DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Passengers from the Sun Princess gathered their luggage and boarded buses today at Pier 2 in Honolulu after their cruise was cut short by a flu-like outbreak.
Mass illness The cruise liner Sun Princess has cut short its voyage to return to Honolulu after 265 passengers and 29 crew members were infected by a virus causing diarrhea and other symptoms.
shortens cruise
A diarrhea outbreak forces
the luxury ship on a cruise
to Mexico to return to HonoluluBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
The ship's 2,000-plus passengers began disembarking this morning to fly back to the mainland at Princess Cruises' expense.
The Sun Princess was to have sailed from Lahaina last night for Ensenada, Mexico, and then Los Angeles, but changed that to head for Honolulu, turning a 15-day cruise into a 10-day trip.
When the ship was at Lahaina yesterday, about 30 passengers were still recovering from what federal officials call a Norwalk-like virus, said Tom Dow, public affairs vice president of Princess Cruises. But there were four new reports yesterday, and the decision was made not to keep so many people in close contact for the five days it would take the ship to sail to Los Angeles and complete its voyage, Dow said. The line could better to use the time to sanitize the ship completely and prepare it for its next cruise, he said.
Dow said a lot of progress had been made in dealing with the outbreak but the decision to fly passengers home was made after consulting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, he said.
Dow said the CDC is notified any time more than 3 percent of a ship's passengers get an illness. In this case, the CDC said, the total through the eight days of the voyage up to yesterday was about 13 percent of the passengers and a little more than 3 percent of the crew having "a gastrointestinal illness" at some time during the voyage.
"This is a very difficult decision for us because we know that there will be many passengers unhappy, but we believe it is the right thing to do," Dow said.
The ship arrived in Honolulu this morning and was scheduled to leave for Los Angeles at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow, according to the state Harbors Division.
The ship -- which left Honolulu Saturday night, spent Sunday on Kauai and yesterday in Lahaina -- gave most of its passengers a good time, Dow said. The weather was great, and about 1,000 passengers took part in ground tours on Kauai and on Maui, with others going ashore independently, he said.
But the virus was still showing up, and "if we couldn't break it completely, the prudent thing to do was to terminate the cruise," Dow said.
Bill Acosta, a Las Vegas entertainer who had boarded the ship yesterday, said people appeared to be getting over their illness within 24 hours, and he thinks the matter was "getting blown out of proportion." Still, cruise officials did the right thing by ending the cruise, Acosta said.
Sick passengers were treated on the ship.
Passengers began leaving the ship to board buses shortly before 8 a.m. at Pier 2 in Honolulu, across from Restaurant Row. The passengers were separated into three groups, one that went to the airport, another that went to the Hawaii Convention Center for a temporary wait and a third that went to Waikiki hotels for an overnight stay. Information on the number of passengers in each group was not immediately available.
Arrangements for the passengers were being handled by Princess Cruises' internal airline and hotel booking departments, according to Dow. He did not have estimates on what the entire effort would cost. Princess was planning to pay for Honolulu hotel accommodations for any passengers who could not get flights to Los Angeles.
If they cannot find flights from Los Angeles to their homes and need accommodations, "we'll stand for that expense as well," Dow said.
And to compensate the passengers for having five days cut off what should have been a 15-day cruise, passengers will get a refund of one-third of their cruise fare, and there will be a $500 credit per cabin that can be used toward a future cruise, Dow said.
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta confirmed the Princess figures for how many had taken ill.
Several thousand cruise ship passengers have come down with viral infections in recent weeks, mostly on cruises in the Caribbean.
Princess Cruises' Dow said that is not a lot compared with 23 million such cases across the United States in the past year, but when people are confined to a ship, it is more risky. "It is very contagious and easily transmitted," he said.
During the voyage, those with symptoms were confined to their quarters and not allowed to go ashore, he said.
Star-Bulletin reporter Tim Ruel contributed to this story
