Norovirus outbreaks reported on 2 cruise ships that sailed the Caribbean – CNN

Princess Cruises’ Caribbean Princess, seen here, is cutting its seven-day trip short after at least 162 passengers and 11 crew members reported being ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between the tragic and rare grounding of the Costa Concordia in 2012 and periodic widespread illness aboard ships, a number of unfortunate events can affect sailings. Here are some of the recent incidents.

Nearly 700 crew and passengers fell ill aboard Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas, which returned home to New Jersey on Wednesday, January 29. It is the highest number of sick people reported on any cruise ship in two decades, according to the CDC.

In 2013, the Silver Shadow, run by Silversea Cruises, failed a CDC health inspection over concerns about hiding food in crew cabins.

On Memorial Day last year, a fire aboard Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas cut short a seven-day cruise to Port Canaveral, Florida, and the Bahamas. The ship changed its course and sailed under its own power to Freeport in the Bahamas.

Carnival Legend, shown here in 2012, had to cancel a scheduled March stop on Grand Cayman after propulsion system problems hampered its sailing speed. It arrived in Tampa, Florida, hours ahead of schedule.

The Carnival Dream, shown here at its North American debut in November 2009, lost power in March, and some of its toilets stopped working temporarily. For a time, no one was allowed to get off the vessel, docked at Philipsburg, St. Maarten, in the eastern Caribbean.

A February 2013 engine fire left the Carnival Triumph adrift in the Gulf of Mexico. More than 4,200 passengers endured power outages, overflowing toilets and food shortages.

During a surprise visit in August 2012, CDC inspectors found multiple sanitation violations on the Holland America ship ms Veendam (shown here in March 2012). The CDC found enough violations, including brown liquid dripping on clean dishes and a fly on the buffet, to give the Veendam a failing grade.

A fire in the Carnival Splendor engine room in November 2010 crippled the cruise ship, stranding passengers off the coast of Mexico for several days without air conditioning or hot showers.

The report didn’t sit well with some passengers, who spoke to CNN affiliate KHOU as they disembarked the ship Friday.

“That’s last Tuesday they tell us this, and they’ve never said anything different,” Keith Davis of Austin told KHOU of the fog report. “I knew then nobody can predict five days in advance. I knew that that wasn’t the case. They were just doing that to minimize their damages. … I didn’t like the way they treated us. I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like the captain doing that.”

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Sam and Terry Bible of Woodville, 100 miles northeast of Houston, told the station they doubted fog spurred the decision to cut the trip short, and Bill and Linda Askins of West Columbia, 50 miles south of Houston, said they had a great time but were disappointed to turn back before the ship reached Belize.

“I’m still looking for the fog,” Bill Askins told the station. “It’s a little irritating.”

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Linda Askins added, “We were looking forward to (going to Belize). That’s why we had taken the cruise, yes, but things happen. We understand.”

The Caribbean Princess departed Saturday on its Western Caribbean tour with planned stops in Cozumel, Mexico, the Honduran island of Roatan and Belize, but threats of fog and a Houston port closure forced the ship to return home before it made it to Belize, Princess said in its statement.

It was carrying 3,104 passenger and 1,149 crew members.

“We truly regret having to make this change to our passengers’ vacations, and we hope they understand that we did not have any choice but to return to Houston early before the unusually heavy fog closes the port,” it said.

Princess will provide hotels for those flying out of Houston, and passengers “will receive a future cruise credit of 20% of their fare as well as one day per diem” for meals and other expenses, the statement said.

“Approximately five passengers” still had norovirus symptoms Friday, the cruise line said, describing it as “a common but contagious illness which is widely circulating throughout North America.” The gastrointestinal illness causes vomiting and diarrhea, the CDC says.

Sick passengers were asked to stay in their cabins while staff disinfected public areas such as restrooms and elevators. Several passengers told KHOU that crew members wearing gloves distributed hand sanitizer throughout the ship, and passengers weren’t allowed to touch items like salt shakers, tongs and forks in the ship’s common areas.

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Robert Fisher of Houston said he came down with an illness, but the symptoms passed after two days. Still, he said, the staff made him feel as if he were being incarcerated.

“I was tired of being held as a prisoner in the room,” he said. “They didn’t bring food. They said they were bringing food. We had to call and remind them every time.”

His cabin mate, Steve Juneau said, “I would have to leave the room and go get him food.” He added that the staff worked diligently to keep the outbreak from spreading.

“They were trying really hard, but they were also very rude about it,” Juneau told KHOU.

Fisher said the 20% credit on a future cruise amounted to “nothing” when you consider he wasn’t allowed to dine in the onboard restaurants and never saw Belize.

Despite more than one of every five passengers being ill, many passengers reported seeing no sick people during the trip. Lloyd and Rosie Swayne of Grand, Texas, saw a passenger vomiting on the beach during one of the cruise’s stops.

“They immediately removed her, cleaned the area, bleached the sand, everything. It was handled well,” Lloyd Swayne told KHOU.

The news follows reports of sickness this week on another cruise ship, this one from the Royal Caribbean line.

Nearly 700 crew and passengers fell ill aboard the Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas, the highest number of sick people reported on any cruise ship in two decades, CDC data show.

That ship returned home Wednesday, two days earlier than expected.

Norovirus is also suspected on board the Explorer of the Seas, though the cause of the illness there has not been confirmed.

CNN’s Suzanne Presto, Dana Ford and Miriam Falco contributed to this report.