FLORIDA — Midway through a five-day cruise in March, the tail of the Carnival Freedom cruise ship caught fire.
Passengers chronicled the drama that played out on board in hundreds of social media posts. They showed flames shooting from the tail, water leaking from the 5th-floor interior, and shuttered areas like pools, sports venues, and restaurants.
For 9-year-old Katherine Drey and her family, it marked the beginning of the end of what had been a great getaway.
“We couldn't swim, we couldn't eat, we couldn't do water slides, we couldn't go to the sports area,” Katherine recalled.
Katherine's mom, Kelly Booth, said many of the venues on the back half of the ship, including the pool and restaurants, shut down for the day. Some closed for the remainder of the cruise. The main dining room opened that same night, but several on board described waiting in line for up to four hours for dinner.
Passenger Gemma Phillips is one of several who told ABC Action News that Carnival brushed them off when her family asked for cruise credit or some sort of compensation for the trip’s interruption.
“The second that happened, like, vacation was no longer a vacation,” she said.
Phillips created a Facebook page for Carnival Freedom passengers. It has more than 280 members from the nearly 3,000 that were on board the full-capacity ship.
Many of the people posting in the group are outraged that Carnival isn't offering a partial cruise credit or anything else to make up for the stress and inconvenience.
A Carnival spokesperson said in a statement:
Any venues that were temporarily closed because of lightning in the area, or from the brief cleanup after the fire was extinguished, were reopened by the late afternoon/early evening.
Veteran travel agent Tammy Levent, owner of Elite Travel, said there is no regulatory agency to advocate on passengers’ behalf when things go south on board. She recommended cruisers purchase travel interruption insurance, which could apply in cases where part of a trip is interrupted.
Gemma Phillips said this was her tenth cruise on Carnival and likely her last.
“I don't want to break up with Carnival," she said. "But I feel I have no choice by the way they are handling this.”
And Kelly Booth, a three-time Carnival cruiser, said she's already canceled a future Carnival trip and booked with one of their competitors.
“The way Carnival has handled this and the way Carnival has treated the guests that were on board has ruined what I think of them as a company,” she said.
