Unknown Ship Sickness Spoiled Our Cruise

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 19

Review summary

We had a cruise on the Norwegian Jade in late January, 2010. The ships ports of call were wonderful. We started out from Barcelona (Spain), then we visited Civitavecchia (Italy), Pireus (Greece), Izmir (Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), and Valetta (Malta), and we finally returned to Barcelona. The ship was very attractive and well-maintained. The food was adequate, but far from excellent. However, the musical shows were outstanding. They were some of the best weve seen on cruise ships. But the cruise itself was marred by some unknown sickness that the ship apparently was carrying. By the ships own admission, it had some 2% (of reported cases) of its passengers on the cruise prior to ours getting sick with vomiting and diarrhea. However, Norwegian Cruise Line did not notify any of us until we checked in for boarding the ship in Barcelona. At that time, it handed us an announcement that passengers in the last cruise experienced some intestinal viral infection that caused fever, diarrhea, vomiting and/or intestinal pain or discomfort with the implication that these passengers got sick while visiting the ports of call. To combat this unknown sickness, the ships crew expended extra efforts to keep the ship cleaner by disinfecting everywhere. In fact, boarding the ship was not from 1 p.m. as announced in the literature; it was delayed three hours until late afternoon so that the cabins presumably could be further disinfected. Passengers had to disinfect their hands at every public gatheringthe shows, restaurants, and buffet lines. In the buffet lines, the crew served everything, including glasses of water and unopened boxes of cereals! Nevertheless, many people still got sick on our cruise. When we got to Egypt, the Egyptian authorities delayed anyone from disembarking the ship for over five hours! They apparently were checking the health records of the ship and were determining whether or not to quarantine the ship! But by the time we were able to disembark, half the first day was irretrievably gone. That created a lot of chaos, extra expense and hardship among the passengers to rearrange their schedules to visit Cairo and the pyramids and sphinx, switching or canceling the tours to accommodate this unforeseen change. Norwegian Cruise Line should have been more upfront with its passengers regarding this uncontrolled noxious viral intestinal illness aboard the ship. But for this unknown sickness on the ship, we would rate the cruise at least a very good! Also, though we don't recommend this ship (in its present condition), we've had good experience with NCL in some of its other ships.

Pros: The wonderful ports of call

Cons: The ship apparently had some intestinal viral infection aboard which caused many passengers to have diarrhea and vomiting. But for this, the cruise would have been rated much higher.

Recommends Norwegian Jade? No.