I was sorry to read that more than 180 passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas were struck down by what the Australian media called a “stomach bug” on a recent cruise into Sydney.
I sincerely hope the inconvenience of being ill doesn’t put these people off taking further cruises. I feel their pain, because it happened to me during a cruise down the Suez Canal, but I can assure them that Royal Caribbean will look after them, and work hard to prevent a repeat.
When I contracted the norovirus aboard the Mariner of the Seas, I was attended to quickly by the nurse. She gave me a needle in my backside to treat the vomiting and a series of tablets to cure the diahorrea. At the time that seemed to be the wrong way round, but apparently that’s the correct treatment.
I was confined to my cabin for 24 hours, which suited me fine because all I wanted to do was sleep.
When I recovered, I discovered that a few other people had been ill, too. It wasn’t classed as a breakout, but the crew had swung into action performing what’s known as a “deep clean”, meaning all surfaces that people might touch — tables, bar tops, railings etc — were thoroughly disinfected. They also took away bar menus and peanuts — anything that might be handled by more than one person — for a few days.
Luckily, my illness fell in the middle of a stretch of sea days, meaning I didn’t miss any ports of call. And Royal Caribbean gave me a voucher (worth $200 from memory) as compensation for my inconvenience.
The sad truth is that wherever people gather in numbers, it only takes one person to get ill for others to be affected. That’s why they ask you to fill in a form declaring that you’ve not had cold or flu symptoms in the days before boarding.
Royal Caribbean — and all the other cruise lines — know what to do to try to prevent illness on board, and what to do in the case of such an outbreak. These incidents are rare, given the huge number of ships at sea at any given time, but they get a lot of publicity when they happen.
Inevitably some people will get sick. All you can do is hope that nobody is knowingly bringing a bug on board — and that starts with not being that person yourself.
