Your ship's size decides which locks you see
The canal runs two sets of locks side by side. The original 1914 chambers handle Panamax-size ships; the larger Neopanamax locks, opened in 2016, take the ships too big for the old ones. For the 2025-26 season the Panama Canal Authority scheduled more than 195 cruise transits, 41 of them Neopanamax, including Norwegian Bliss, Joy and Encore at around 168,000 tons and Disney Adventure, a record at 201,000 tons.
So if going through the 1914 chambers is the point of the trip, check the size of the ship before booking. The very large ships on these itineraries use the Neopanamax locks, not the historic ones.
The cruise season and what changed
The 2025-26 canal cruise season opened in October 2025 with Queen Elizabeth's northbound transit. The authority projected a slight drop in cruise transits for the year and put it down to the lines' cost-cutting - shorter itineraries and more use of upgraded Caribbean ports instead.
On a partial transit, the shore option to look for is the Gatun Lookout, opened by the canal authority in April 2025 on the west bank, 16km from the Agua Clara visitor centre. It overlooks both the 1914 Gatun locks and the Neopanamax locks, opens daily from 8:30am to 4:30pm, and has no ticket window of its own - tickets are sold online or at Agua Clara.
Sources: pancanal.com, telemetro.com