WonderMan3

It doesn't help when they included misinformation in the story saying that the ship was docked when it actually was anchored which is what complicated getting the passengers back on the ship.

OMG, now this story is on the NBC evening news. It just won't die. 😄😄

My Vista cruise for September 2025 that I booked in late December has gone up by $700pp since then

Just to refresh your memory, this is what you posted earlier: “They returned when the gangway was still down and the captain refused to let them board, but anyhoo.” Why would you mention a gangway being “down” if you were only referencing an “opening in the bulwark of a ship” and “nothing about a ramp up into the ship a person can walk on”? 🤔

They’re docked with a gangway. The other situation involved an anchored ship where all lifeboats had been restored to the ship before the late passengers showed up. Totally different situation.

I thought it was a tidal issue that caused them to miss Gambia? Someone on the ship posted about it here and it was announced the day before they were to even arrive there so it must have been an issue that was impacting the port for days.

Claiming that highly touristed African countries should be avoided by Americans for fear of folks being kidnapped and murdered certainly helps exacerbate those flawed perceptions…

Alexa, play “Let It Go” from the movie “Frozen”

Ignorance is bliss…

Eagerly awaiting for someone to come here and tell us how NCL failed these late passengers. 😂😂

Huh? The ship was anchored out in the water. There was no gangway.

In all of this that is the one thing that I found concerning. I used to work for a travel company and occasionally we would have a traveler get injured and have to go to the hospital. In every situation that I can recall, the trip guide would go to the hospital and make continual check-ins until either they were released, a family member could show up (if that serious) or another representative from our company or from a trusted local associate company could be there to continually check on them (because the tour often had to move on to another destination). This sometimes meant a disruption to the itinerary for the other travelers. I would read feedback from other travelers who would always be praising the guide and our company for putting the needs of the traveler over the trip despite it causing them to miss things in the itinerary. Now who knows what the truth is. Maybe NCL did have someone local there who they worked with who was keeping an eye on the hospitalized passenger. I wouldn’t necessarily trust everything the disgruntled “stranded” group has to say about it.

Because you’re afraid the ship will sail away at its scheduled departure time when you choose to take a risk and go off on your own on an excursion that if delayed a bit can cause you to miss all aboard time? Okay. But I’ll guess you’ll have to forgo cruise ships altogether then since they all have the same rules. 🤷🏻‍♂️

They’re milking the drama.

I find it amusing that in the midst of apparently transiting through multiple African countries over the past few days, likely in one of the most stressful situations of their lives, trying to catch up to the ship these folks have found plenty of time to talk to and be interviewed by multiple media sources. Guess we know where their priorities lie…

If a port was not safe for passengers to debark then the cruise line would not go there. And to just make a blanket statement that “Africa is not safe” is a bit slanderous and factually incorrect. Are there particular places within the CONTINENT of Africa that are not safe, certainly. Just as there are a number of places here in the United States that are not safe, or in France or the UK and so on. I mean just to look as an example, let’s compare the crime rate of São Tomé where these passengers were “stranded” to Fort Lauderdale, FL which is one of the key ports for boarding a cruise in the U.S. where many of us have spent time. I have never felt unsafe in Ft. Lauderdale and yet its crime rate is considered moderate while São Tomé’s is considered very low. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Fort-Lauderdale https://www.numbeo.com/crime/country_result.jsp?country=Sao+Tome+And+Principe Now if you want to say that Africa can be a more challenging destination to be “stranded” in (due to more limited flights, increased barriers with English not being spoken as readily, etc.) there is more weight to that argument but we still should not be generalizing an entire continent because there is a vast difference between being left behind in say Cape Town or Alexandria versus São Tomé.

Huh? It’s all over news sites now. This is what you see with a quick google search.

Dude chill out. People kept responding to my comment when I had already clearly explained my point. They either weren't bothering to read through the thread or just felt like arguing. You're now just perpetuating it all with yet another response. Move on please...

Missing the point...Not going to repeat myself again. Just read through the thread.

You're missing the point. Regardless of whether stores normally open for someone after closing (and they occasionally do as I've had it done for me at least once in the past...), that action does not put the customer in danger with risk of injury or death as this transfer at sea apparently would have.

Where did I say that it was? I was responding to a comment talking about NCL sponsored excursions not guaranteeing transportation coverage to get you to the next port if you miss the boat because of language in their T&Cs.

That's actually a poor analogy as an employee could easily open a door and let someone into the store. Someone further up the thread outlined exactly why the passengers could not easily transfer back to the ship to board; it was an extreme safety issue with the risk of injury or death to a passenger if they were to fall while transiting from the port boat back to the ship.

Sounds like she's the only one in this group of passengers whose insurance will actually cover her transport back to the ship or home.

I suppose terms and conditions can get the cruise line out of pretty much anything but anytime I've heard of a story where a cruise line sponsored excursion has had delays to the point where passengers missed the ship then the cruise line covered the expenses to get passengers back to the ship at the next port or to the debark port depending on the itinerary.

Yikes. The article says they were supposed to be flying to Gambia today. If they did, they're going to now have to fly on to Senegal. What a mess.