This event happened to me and my children on a carnival cruise (specifically - the Carnival Glory ship). Our Nassau shore excursion (interacting with dolphins) caused us to be late getting back to the ship (we did stop to get a drink and 2 tee-shirts which took all of 2/3 minutes). I have advanced osteoporosis and don't walk too fast either.
When we reached the dock where the ship was we noticed the ropes were pulled from the dock and the ship was idling at the dock. We started screaming and yelling and waving our arms to ship personnel (they were in white uniforms) that we needed to get on the ship. They refused to let us board. We were so close we could have thrown a stone and hit the ship — it was still was exactly in the same place — all they had to do was lower an entrance ramp.
The ship's staff saw us/heard us/ignored us/laughed at us. We had nothing-except the bathing suits on our backs. My anti-seizure meds, my med id necklace/other meds/money/credit card/jewelry/computer/phone etc. Were on the ship. We were very traumatized. We had to book hotels 1/nassau & 1/st thomas before we could meet back up with the ship. We also had to book flights from nassau to miami then from miami to st thomas. We had to call home for financial help (almost $3000) because we had nothing-we traveled and stayed in our bathing suits for 3 days-no toothbrush/no hairbrush/nothing. Luckily my son had some pocket money&we were able to eat once in mcdonalds/nassau.
I suffered mini seizures during the nights&my son was plagued with nightmares. The anguish of what carnival did to me brought me to my knees on the concrete dock. We were recognized by carnival guests when we reboarded in st thomas who said they were horrified at what was done to us they saw us scream, wave, beg. The ship was so close we could throw a stone&hit it but they didn't let us on.
What they did to us shouldn't happen to animal. Our vacation was ruined even though we had to continue on the cruise - it was impossible to enjoy the rest of the cruise, we were still shell-shocked. It would have been nice to just have gone home, but we were in a financial bind already.
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