Passengers aboard the “cruise from hell” cheered from the deck as their disease-stricken ship finally docked in New Jersey after their Caribbean vacation was cut short by an epidemic.
Kim Waite, 50, of London was celebrating her victory over breast cancer when, like most of the ship’s victims, she was stricken early in the planned 10-day cruise of the Explorer of the Seas.
“It was an awful sickness, diarrhea, everything. It was absolutely awful,” she said. “My husband had to put me in a wheelchair and take me to the infirmary.”
Aboard the ship, “there were just hundreds of people being sick everywhere. They were throwing up in buckets and bags,” she said. “I started crying. I couldn’t believe it.”
Yet the suspected norovirus ran its course so quickly that of the nearly 700 stricken passengers and crew, only seven still had symptoms when the ship returned two days early to its home port in Bayonne on Wednesday, officials said. Sick passengers were quarantined in their cabins until the symptoms passed.
“We called it the cruise from hell. We spent four days of our travels in the room, but we do feel better today,” said Jo Guarino of upstate Congers, traveling with her husband, Tom.
Bill Rakowicz, 61, from Ontario, Canada, said he thought he was seasick when he began vomiting a day after leaving Bayonne.
“It was really bad. You never felt pain until you had this,” Rakowicz said.
Passengers praised the ship’s crew, who fed the stricken in their cabins. Those who didn’t get sick couldn’t touch the food at buffets and relied on crew members wearing gloves and masks.
“You couldn’t even so much as take a mayonnaise packet out of the container. They handed everything to you,” said Pamela Panto. traveling with her husband, Sal, the mayor of Easton, Pa. “So they were making every effort to keep everyone safe. They really went above and beyond.”
The ship’s operator, the Royal Caribbean Cruise line, said it will provide all 3,050 guests a 50 percent refund of their cruise fares and an additional 50 percent future cruise credit. It’s also reimbursing airline change fees and accommodations for guests who had to alter plans for traveling home.
Stricken guests who were confined to their staterooms are being provided a credit of one future cruise day for each day of confinement.
With Post Wire Services