It is being reported that the Carnival Dream has suffered damage to her emergency generators while docked in St. Maarten. The ship apparently lost power to one of it’s emergency generators. This resulted in the loss of power to the elevators for a short period of time late last night. According to Carnival, the ship never lost primary power and all hotel functions are operating normally.
Carnival is currently in the process of arranging flights home for all guests on both chartered and scheduled flights. Guests on this sailing will receive a refund equivalent to three days of fares as well as a 50% discount on a future Carnival cruise. The ship has been docked in St. Maarten since yesterday.
The delay will force Carnival to cancel the Dream’s next cruise, departing on March 16th from Port Canaveral. Guests booked on this sailing will receive a full refund and 25 percent off a future seven-day cruise. Guests who re-book will have their current rate protected on the future sailing. Additionally, any non-refundable transportation related expenses will be reimbursed.”
All of the ship’s public areas, entertainment, and activities are operating as normal. The Carnival Dream was sailing on a 7 night eastern Caribbean cruise. St. Maarten would have been their final port of call followed by two days at sea before returning to Port Canaveral.
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Photo: Mike Faust
5 replies on “Carnival Dream Stranded in St. Maarten, Next Cruise Cancelled”
This latest incident could be a real PR problem for Carnival. Memories of Sensation and Triumph are still fresh in the public’s mind. I can’t mention my love of cruising lately without someone making a snide remark about how they hope I’m not going on one of “those Carnival poop ships.” Carnival has a growing public perception problem here, even if it is mostly unfair.
I am encountering a similar situation with mentioning cruising as well, Nicholas. It’s a shame, we are such a great industry that provides great vacations, but when one thing goes wrong we are relentlessly chastised for it.
This whole situation with Carnival vessel engineering fiascos provides someone like you heading into the cruise industry/marketing with a terrific case study on how public perception can destroy a company, or, even, an industry. Carnival will recover eventually, but they have a lot of work to do first! Meanwhile, selfishly, all this negative publicity may help keep cruise vacation prices a bit lower than anticipated for a while.
It’s not just a PR problem though. It highlighted the lack of proper emergency planning. The fact that Triumph sat in the Gulf of Mexico for nearly a week was astonishing.
The crew is all safe and back in port Canaveral.