Panama Canal cruise - need assurance :)
 

Please tell me I'm not a complete nut to take a 14-night cruise from LA to Santo Domingo and fly back the same day.

I am nervous a little. Vacation time in January is signed. Checked the flights - seem doable (to/from SFO). Never flew from an out-of-country after-the-cruise airport.

Check in from Santo Domingo can take a while, as can the trip to the airport, so just make sure you have at least 5 hours between the scheduled docking time and your flight, and I think you'll be fine; if you have six hours, I think that's a pretty comfortable margin.

I looked at the flights, 8 am and 4.45 pm. So, if our ship is scheduled to dock at 4 am (huh? 4 am?? will they wake us up that early????) we'll have to spend the day somewhere... with luggage. OUCH!

I went ahead and reserved the cruise. Whatever happens... it will be on the way home. I have the next day off work.

Actually, you may be able to check luggage at the Santo Domingo cruise pier. There's a company called Audio Guide Dominicana, and they have a booth at the old cruise pier (and presumably will have one at the new pier when it's really ready for prime time early next year). They will check and hold your luggage for you if you take their audio tour of the Colonial Zone. There are also hotels in Santo Domingo where you should be able to check luggage; a couple of fairly large hotels are right in the Colonial Zone.

I think if you book the 4:45pm flight you will have no trouble at all, and you'll have almost 4 good hours to do a walking tour of the Zone, which won't show you everything but will be a nice intro to the best part of Santo Domingo.

Renting a hotel room by the hour - what a lovely idea :))

Seriously, thank you, Doug, this is great information!!

Take a tour in Dominica thru the ship, they put your luggage on the bus and drop you and luggage at the airport. Most cruise lines offer one on the day of disembarking if you have a later flight. We had a flight in Honolulu at 10:30 pm, took a 12 hr tour of island and went straight to airport. Also airlines now have deals with cruise lines where you check your luggage straight to airline and then disembark and enjoy your day.

Sorry, I meant to say Santo Domingo.

Yes, I saw it on the website, and will most likely reserve the tour with the airport drop-off.

Don't have air reservations yet, and on the web they said: for flights after 3 pm. So this is something to consider too. I do want a tour of Santo Domingo.

Thank you, Fosterag.

For now we only have Southwest to Los Angeles - Sunday flights go fast, so we got this one right away!