What was supposed to be a wonderful cruise for Richard and Claudene Gordon from Salt Lake City, Utah, turned out to be a major disappointment. The retired couple, aged 84 and 81, decided to venture out on Monday during a stopover in Motril, Spain. They visited Granada, but due to a heavy thunderstorm their bus was delayed an hour on the way back and they were late to their cruise ship.
Family member
Gordon called a family member on board when it became clear that the two would not make the scheduled departure time of 5:30 PM. The family member tried to urge the staff of the Norwegian Viva, as the ship is called, to wait. Despite his best efforts, the cruise ship still left. So without the American couple.
“I am a very experienced traveler,” Gordon told CNN. “And I have already done at least thirty cruises. Never before have we arrived at the port too late. So we are certainly not people who abuse the system.” He criticizes the shipping company because it was not strict with the timing in the days before and the ship regularly left an hour and a half to an hour late. “And now it suddenly had to be punctual…” Even the police said they could not intervene.
Medication
Richard and Claudene were stranded in Motril at the time. And that without the woman’s medication, the man’s glasses, the spare batteries for their hearing aids and the chargers for their mobile phones. Only after much complaining did the shipping company take action and Claudene received a telephone call. “And suddenly we got the royal treatment,” says Gordon. “They picked us up at our hotel in Granada in a beautiful black BMW limousine. It took us to the ship at the next stop in Ibiza, and there we were escorted to the ship’s bosses and to breakfast.”
That was Wednesday, and then the two could finally be reunited with their families on board. “We complained that we were left behind at the port and that there was no one to help us. They said that they had previously received complaints about the harbor master, and that he should have done so. But we only heard from that shipping company after two days. They are certainly at fault too.”
Norwegian Cruise Line denies wrongdoing and says it has made ample efforts to get the couple and family members on the phone to help them.
Abandoned
At the beginning of April, Norwegian Cruise Line had already received bad news when eight passengers from a cruise ship were left behind on the island of Sao Tomé and Principe, off the west coast of Africa. A guided tour had ended there, and they were therefore late to the ship. Despite alleged contact with the captain of the ship, it turned out that they had already left when the eight arrived.
