© 2007 JOHN GREIM
UPDATE 1/31/14: Another norovirus outbreak has struck, this time on Princess Cruises'Caribbean Princess. The ship is sailing back to Houston a day early, with at least 176 sick passengers onboard, cutting short another cruise vacation. This is the third outbreak of illness on a cruise ship this year. At least 142 passengers fell ill aboard Norwegian Cruise Line's Norwegian Star (which I myself have sailed on) on its January 5 cruise out of Miami. Note that all three cruises were in the Caribbean—a region so saturated with cruise ships this year that big deals are on offer. This bad publicity will only force the cruise lines to cut prices even more. So, if you can stomach the risk (pun intended), consider taking advantage of the bargains to come.
ORIGINAL 1/28/14: We all hate getting sick. But getting sick on vacation is the worst. Unfortunately, that's what happened to the 600 people who became ill on Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas. They were felled by norovirus—a gastrointestinal illness characterized by vomiting and diarrhea—on a Caribbean cruise, and the ship had to return to New Jersey two days early so it could be disinfected from top to bottom.
But don't let infrequent norovirus outbreaks convince you to rule out cruising altogether as a vacation option. Your risk of contracting norovirus on a ship is actually a lot smaller than you might think. Norovirus outbreaks are just much higher-profile when they strike a cruise ship than when they strike, say, a hotel (where people come and go, and you never know if other guests got sick) or a theme park (where visitors disperse at day's end) or that roadside fish-taco stand you pull into along the interstate. By contrast, on a ship the outbreak is confined to one small, highly populated space; everyone is in that same place for usually about seven days; and everyone uses the same medical center.As the CDC notes, "Outbreaks are found and reported more quickly on a cruise ship than on land." And cruise-ship outbreaks are highly publicized too, perhaps because there's something so dramatic and riveting about hundreds of people trapped in a floating petri dish, with apparently little control over their fate.
You do have some degree of control, though. Here's the advice I give about precautions to take on a cruise ship—because they're what I do every time I take a cruise (and I've survived 23, with no norovirus yet):
Wash your hands every opportunity you get.
When shipboard staffers try to spray sanitizer into your hands on your way into the dining areas, let them.
When you pass a sanitizer dispenser onboard, use it. But don't think sanitizer is a replacement for soap and water. In its advice about keeping hands clean on cruises, the CDC points out that plain old soap and water disinfect better than alcohol-based products like Purell.
Pack antiseptic wipes.
Avoid the ship's public bathrooms and go back to your cabin.
As compensation for the illness and for cutting the cruise short by two days, Royal Caribbean is offering passengers onboard credit and 50% of the cruise fare they paid in the form of a certificate toward a future cruise. If I were one of those sick passengers, though, what I'd really want is for Royal Caribbean to convince my workplace to count my time away as sick leave and not precious vacation days!
Contributed by Wendy Perrin, cntraveler.com
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