“Holiday from Hell” as Virus spreads aboard cruise ship, The Sea Princess

It appears that the cruise industry cannot catch a break lately. If its not missing persons cases either from criminal acts or over intoxication vanishing aboard cruise ships or inappropriate statements by cruise ship exec’s, its the norovirus. 

More than 1,700 Britons got off a cruise ship today after “a holiday from hell” saw some passengers stuck in their cabin with a virus.

The Sea Princess, part of the Princess Cruises fleet, left Southampton for a seven-night European tour last Saturday.

A virus affected about 200 passengers and the ship was forced to cancel its planned visit to Lisbon.

What makes matters worse in this case of the outbreak of the highly contagious norovirus is that the ship had the norovirus on the previous cruise, but no one had bothered to tell any of the new cruise ship passengers. Just one on a long line in PR black eyes for the cruise ship industry.

Mr Wilson said: “They never told any passengers that they had norovirus on the previous cruise.

“The captain then told everyone. He said ‘We tried to disinfect the ship in Southampton and obviously we didn’t do a good enough job’. He said that over the Tannoy to all the passengers.”

To further compound the problem Carnival is not offering a full refund to the passengers for their “Holiday from Hell”.

Mr Wilson said: “How would you feel if you had paid £2,000 for a cruise and spent seven days in a cabin with very limited food and drink? “It was like being in a prison cell, except prisoners get treated better.”

He said he wanted a full refund for the cruise but Carnival has offered all passengers a refund of 30% off the cruise fare and a £150 per person voucher towards a future cruise with Princess.