by Jason Leppert
Last updated: 11:00 AM ET, Mon November 28, 2016
The newly expanded Panama Canal locks are open, and at least four cruise lines are planning to utilize the increased dimensions.
In June 2016, the Panama Canal officially opened its third set of locks to allow passage of larger vessels from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea and vice versa without the need to descend considerably farther around Cape Horn in South America. The greatest beneficiaries of the new lane will be mega tankers and cargo ships, but the occasional cruise ship passage can also take advantage of the larger size.
In the past, many cruise ships were specifically scaled to the former Panamax dimensions. This included Carnival Cruise Line's Spirit-class and Princess Cruises' Coral-class, but now, much larger ships, now classified as Neopanamax, can fit, opening up a whole new world of convenient itineraries for growing vessels.
Technically, the largest Harmony of the Seas from Royal Caribbean International would even fit the locks. However, it would not clear the Bridge of the Americas near the Pacific side of the canal. So, there are some limitations still.
Additionally, Norwegian Cruise Line will deploy its new Norwegian Bliss to Alaska in 2018 via the third lane of canal locks. In fact, we previously speculated that Norwegian's Breakaway-class would realistically be one of the largest collection of cruise ships to be capable of clearing the full transit, and these plans for the even larger Breakaway Plus-class ship proves it to be true.
Besides those, several other biggest cruise ships in the world are potentially too tall, but there are several contenders still larger than the original Panamax size that could fit and will likely be deployed accordingly in time.
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