Due to worsening weather, a Bahamas cruise, MSC Meraviglia, was diverted to New England and Canada.
Rerouting of Bahamas cruise, MSC Meraviglia
Diversion of MSC Meraviglia Cruise Ship
Hundreds of passengers who were set to sail on board the MSC Meraviglia cruise ship did not get the balmy vacation that they were expecting as the ship diverted to New England and Canada. The MSC Meraviglia which was scheduled to sail to the Bahamas, had to change its route. According to the director of communications, MSC Cruises USA, Field Sutton, this redirection was caused:
“Due to unseasonable and rapidly worsening weather that would have made it impossible to safely reach the southern Atlantic Ocean from New York City,”
The last-minute change in itinerary left the passengers befuddled. According to a passenger, Lakeya Allen, from Illinois who was ready to board the Bahamas cruise, she was notified of the change in itinerary around 8:30 p.m. a few hours before she had planned to head to Chicago with the family to catch a flight to New York City. The passenger stated in an interview:
“Once I got the notification, I rushed to Walmart to try and get my family winter clothes. I grabbed whatever I could, but Walmart was closing early that night, so we had to just bring what we had packed. We still have shorts, bathing suits, and sunscreen with us,”
“If the email did say anything about getting a refund or credit, it was in the fine print because I didn’t see anything. I was hoping they would reroute the ship once we got to New York.”
Guests scheduled to board the MSC Meraviglia were given two choices, whether they could sail on the new itinerary or they could cancel their trip for future cruise credit at their convenience. The MSC cruise line posted a statement that read:
“The only alternative would have been to take the more extreme step of canceling the cruise — and thousands of people’s vacations — outright. The complexities involved in obtaining last-minute berths for unplanned stops and provisioning the ship along its new route left a sailing to Canada and New England as the only viable option,”
MSC Meraviglia Bahamas Cruise – An Immense Change of Plans
Lakeya Allen stated in an interview that she had been planning the Bahamas vacation for her family since February 2023, and intended to take her children onboard the MSC Meraviglia to the Bahamas as a Christmas present. She stated that she already has family waiting for her and her children on the island and in New York City.
“I told myself that we would do something different this year and instead of buying gifts, we were going to travel and make memories,” Allen stated in an interview.
“At first, everyone tried to make the most of it, so in the video you see kids jumping in the outdoor pool even though we were in New York, and it was 40 degrees, but we’ve all congregated around the indoor pool so now that pool is crowded,”
Allen stated that she and her family spent the first two days of the cruise in Boston, where the first day they could not leave the ship due to rain and the next day they got off the MSC Meraviglia in search of coats and sweaters.
“We’re in Portland now and on TikTok trying to find what to do in Portland or what’s in this area because we didn’t plan for this,” Allen said. “The boat is beautiful, but I didn’t want to leave the cold weather to go to another place with cold weather. I just wanted to be in the sun.”
MSC Meraviglia Itinerary Change
Cruise Ships can change or skip ports of call and also reserve the right to do so in their carriage contracts, According to MSC:
“The Carrier does not guarantee that the Cruise Ship will call at any or every advertised port or follow any particular route or time schedule.”
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