The locks were great, but they were impressive because they are over 100 years old. To accomplish that back then was amazing. The most surprising thing to me was seeing literally thousands of ships converging on Panama City. There were HUGE shipyards and freight terminals there also. The city itself was large and quite the metropolis with high-rise apartments and an international flare.
Our ship had an appointment at the locks. If we had been late, we would have missed out slot and would have had to get in line with other ships. This could have cost us a day or more. 
The locks look really small from the top deck of the ship. We had just feet of clearance on each side.
The "mules" looked like double ended locomotives. They didn't pull us through the locks, but kept us centered in the locks. 
I wish I had done this before going through the 3 Gorges dam. This was neat but the 3 Gorges structure is much more impressive. The amount of ship traffic is what is impressive with the Panama Canal and Gautun Lake is a delight. We watched birds and toucans flying about. The jungle was a quiet interlude between locks.
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