got several recommendations from the crew and staff to go aft on the same deck as the buffet for the transit through the locks. Since the ship lined up very early we were up by about 5:00 AM and out on deck by 5:30 AM for sunrise and the start of the transit. We staked out a table aft and stayed out there for the whole transit through the locks. It was easy to get coffee and eventually breakfast. Part of our party of eight tried to experience the locks from their veranda but discovered they were spending much of the time looking at the concrete walls of the lock so they eventually joined us. As I recall once we cleared the locks and took up a holding position in Gatun Lake around 10:00 AM we went back to bed for a couple of hours. We chose not to take a tour that day. For the return transit back to the Atlantic/Caribbean side we just kind of wandered around the ship with a couple of cool drinks in hand to catch the views. A great experience but still would like a full transit. Might add we did the full Suez Canal a year ago and it is very interesting but way different.