3,500 passengers stranded on Royal Princess cruise ship
The brand new cruise ship that was launched by the Duchess of Cambridge back in June has suffered a power outage, leaving 3,594 passengers and 1,336 crew stranded between Mykonos, Greece and Naples, Italy.
The 141,000-ton Royal Princess cruise ship suffered the power outage on Sunday. Passengers were seven days into the trip when the outage happened and Travel Agent Central reports that, following assessment, the remainder of the cruise has been cancelled. As a result, passengers missed going ashore to explore Rome and Florence, as well as a port call at Toulon, France. The ship is now en route to Naples, where it is expected to arrive today, a day later than scheduled. Passengers are expected to stay onboard the ship tonight, and disembark on Wednesday.
Cruise company Princess told Travel Agent that the problem began at 1:30pm on Sunday. The captain notified passengers of the situation, slowed the ship to conserve power and the emergency generator kicked in to maintain lighting and toilets. Nevertheless, passengers reported power outages of up to six hours.
According to Cruise Critic, the ship will now be taken out of service for repair. All passengers will be disembarked and flown home from Naples. Princess is making all flight arrangements for passengers and has promised to issue a full refund of the cruise fare, as well as a 25 per cent future cruise credit.
Princess said it is not yet known how long the ship will remain out of service and whether future cruises will be cancelled or shortened.
The cruise line issued a statement which said: "The impact of repairs on the next Royal Princess cruise, scheduled to depart Barcelona on September 27, is not yet known and we will keep passengers fully advised as details become known."
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