Fab cruise until the point that we re-entered US territory at Port Canaveral having left Bermuda two days previously. We were informed of the US immigration requirements the night we left Bermuda by letter stating that everyone had to leave ship, and could not return until everyone had been seen. Having visited Florida several times, we planned to stay local, and return to the ship for breakfast before going off for the day, as did many other people judging by the large amount of people waiting to return in the terminal (at least a thousand). The first people were told to leave the ship at 7.15am. During the next 3 hours, we witnessed lots of distressed families with children who had not had breakfast, lots of people who had missed medication, and lots of people whose day to the Orlando parks had been ruined, with people chanting ‘refund, refund’. We then noticed the Local police arrive, we thought because people were becoming upset, but found out the real reason later. Eventually at approximately 10.15 we were allowed back on board, where everyone rushed to the garden grill restaurant for breakfast, to find very limited food, in one small servery and a massive queue of very irate people. On later leaving the ship we were advised by a local transportation driver that there had in fact been four stowaways on our ship for almost 48hours from Bermuda.

Whilst on the ship I made a complaint about Norwegian’s handling of the whole fiasco, suggesting that it would be helpful to inform passengers to feed their children, take medication with them, and perhaps to plan to go off for the day immediately. We complained about the lack of information or announcements whilst passengers were waiting, and more importantly about our safety being compromised . I was dismissed with it’s not our requirement, but US immigration.

We have made a further complaint since returning with two email exchanges, and Norwegian have been very careful to not address the main issue raised which is our safety, offering a welcome aboard amenity on our next sailing, which I believe would be something like a bottle of wine! We have gone onto tweet that we are not happy with how they have addressed our concerns, and were invited to call their customer relations stating ‘ we can help’. After being in a queue for 40 minutes, we were eventually told ‘what are you worried about? - we found them on the ship, and nothing happened, so there is no problem- we have done our job’ Read more