What is your worst cruising expirience?

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TINKERTOY ..... the 1 & only

First of all Tony needs to lighten up on older people and over weight people. If he is blessed enough to live long enough he will be in that category soon also. Show some respect for your elders and for sure NEVER go on a Holland America cruise because their ships have almost all seniors.

I have been on many cruises and had a few where there was a medical emergency but I would not categorize the cruise as the worse based solely on that. On one of my first cruises a person had a heart attack and the ship stopped at a small island in the Bahamas where the patient was taken off the ship to be transported by air to Miami. But when the ship lower the life boat its rudder broke and so they spent half an hour fixing the life boat's rudder so they could go 100 yards to shore. All of this emergency took about 3 hours (with it taking half an hour for the ship to slow down and stop). Then net result was that our day on a private island was cut in half.

I think my last cruise just completed a couple weeks ago to South America would be my worse. But it was not a catastrophe, just an inconvenience that made it so. First of all VISA's are required for Chile and Brazil and that added about $500 to the total cost of the cruise and that's on top of about $3000 for air fare. Then to make matters worse the Brazilians have a bunch of requirements (hassles) to get the VISA. Things like you can't apply for it until 90 days before you will enter the country; you MUST pay for it with a US Postal Service money order; and the VISA application for each person MUST be submitted in a separate envelope and contain a self addresses and postage paid Express Mail return envelope. All of this just to spend a total of about 24 hours over two days in the country. Chile, on the other hand just collected the VISA fee in the airport when we got there; took all of 10 minutes. Had I known beforehand about the VISA requirements and costs I may have decided not to do this cruise.

Then this VISA problem resulted in about 100 people being denied boarding in Chile, which in turn resulted in long lines and delays at check-in. The cruise line never told anyone that the VISA was an absolute requirement; until they arrived at the port. Needless to say, people were pissed.

Then 2 days into the cruise the Norwalk Virus raised its ugly head. It seemed that about 100 people were sick. What we heard was that most were sick when/before they boarded the ship. So some activities were cut out all together. Hand wipes were passed out at all food places and were required every time you got back on ship in a port. The ship's buffet was still open but they had crew members serving all of the food and drink, including handing out plates and eating utensils. This slowed getting food for about 10 days and getting coffee, tea, or juice was even worse. A couple days before the cruise was over things returned to normal. I didn't get sick but all of this was an inconvenience.

On top of the other things, the weather the first couple days was not good. It was foggy, drizzling, and the seas were very rough. While the cruise line has no control on weather or seas it was just not that we did not see some of the vistas we would/could see with good weather and using the outside decks for walking and other things was near impossible at times. But I didn't get sea sick and the weather and ride did improve after a couple days.

While I wanted to see South America, what I found was that most of the port stops really didn't have much very interesting to see. I enjoyed a couple of the places but most were just a place to get off the ship.

cruise junkie

my worst was not the cruise lines fault , but the fact that in trying to fill a large group booking, I wasn't too picky who all went..I have always cruised with a group who really had a good time together. but last year many couldn't go for one reason or another, so we invited a lot of people who had said before they wanted to go.. what a mistake , we thought that it was OK because they would be on there own.. Wrong if you don't really care for someone at home , don't get trapped on a cruise ship with them.. some of then I haven't even seen sense we got back.. so I say be careful who you invite to share your vacation.

travelbean

I have been on lots of Cruises and will be going on another one this summer so this is not in anyway to dis the cruising experience, its a pretty chill way to travel.
However, the worst experience would have to be a few years ago when I was on a family trip with my parents.
We were on a cruise through Hawaii and my Mom started to feel very ill. She went to the doctor on board and his diagnosis was that she most likely was sea sick. She got progressively worse and decided to go to our local physician when we arrived back home.
It turned out that her gallbladder had actually started to rupture!!!
Had the cruise been any longer she would have been seriously hurt because of the medical staffs inability to diagnose/treat the issue.

acenicksgirl

This couple I met on the "Carnival Freedom" told me that that the "Carnival Triumph" ship is filthy. And they said that there was dust all over their stateroom. My family was considering going on that ship during spring break, glad we didn't!

Edit: Momsezno I know exactly what you mean, I was upset getting off the ship because I had way too much fun. >.<

MomSezNo

My worst cruise experience was having to leave the ship at the end of the cruise!

Empress1

Last year my husband and I decided to have a romantic getaway and always wanted to go on a cruise. Long story short, due to my son's school schedule, we had to leave from NY and opted for the NCL Spirit. The short list:

We paid extra for a balcony room and the balcony was so scummy, you couldn't even see the ocean. The food was, quite possibly the blandest food and most poorly prepared on the planet, if you weren't an alcoholic, forget trying to get a drink, the service is sucky because the tip is included in the fare so there is no incentive to provide good service, my husband and a bunch of other passengers got food poisoning after eating at the Raffles buffet (but they tried to pass it off as the Norwalk virus - funny, you didn't hear about it in the papers like you normally do) and because of that, we got quarantined for 24 hours and missed our entire time in the British Virgin Islands. To add insult to injury, because we were quarantined, they charged us for room service and while stuck in the room, I got bit by bed bugs (which the head of hospitality told me was my fault because I probably brought a bug back with me from the Domenican Republic, even though we hadn't even stopped there yet). Oh, and the next day we found our bedspread under our bed after turndown...that would explain bugs on the spread because they aren't stored properly. There were other little things and the entertainment on the ship was reminiscent of high school musical productions. It was horrendous and because they were so rude about all of our issues, I have made it my personal mission, whenever possible, to try and dissuade anyone and everyone from ever giving Norwegian cruise line business. We travel fairly extensively and had never cruised before that. And now, thanks to NCL, we will NEVER cruise again!

Martha Y

never had one

Erin M

I'm not sure if this is going to help you with your decision but I have gone on Carnival 7 times and have never had any complaints. They are so great and not extremely fancy. Cruises are such an amazing time!

DCDARLING

I have been really lucky cruising, but one of the people in one of my groups were not

I used to run big groups of singles cruises and we went on the Carnival Conquest in Feb 2007 out of Galveston. We had a group of about 300 rowdy Mardi Gras ready people ranging from 21-70...

A woman on the cruise on the SECOND day had found out her son had been killed. She had to wait until we got to Jamaica to get to the port and fly home back to NYC. It was awful and my heart went out to her....

Time travler

Like the first answer, it was still a great cruise, but last year even before the cruise, I lost my passport on the plane between San Francisco and LA. The plane was checked 2 times and nothing was found. Some very nice employee kept insisting. The plane had gone back to San Francisco and then came back to LA. It was found on the 3rd try between the seats, so it flew without me. We then flew to Sydney Australia and everything was fine till we realized my husband forgot his medication, Great, just great. As soon as we got on the ship, we went to medical and they took care of everything. They took us by car to a pharmacy, got the meds, then back to the ship. So I had my passport and he had his meds, so off we sailed. This is one of the reasons I love Princess, because of the great care they take of there passengers. By the way, the was a 29 day cruise, so a lot of money was at stake.

Tony

I just got back from a 4 night cruise. We had just left San Diego when we had to turn back. Someone had a heart attack. The Coast Guard came and got them.

The very next morning, I'm drinking coffee on the pool deck when, sure enough, another medical emergency...

There are Too Many old people on cruises, getting sick and having attacks, clogging up the walk ways with their wheel chairs and walkers. Also, there are Too Many fat people on cruises, riding around in their motorized scooters getting in the way.

All old people and fat people should be kicked off of cruises. All they do is ruin everyone else's good time with their heart attacks and wheel chairs. While we're at it, outlaw ugly people too. I saw waaaay too many ugly people on this last cruise. Cruise lines should have better standards of who they let on.

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