Cruising on a “Contaminated” Ship

This past December 1-8, Sunday to Sunday, Bonnie and I cruised the Mexican Riviera aboard the Norwegian Joy. We have taken this same cruise at the end of the year several times because:

1. Our main purposes in cruising are relaxing and dancing, so the ports aren’t particularly important.

2. The cruise originates from Los Angeles, and I have about 15 family members (from ages 2 to 76) in greater Los Angeles. Los Angeles is approximately a five-hour drive from Las Vegas. We go down the day before, buy dinner for everybody, have a bed to sleep in for one night, transportation to and from the pier, and a place to store our car for a week.

3. Compared to flying to another port city, this is relatively inexpensive. Plus, we only see most of those people once a year, so it’s worth it.

A couple of weeks prior to the cruise, my brother Dick, who was providing the bed and the transportation to the pier, asked what time they could drop us off. They had something else to do that Sunday and were trying to figure out their schedule. I told him if he dropped us off anytime between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., we’d be fine. I knew from experience that you can usually get on these ships by noon and the embarkation process takes some time. So, he planned on dropping us off at 10 a.m.

Three days before the cruise took off, we received an email saying we couldn’t get on the ship before 1 p.m. at the earliest. Dick and Ginny’s plans could not be changed conveniently, so we each brought a book to read and planned to wait.

At 12:45 p.m., as we waited at the cruise port, an announcement was made that it would be quite a while before we could get on the ship.  They recommended we get on a bus to Long Beach in order to walk around. (The Port of Los Angeles does not have much of interest to see in the immediate vicinity.) They dropped us off near the Queen Mary — where there were a variety of shops, restaurants, and bars, and told us to be back at the bus in 45 minutes.

They had repeatedly requested that we cruisers go to Long Beach — eventually filling up numerous busloads of people. This was a nice gesture on NCL’s part, but they also needed the terminal space to process more people. Usually the terminal clears out as people board the ship, but the ship wasn’t ready yet and they needed room for partially processed passengers.

When we returned to the ship 1.5 hours later, we could see a line of people with their luggage stretching for more than a quarter mile. We were clearly going to be late leaving port. We couldn’t hear the people from the bus, but I’m sure there was a lot of grumbling.

On the ship, we found out that there had been 19 people hospitalized the week before with norovirus, which is a highly contagious disease similar to the stomach flu. It is spread by touching or placing contaminated materials in your mouth or eyes.

Since norovirus stays active for a while, everything in the ship had to be sanitized — and re-sanitized. You can tell people not to put their hands in their mouth or eyes, but people (especially children) each have their own habits that are hard to break. So, the employees on the ship had to protect us from ourselves.

Every time you presented your boarding pass at a restaurant, it was wiped clean. Each time someone left a table at the Garden Café (the buffet area of the ship), the table was wiped down with a soapy mixture that left a residue until it dried.

The bare walls of all hallways were wiped down every day. The process of cleaning up the staterooms was a longer process than usual and included a much more thorough wiping down of light switches and other places people touch.

Many food service employees wore latex gloves at all times.

Some ship amenities were cancelled during this cruise. The library, for example, would not check out books because infected people may have touched them. There were no Monopoly games or chess sets to check out. The ship tour usually given for free to high-tier passengers was cancelled this time.

I’m sure there were other behind-the-scenes precautions being taken that I didn’t observe.

The precautions appeared to be successful. There were no health-related evacuations due to norovirus necessary during the week-long cruise. For how many weeks afterwards this ship will need to take these precautions, I don’t know.

Clearly the cruise line had procedures in place for this type of emergency and these plans were executed well. Periodically, health problems aboard cruise ships reach the media, but probably not this time. (I do not consider myself a member of the media — although I suppose that technically I am.) Clearly, each time a cruise line’s name is associated with onboard sickness, the bad publicity affects future revenues.

I know this article doesn’t have anything to do with gambling, but I also know that many of my readers go on cruises — sometimes at reduced rates from casinos. This may well happen to some of you. We experienced relatively minor inconveniences. I wish the same for you.