Woke up at 5:45 and was upstairs by 6am. There were tons of people already up there. The front of the ship was packed and they were not letting people move up front. We found a spot on the port side of deck 10 and watched from there for a little while.

Then mom and I got some coffee and headed down to deck 4. There were a few places to sit down there and a better view of the land and since you can’t see off the front away I felt deck 4 was more relaxing. We were told by some people who have sailed this before that deck 10 will clear out during the 2nd set of locks so we will check there again. 

To go through the locks you have to have 1-4 pilots on board and they will give directions to the staff on sailing through the canal. 

Cost to go through the Canal is $1,700 sail boats, yacht, leisure. Commercial $200,000 for one way to use the locks. Price depends on length of ship and what it is carrying. You have to pay a day in advance to get into the canal. If you don’t have a reservation you could wait up to 4 days to get through. If you want a reservation it cost 15% more and can make you reservation a year in advance.  From what I could find it is at least $25,000 for the Magic to go through.

There was a quick rain shower and now the humidity has gone from pleasant to sticky. 

On the port side there is a view area for people to come and watch the ships go through the last Aqua Clara Lock. It is open from 8am- 6pm 

Once we passed through the first locks we had to sit and wait for 2 hours until we could start moving. Then we traveled through the man made Gatun Lake. It was created by damming a river in another area to create a lake for boats and ships to pass through.

Around 10am once we were through the first locks we headed up to Cove so I could do some homework. For lunch went to Duck in dinner they had pulled pork sandwiches. We ran into Timur our server and then Kevin our assistant server.

I felt the views were so much better on Deck 4 you were closer to the locks and could see the water rising and falling. The front of the ship was full of people when going through the locks. Plus we made friends with the woman passing out cold towels. Everyone she came around she made us take a new cold towel.

Panama City, Panama 🇵🇦 has a population of over 2 million people. Its main industry is tied to the Panama Canal. The water areas for the locks are filled with rain water or water from the rivers. Average rain fall for Colon is 140 inches and Panama City is 75 inches. So the Atlantic side has a good bit more rain than the Pacific side.

We saw the bridge of the Americas. It was time for dinner so we didn’t watch going under it outside. We did see it during dinner since the blinds were open during dinner. We were in Rapunzel’s so we had a good view during dinner.

We did a few laps after dinner and then back to the room for movie time!