Passengers on the MSC Meraviglia had planned to pack their swimsuits, sunglasses and flipflops, but shortly before they were going to embark on a Christmastime cruise to the Bahamas, they were told they were not going to a warm-weather destination.
Instead, their ship would sail north to the not-so-tropical destination of Boston and Canada.
The MSC Meraviglia was sailing out of Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, ABC News reported.
The company said the change from the Bahamas to Boston and Canada was “due to unseasonable and rapidly worsening weather that would have made it impossible to safely reach the southern Atlantic Ocean from New York City,”
According to Cruise Mapper, the ship had been scheduled to return to New York on Dec. 23 and was in Portland, Maine, on Wednesday morning.
It was the same weather system that moved up the East Coast that caused flooding, power outages and deaths. The storm system that the ship was avoiding eventually hit New England.
MSC decided to change the itinerary instead of making the tougher choice of canceling the cruise for thousands of passengers. Still, the change in plans was a challenge for the cruise line.
“The complexities involved in obtaining last-minute berths for unplanned stops and provisioning the ship along its new route left sailing to Canada and New England as the only viable option,” MSC said, giving those who were setting sail to either go on the adventure or canceling the trip for future credit, using the entire amount paid for this trip toward a different one.
Passengers however said they didn’t get that choice when they first found out about the change. Business Insider said they found out about the adjustment via email the day before departure.
Val Montgomery told ABC News, “When they first sent out that message, I wish they would have given us options right in that message and we could at least have a choice. We didn’t have a choice at all.”
Montgomery and her friend, Lakeya Allen, had planned the trip to get out of their cold hometown of Chicago to spend a warm holiday in the Bahamas.
“So this is some of my kids’ Christmas gifts,” Allen said. “[T]his was like, ‘Hey, you guys, you got to go to [the] Bahamas.’ We’re from Chicago, so we wanted to change the weather. I never fathomed that we will be back in cold weather.”
Cruise experts said that while rare, it’s “not out of the question” that cruise vacations have to be rerouted because of weather. The “contract of carriage” clause in the cruise paperwork covers the possibility, of allowing the cruise line to change the itinerary for several issues including weather.
The MSC Meraviglia can carry 5714 guests in 2244 cabins. Typically it stops in Port Canaveral, Florida; Nassau, Bahamas; and Ocean Cay, the company’s private island, according to Fox Business. Cruise Mapper said there were 5386 people on board the ship.
