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Another Carnival Cruise liner heads back to port with 'technical issue' Another Carnival Cruise liner heads back to port with 'technical issue'
(about 4 hours later)
Carnival Cruise Lines says another of its ships has experienced problems and is heading back to the Port of Tampa. Yet another Carnival cruise ship has run into difficulty with a technical fault, forcing passengers to endure a slow-go sail back to the US rather than a stop off in the Cayman Islands.
Late Thursday, the company said "a technical issue" affecting the sailing speed of the Legend forced the cancellation of a stop at Grand Cayman Islands. The Carnival Legend had been on a seven-day Caribbean cruise when it encounters problems that affected its travelling speed. It is still due to reach its destination in Tampa, Florida, this Sunday on time. But it means that a high-point of the return journey – a trip to Grand Cayman on Friday – was abandoned.
The Tampa Bay Times reports the ship is expected to arrive in Tampa as scheduled on Sunday following a seven-day cruise. Passengers will get a $100 credit, refunds on pre-purchased shore excursions in Grand Cayman and half off on a future cruise. Holidaymakers, who have been offered a $100 refund for missing out on the stop-over, are less than pleased. "Passengers are really pissed off," Rob Bonenfant told CNN in an email from the Legend.
The Carnival Dream experienced problems with an on-board generator while docked in St Maarten and the company announced Thursday that passengers would be flown home. He added: "Mood on the ship is getting worse among passengers, captain is giving limited information."
A month ago, passengers on the Carnival Triumph spent five days in the Gulf of Mexico without power or working toilets. Those affected are the latest in a string of Carnival cruise-goers to be left feeling aggrieved. Over the last month four ships operated by Carnival have run into difficulties.
Yesterday it emerged that a "technical fault" had led to passengers on the Carnival Dream being stranded for four days.
A malfunction had occurred in the emergency diesel generator, a company spokesman confirmed, leaving the ship stricken in a dock at St Maarten in the Caribbean.
In a statement, Carnival acknowledged that as a result "there were periodic interruptions to elevators and restroom services for a few hours".
Gregg Stark, on the ship alongside his wife and two young children, gave CNN a more graphic take on what had occurred on the Dream: "There's human waste all over the floor in some of the bathrooms and they're overflowing."
That came a few days after the Carnival Elation required assistance from a tugboat after getting into trouble while cruising down the Mississippi river.
But the hardships forced upon passengers on the Elation, Dream and now Legend are somewhat less than those of the Carnival Triumph in February. A fire in the engine room disabled the cruise ship, leaving more than 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew members in squalid conditions and no working toilets or washing facilities for four days.
A class action lawsuit has since been filed against the company by representatives of the Triumph passengers.
The latest difficulty to hit one of its ships occurred on the last leg of a Caribbean cruise. The Legend completed scheduled stops in Mexico and Honduras before the technical fault hit. A spokesman for Carnival said the ship's safety systems and hotel services were functioning normally. But reduced sailing speed curtailed its itinerary, leading to an early departure back to its home port in the US.
A company spokesman explained that alongside the $100 reimbursement, passengers would receive a future Carnival cruise at half-price.
In a call to Wall Street analysts, Carnival chief financial officer David Bernstein said he was "hopeful" that the Legend would be back to business as usual by next week.
Nonetheless, the company was forced to lower its profit and revenue predictions Friday partly as a result of its recent problems.
In December, prior to the media focus on passenger woes, Carnival said it expected a revenue bump in 2013 of between 1% and 2%. But it now predicts company income to be flat.