Cruise Plagued by Problems, Passengers Say

It was supposed to be Carnival Cruise Lines millennium trip--11 days of sun, fun and six ports of call from Cabo San Lucas to Acapulco. But to many passengers who paid at least $1,500, their voyage into the year 2000 seemed more like a shakedown cruise.

“This was my first Carnival trip, and it will be my last,” said Sue Lim after she disembarked Friday from the M.S. Holiday, which is based at the Port of Los Angeles. “I want my money back.”

Lim, who is from Orange County, isn’t alone. More than 20 passengers interviewed as they left the ship said the cruise was plagued from the start by an array of problems, including long delays, abbreviated or missed port calls, dirty water, rude staff members, and plumbing problems that filled their cabins with foul odors.

More than one of them said they would lodge formal complaints with Carnival or contact an attorney to inquire about getting refunds. They said they were particularly irritated by late arrivals in port and short stays ashore.

“It was all pretty disgusting. The toilets were always out of action. Nothing seemed to work,” said Myra Craddock of New Zealand, who had flown to Los Angeles to take the millennium trip with her husband, Chris Davison.

During the trip, Craddock said, they sent an urgent message to their travel agent about conditions on board and the possibility of getting their money back.

“We just wanted off the ship,” Craddock said.

The trip was one of 14 extended millennium voyages offered in the United States by Carnival, which promotes itself as “the world’s most popular cruise line.” Passengers generally departed after Christmas for destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean.

In Los Angeles, they boarded the Holiday, which carries 660 crew members and 1,452 passengers. The ship, built in 1985, usually makes trips of three or four days to Mexico and Catalina Island.

Jennifer de la Cruz, a spokesperson for the Miami-based company, denied that there were any major problems aboard the Holiday. She said, however, that the crew received numerous complaints from passengers about delays getting ashore at two Mexican ports.

De la Cruz said the destinations are not heavily visited by cruise lines and therefore don’t have good tender services that ferry passengers to and from ships. Consequently, the Holiday had to use its four launches, not enough to quickly move everyone who wanted to go ashore.

According to Carnival, there were no breakdowns in the Holiday’s plumbing system. The staff, De la Cruz said, received two complaints of clogged toilets during the 11-day trip, on a ship with 725 cabins.

She said that “troublesome currents” delayed the Holiday’s arrival in Los Angeles on Friday morning, but that more complaints were received from passengers about a broken ice cream machine.

“If anyone comes off one of our ships and says they did not have a great time, we want to hear about it,” De la Cruz said. “If it wasn’t right for them, then we want the opportunity to make it right.”

The cruise line might get that opportunity.

“It was supposed to be the millennium trip, but it was more like a shakedown cruise, a training run,” said a San Diego woman, who was vacationing with her family. “A lot of things went wrong.”

Passengers estimated that they had to wait three to five hours to board the tenders, which substantially reduced the time they could spend ashore.

They also said that because of a six-hour delay leaving Los Angeles, the Holiday did not make its first stop in Cabo San Lucas. Passengers said they stopped there on the way back, but had only a few hours in the Baja California resort.

De la Cruz said the visit to Cabo was shortened by only one hour.

Colin Gallagher and Beth Stasiukaitis, who flew from South Carolina together, said that the first night of the cruise, water began dripping from the ceiling of their cabin at 2:30 a.m. In the first 30 hours, they said, they were moved to three different cabins.

Later, Gallagher said, the staff was rude and abusive when they complained about the cabin changes and about yellow water that occasionally came out of their bathroom spigots.

“Hundreds of people are upset,” said Meagan Spence of Seattle, “and all the crew can do is come on the loudspeaker and ask the passengers to consider this ‘as a camping trip’ not a cruise ship. We had fun for the first couple of days. Then the millennium turned into a total bust.”

Times staff writer Christopher Reynolds contributed to this story