Two Cruises, 2 Norovirus Outbreaks, 1 Unhappy Couple
And you thought you had bad luck.
Ed Petrasovits and his wife Barbara Ferguson, from New Jersey, just stepped off a norovirus-infested cruise — for the second time in two years.
“We were all in some kind of a shock that this could happen two times in a row,’’ Ferguson told NBC.
The two were passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas last February, which was famously struck with one of the largest norovirus outbreaks on a cruise ship in the last 20 years. Norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhea, and Ferguson was one of the 630 passengers who became ill on that ship.
Royal Caribbean gave the couple a $400 room credit for another cruise, so they booked a make-up trip and boarded Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas on January 24.
“Our last cruise was horrible,’’ Petrasovits told NBC. “The only reason I went again is because my wife said, ‘What’s the odds?’’’
And then it happened again.
Their cruise was cut short this week when nearly 200 passengers became sick with norovirus. The cruise returned to Baltimore on Monday, a day early. The couple did not get sick this time, but said their vacation was ruined.
“Men running around in hazmat suits and chemical sprayers,’’ Ed told CBS in the video above. “Fun. Good. Good trip.’’
Royal Caribbean sent the couple a one-day voucher good towards the purchase of another cruise within the next 12 months. But they won’t use it.
“I will never go on a Royal Caribbean cruise again,’’ said Ferguson. “And I don’t even know if I will cruise again.’’
Despite the cases in the news, the odds of being stricken with an illness aboard a cruise ship are “quite low,’’ according to Mitch Lipka, editor of The Consumer Chronicle. Twenty million people cruise in a year, and the percentage of passengers affected by illness on a ship that has an outbreak is 5 percent or less, he said. There are 19 to 21 million cases of norovirus a year in the U.S., reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cruise ship cases just get more attention because the sick are stuck at sea, Lipka said.
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