Prisoner in my cruise ship cabin. Or how Norwegian ruined a vacation

Norwegian Spirit Cruise Review to Europe - Western Europe

annapolisgirl

Contributor Level: Deck Hand

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 37

Overall rating:

2.8 out of 5

10 Night Canary Islands & Morocco (Barcelona Roundtrip)

Sail date: January 24, 2019

Ship: Norwegian Spirit

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

Our ship had norovirus on board. After continuously asking passengers to let them know if they had any sickness at all in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, we notified them when was husband was sick with food poisoning, just in case. They never tested him, other than to check for fever, which he didn't have. He was immediately quarantined for two days, as was I. I was perfectly healthy the entire cruise and my husband quickly recovered from the food poisining. Not only was I quarantined to the room, I only had access to sick people food--broth, crackers, juice and some horrible dried out chicken and rice. This was my available food for two whole days. I was not sick! It's lucky I had brought granola bars on board, its what I survived on. My card was tagged so I could not go to a restaruant or even buy a drink. No one had even told us that I was quarantined as well, I found out as I was trying to get off the ship for an excursion. Alarms actually went off and they treated me like some sort of criminal. The worst part, of course, is that we missed two destinations in the Canary Islands, somewhere I had never been. My husband obviously would have missed one day due to illness, but we both missed both ports. Me, for no reason whatsoever. I honestly didn't realize that cruise lines were basically God while you are on the ship. They can make you a prisoner with no recourse. I lodged a complain with Norweigian, not even requesting a refund, since that would have been a pittance of a 10 day cruise anyway. Just looking for some remorse, or goodwill, or consideration of changing their policy. But I got a very prickily worded "not our problem" type of response. I'm not a huge fan of Norwegian anyway, I think they offef good affordibility, but quality suffers compared to other nice cruise lines. The itineary they offered on this trip was fantastic, but not so fantastic when you strip off two ports. The moral of my story: Don't be honest with Norwegian Cruise lines. If you are sick, you have an ethical responsibility to stay away from other people. But if you are just feeling bad, quarantine yourself and wait until you are very sure that you have a virus before contacting them. And warn your bunkmate that they will be quarantined as well. Bring your own medicine so you don't need to rely on them until you are really sick. Or better yet, pick a better cruise line.