As a passenger, it’s never fun when a ship gets delayed in port.
It’s better when the delay happens once you are onboard. At least you then get to enjoy some of the amenities of the ship.
But, when a ship gets stuck in a United States port, it can’t open the casino or any of the shops onboard. If the delay becomes too long, in many cases, stops have to be skipped and itineraries must be changed.
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In many cases, when this happens, passengers don’t know the reason.
Sometimes the captain will share some vague information. It’s often due to a medical emergency and that much might be shared, but, in other cases, passengers are simply left waiting with knowing why.
Carnival Freedom had a long delay on its sailing that left Thursday, Jan. 23. Fox 35 Orlando had the full story.
Carnival passengers angry after Freedom departure delay
Transcript:
Male anchor: People are looking for answers after a Cruise ship is stuck in port for hours.
Female anchor (Danielle): We brought you this story as breaking news on the late news at 11 last night. This morning, Fox 35’s Morgan Parrish is live once again, and Morgan, good morning to you.
So, what was the situation? What happened here?
Morgan Parrish: Danielle, so apparently there was some type of environmental issue on the Carnival Freedom. It finally set sail, but last night it was docked at Port Canaveral for hours. Passengers were upset, and now we’re working to learn exactly what that environmental matter was.
But we know the ship is pretty full. The Carnival of Freedom holds 3,000 passengers and at least 1,100 crew members. And the ship was supposed to already be at the Bahamas this morning.
Carnival released a statement reading, “Carnival Freedom’s team managed an environmental matter Thursday, delaying the ship’s departure from Port Canaveral. Guests are being kept informed.”
And we spoke with passengers who say that they noticed something a little bit off before they even made that announcement.
And others, they are saying that they are just not happy with what happened.
“You know, will I lose a whole day? If I’m going to lose a whole day, you know, should they give me the, I think they should give us the option to get off at this point and rebook it.”
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And Carnivals tell us that the itinerary on the app has already changed to arriving in Nassau on Sunday as opposed to Saturday. And this isn’t the first time that Carnival of Freedom has dealt with some issues. If you take a look at that video on your screen, you can see last year that Freedom, that funnel, burst into flames as it was docked in Grand Turks.
So we’re going to keep an eye out on an update from Carnival on what that environmental issue was. As soon as we get some details, we’ll be sure to bring you the latest. For now, I’ll send it back to you guys in the studio.
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