ROBYNARCHROY

16 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

I'm sorry to hear of your experience and hope you are now fully recovered.  When you say recent is this in the past few weeks?  May I also ask were Marella testing throughout the cruise and this is how the cases were picked up?  I am intrigued that some cruise lines (including P&O) do not offer any tests or checks unless required by the ports for entry and yet these cases are appearing.  My own thought going into another winter of Covid is that if the itinerary is one which does not require tests to go ashore, undetected cases may cause infections such as your own.  We had another poster on this thread a few pages back who contracted Covid and had no idea as neither he nor his wife felt unwell.  Fred offloaded him along with others and he had to find his own way back home.

 

Whilst following the common sense approach and being cautious is the best we personally can do, I can't help wondering if testing on board is showing up more cases than expected and perhaps as little testing is being done on board by some lines they are able to mask the number of infections, albeit numbers are small when looking at the number who have sailed since the restart.

 

 

Thank you. Yes very recent. We were on a weeks cruise around Spain and flew home on 31st October.

My wife is still suffering breathing difficulties and off work. I fared better but am a little wiped out still and struggling with work, but as self employed have to try to soldier on.

We're both fully jabbed, in our fifties, and sensibly cautious in life. We've been to Greece and Turkey through the pandemic and have been fine. We were "unlucky" on the cruise.

Marella had a pre departure lft  taken at home, which means nothing in my experience as lft's mostly only show the most severely infected not those that could be asymptomatic at the time of testing/boarding.

Marella had a temperature check every day and if you didn't take it your cruise card was blocked. 

It was only the last day everyone was required to take a lateral flow test, but IMHO this was just box ticking.

I do hope cruises survive this opening up, but think it's important that if we feel there's a suppression of information we all share our experiences with facts rather than leaping around shouting "We're all doomed."

As mentioned, TUI will not engage at all about this. I draw my own conclusions.

2 hours ago, Interestedcruisefan said:

Entirely agree

 

I have no doubt the reason cruiselines are keeping the world in the dark about Covid cases on board is entirely self interest and to the detriment of the health and safety of their passengers

 

Nothing to do at all with trying not to spoil the cruise experience

 

 

 

 

Completely agree here. My own experience on a recent Marella explorer 2 cruise we saw ambulances queued at Almeria taking off passengers. We were told 10 people were disembarked by ambulance. The ambulances were escorted out of the port by a police car with blue lights flashing. We also saw the hazmat suited escort as pax were escorted to the ambulance.

My wife felt a little unwell on the last day and tested covid positive on our return. I followed swiftly after.

I have tried to communicate with TUI via social media, post holiday feedback form, and raised a complaint about some of the things we saw while on board. TUI will not communicate in any way with me regarding the covid on this cruise. God knows how many people tested positive after. There was a last night lateral flow test for all passengers. After the farce of close queuing for over an hour the "tester" barely waved a swab up our nose and that was that. I suspect they can't afford to actually show mass infection on a ship.

It seems an obvious conclusion that they are trying to hide behind a wall of silence.

Yes, it's always about personal risk, but I'd like to have all the facts before I take my life chances and not what a cruiseline wishes their paying passengers to know.

We'll certainly be waiting a while before cruising again. 

I agree that people are now far too complacent. We are 55 and 57, double jabbed, and have been careful enough until this cruise to have remained covid free. I feel now that I was swept along with the Marella publicity that everything's safe on the cruises. As mentioned they are doing a lot to help, but they can't supervise every person washing their hands or filling their bottles from the water fountains.

We had planned to book a xmas break as soon as we returned but that now is off the cards for us.

Forgive me for gently nudging into this thread, I did consider starting a new thread on the subject but didn't want to create a full blown thread about Marella cruises failure to have a handwashing warden at every toilet🙂 

I will post a full review in due course, hopefully with a reply from TUI in hand 

The cruise was great especially with the added space on the boat. I think there were 800 on our cruise. I do wonder, though, how many others caught it on the cruise. I also sincerely hope that the problems are ironed out so cruising can continue. I'm trying to communicate things I saw to TUI, but as discussed a wall of silence. Shame.

There seems to have been quite alot of infection on this particular trip. We saw the ambulances taking away infected passengers with blue lights flashing at Almeria. Unfortunately my wife and I have both tested positive on our return. Such a shame as we were really looking forward to returning to cruising with Marella after nearly 2 years away, and were swept along with booking fervour. I felt Marella staff couldn't really have done any more to keep people safe and the chinks in the armour were mostly out of their control, with good social distancing in place mostly.

My advice to anyone about to cruise is perhaps wait for the port shuttle bus numbers to subside, before you go ashore, also buy your own water as we still saw people filling their personal bottles from the water fountains. Some toilets ran out of soap , but many people are still not washing their hands after using the toilet. Avoid mixing with other bubbles as we saw quite a bit of infringement here. Not sure how you'd stop it though. Obviously there needs to be some personal responsibilty here and that ulimately is where the problem lies.

Otherwise thoroughly enjoyed the holiday. I've been in touch with Marella through the post holiday survey and twitter but have been met with a wall of silence. 

I'd be interested to hear how many people tested positive post trip. The Indigo bar last night test was cursory to say the least.