Can You Be Kicked Off A Cruise Ship?

You betcha! We've seen it many times but mostly it's for the person's own good. They are seriously ill. We're not talking about the Norovirus type illness. What I mean is a serious illness such as a heart problem, a stroke, appendicitis, etc. Those types of illnesses will have you meeting an emergency squad at the next port on a medical ship for transport to the nearest port with a hospital or on a helicopter. The prospect of ending a cruise that way is frightening and keeps us checking our insurance coverage.

I do have to credit the cruise ship doctors we have met so far who have great common sense. Our cruise to Asian ports was diverted from Nagasaki in the middle of the night. It was after eight days of touring China and I was so glad to be on board after our land experience. I woke to the feel of the ship turning and remember in my fog of sleep thinking, "No! Don't take me back!"

We found out the next morning that we were going to Shanghai where there was a hospital for a passenger who was experiencing heart problems. The captain explained that a medical ship had met us outside the port of Tianjin (port for Beijing) to take the passenger to Beijing but when the ship's doctor inspected the medical vessel he found it to be quite lacking the facilities the passenger might have needed for the trip. That's when the captain decided to make a change in plans. We were disappointed
to miss Nagasaki but grateful for the care taken by the captain and crew to insure the passenger was well cared for. After all, it could have been one of us.

Of course we have seen and heard of people removed for other reasons. On one cruise quite a few years ago there was a fellow who must have decided that his goal was to see how much alcohol he could consume in seven days. The trouble was, he became a belligerent drunk. He wrapped a T-shirt around his head, waved his glass of the drink-of-the-day and walked around the pool loudly trying to pick a fight with whoever would respond. He lasted until the first port and was promptly escorted off the ship to find his own way home.

There are several other ways to get booted from a cruise ship and Erica Silverstein of the Cruise Critic covers them in 11 Ways To Get Booted Off A Cruise Ship. Most of them just involve common sense. After all, who is stupid enough these days to joke about a bomb? Oh, well, maybe there are a few.