The Winter Canal: NCL's Other Repositioning Cycle

The Winter Canal: NCL's Other Repositioning Cycle

Norwegian Star leaves Miami on December 4, 2026, and arrives in San Diego on the twentieth. She spends the next ten weeks running the Mexican Riviera out of San Diego. Then on February 13 she sails back through the canal to Miami.

That's a second canal season, running on its own calendar. The Alaska cycle sends the big ships west in April and back east in October. This one moves a ship to the West Coast for a winter rather than a summer, and it puts crossings on the board in December and February.

Star's two crossings

Miami to San Diego, December 4, 2026 — 16 nights, about $3,219 for a balcony, or $201 per night. Cartagena, Colón, Puerto Quetzal, Puntarenas, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas.

San Diego to Miami, February 13, 2027 — 16 nights, about $4,159, or $260 per night. Panama City, Cartagena, Puntarenas, Puerto Quetzal, Acapulco, Cabo San Lucas, and Grand Cayman on the run home.

Pricing from our snapshots dated July 26.

Same ship, same length, opposite directions, ten weeks apart. The February sailing calls at Panama City, and the December one doesn't — the isthmus stop follows direction rather than ship, and it's the same split you'll find on the Alaska-cycle crossings.

The February return is also about $940 more for the same number of nights. Some of that is the calendar — a mid-February departure sells to a different crowd than a December one that lands you home five days before Christmas.

What the pair makes possible

Two crossings ten weeks apart, with a season sitting between them, is an unusual shape. You can take one leg and fly home. You can also take the December crossing, stay on the West Coast, and sail back in February.

The middle is ordinary Mexican Riviera work — seven-night round-trips out of San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlán, running every week from just before Christmas through the second week of February. Add one to the December crossing and you've got a twenty-three night trip. Add two and you're past a month.

That's not something NCL packages or prices as a unit. It's separate bookings that happen to fit together because one ship is doing all of it.

I have guests on the December sailing. It's a good itinerary on its own terms — the Central American ports are the same ones the fall crossings visit, at a time of year when the weather on both coasts is about as settled as it gets.

Encore's thirty nights

There's one more winter canal sailing, and it's a different animal.

Norwegian Encore leaves Los Angeles on January 9, 2028, crosses to Miami, arrives on the twenty-fourth — and departs Miami for Los Angeles that same day, arriving back on February 8. Fifteen nights out, fifteen nights back.

She isn't repositioning. Encore runs the Mexican Riviera out of Los Angeles all that winter, leaves for a month, and comes back to it. The canal round trip is dropped into the middle of her season.

Booked as a pair, that's thirty nights, two full transits, Los Angeles to Miami to Los Angeles — about $3,669 for the first leg and $3,589 for the second, roughly $242 per night across the whole thing.

The reason I'd put this in front of someone: you end up where you started. Every other crossing leaves you on the wrong coast holding a one-way ticket home. This one is round-trip air out of Kansas City or Wichita to Los Angeles, which is a normal booking at a normal fare, and you're back at the same pier thirty nights later.

You also get both versions of the Panama stop. The outbound leg calls at Panama City. The return calls at Colón. Same trip, both sides of the isthmus.

Booked properly it's two sailings rather than one, and there are a few things worth knowing about how that works. You keep the same stateroom across both legs if it's set up as a back-to-back — you're not packing up mid-trip. Your luggage stays put. On turnaround day in Miami you'll do a short walk-off for immigration and then reboard, usually with a few hours ashore if you want them, and the ship is quiet that morning in a way it never is otherwise.

It also means two deposits, two final payment dates, and two fares that can move independently. If one leg drops in price and the other doesn't, that's a conversation about one booking rather than the whole trip.

The catch is the calendar. Thirty nights is a month, and January 2028 is a long way out — far enough that the pricing hasn't been through a repricing cycle and I'd expect it to move. But if a month at sea is something you've been circling, this is the cleanest way I've seen to do two transits without ever booking a one-way flight.

The two ships

Norwegian Star is a 2001 hull, 91,740 gross tons, 2,298 guests at double occupancy — roughly half the size of the Breakaway Plus ships running the Alaska-cycle crossings. I haven't sailed her, so I'll leave the description at the specifications. What I'll say is that the smaller hulls suit a canal itinerary, because the day everyone cares about is spent outdoors and deck space per guest decides how that day goes.

Norwegian Encore I have sailed. She's Breakaway Plus, 169,116 tons, close to four thousand guests, and she carries a thirty-night booking better than a smaller ship would — there's genuinely enough aboard to fill the sea days, and on a month-long trip that stops being a luxury and starts being the thing that determines whether you'd do it again. The trade is canal day, where four thousand guests all want the same rail.

What the winter crossings cost

Winter runs more per night than fall. The October crossings on Joy and Bliss come in around $136 to $141 per night. These land between $201 and $260 per night.

My read on why, and I'll flag it as a read rather than something the numbers prove: December and February crossings compete for guests with holiday travel and with snowbirds heading somewhere warm. An October crossing competes with almost nothing. The ships still have to make the trip either way, so it isn't that one is subsidized and the other isn't — it's that the winter dates have more demand pressing against the same supply.

What you're buying with the difference is a departure date. If October and April are the only months you can't travel, that's a trade worth making rather than a premium to resent.

Who this suits

Someone whose calendar doesn't bend to a cruise line's deployment schedule.

The people I end up putting on these are usually working around something — a business with a busy fall, grandchildren's school calendars, a spouse who can't take October. The Alaska-cycle crossings are the better value and I'll say so plainly. But a better value on a date you can't use isn't worth anything, and December and February are real options that don't show up unless you go looking.

If you want a crossing and the calendar is the constraint: Star's December 4 sailing is the nearest one, and her February 13 return is the same trip pointed the other way with Panama City added. If you'd rather not fly home from a different coast at all, Encore's back-to-back in January 2028 is worth the wait.