No doubt you will have seen the news reports regarding the Opera and the engine failure, or explosion, that occured on Saturday in Baltic waters. This is not a unique event. Unfortunately things do sometimes go wrong on cruise ships, and it isn’t just MSC.
News reports are full of horror stories about air conditioning not working and poor or no sanitation whilst passengers were marooned at sea, but we all know how the press love to embellish their stories, so I would take most of these reports with a pinch of salt.
MSC have just issued the follwoing statement to clarify the situation:
Following the technical problems to an electrical panel experienced on May 14th, MSC Opera has been towed to the port of Nynamshamn (close to, Sweden) where she arrived this morning around 11 am.
Since yesterday afternoon, most of the services have been restored and this morning passengers have been offered a hot breakfast. All ship’s bars were open with a complimentary beverage service. The whole crew, together with a team of technicians from STX Yards have been working around the clock to solve the electrical problem and an additional technical team has just embarked in the port of Nynamshamn.
MSC Cruises’ team ashore is working closely with the port of Nynamshamn and the port of Stockholm to welcome and repatriate all guests from Stockholm. MSC Cruises is issuing all passengers with a credit voucher for the whole amount of the 10-day cruise valid until December 2012.
As the work of the electrical team is not yet over, MSC Cruises has taken the precautionary measure of cancelling the next MSC Opera cruise which was due to sail out of Southampton tomorrow May 17th, in order to maintain its high standard of security, quality and comfort. All affected passengers will be contacted and offered compensation.
As I would expect, MSC are doing all they can to compensate passengers for this unfortunate stroke of luck and I’m sure that the Opera will be up and running again in no time.
I was due to go down to Southampton tomorrow for lunch on board the Poesia but this has now been cancelled as the cruise line concentrate all their efforts on the Opera and her repairs. Ho hum! I was looking forward to that as I have only been on the Fantasia to date but I’m sure we will have another opportunity later in the year.