{"id":442,"date":"2010-04-20T12:54:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T19:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=442"},"modified":"2010-04-20T12:54:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T19:54:46","slug":"the-ongoing-ride-to-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=442","title":{"rendered":"The Ongoing Ride to the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

ON BOARD THE CELEBRITY MILLENNIUM<\/a> \u2014 The longest stretch of the Panama Canal, a stretch that cruise ship employees have been known to call affectionately “a day in the ditch,” was also the most difficult terrain to cross when it was built a century ago. Think turn a mountainside into a man-made lake, with what today would be primitive equipment, and you get the picture.
\n\"\"<\/a>It’s 85 feet above both oceans and the shortest, quickest intercontinental crossing anywhere. With three sets of locks \u2014 we’re currently going through the Miraflores Lock<\/a>, the last of them \u2014 quick sometimes seems an inappropriate word.
\nEarlier, we mentioned the “new canal” due for completion in 2014, when the old one will turn 100. In reality, it’s “new locks” being built at both ends of Gatun Lake, locks large enough to accommodate what are called the Panamax fleet, or the growing number of ships too large for the current canal.
\nThey pay through the nose, or bow, to make this crossing, but it saves more than a million dollars per ship if it had to circumnavigate Cape Horn at the tip of South America, a voyage 8,000 miles longer. A few weeks ago, the Norwegian Pearl<\/a> broke the Disney Dream’s<\/a> toll record by paying $375,600.
\nMore later\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ON BOARD THE CELEBRITY MILLENNIUM \u2014 The longest stretch of the Panama Canal, a stretch that cruise ship employees have been known to call affectionately “a day in the ditch,” was also the most difficult terrain to cross when it was built a century ago. Think turn a mountainside into a man-made lake, with what… Continue reading The Ongoing Ride to the Pacific<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,31,19,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-ports","category-ships","category-stories","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}