A Spring woman, her daughter, and her infant granddaughter are aboard the Carnival Magic cruise ship that has gained national attention in the past 24 hours because of a quarantined passenger who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus. The Mexican government denied the ship entry to the port at Cozumel Friday morning and the ship headed back to Texas.
Lajoyce Poling left Galveston on her first cruise last weekend, along with her friend Cindy O’Neil, who is a Cleveland resident, her daughter Emily and Emily’s 8-month-old daughter. They were having a wonderful cruise, she said, with no one having any idea a healthcare worker was onboard who may have handled a lab specimen from Thomas Eric Duncan, an Ebola patient who died in a Dallas Hospital earlier this month.
The first sign something was wrong, Lajoyce said, came after passengers spent the day in Belize.
“We were supposed to be back at the ship at 4:30, but we didn’t actually start leaving until a little after 10 p.m.,” she said. “They didn’t tell us anything al that night. Rumors were going all over the ship somebody fell overboard, but that didn’t happen.”
They were scheduled to dock at Cozumel at 8 a.m. Friday, but the Captain announced it was changed to 10 a.m. However, when 10 a.m. arrived, the ship remained in open waters and the Captain announced he was still awaiting permission to go into port and would update them in 30 minutes. A half-hour later, the truth came out. The Captain announced to passengers the ship was denied access to the port and they were heading for Galveston.
“We were just told there was someone on board they were trying to get a flight for in Belize, and that was denied, and she was being quarantined, and every measure was being taken,” Lajoyce said.
They left Cozumel around 11:30 a.m. Passengers were told they were receiving a $200 credit, and a 50 percent discount on the price of their next Carnival cruise. However, Lajoyce is unsure she wants to take a second cruise.
She said most of the passengers were calm and accepting of the situation, with only a few being vocal about feeling a $200 credit was not enough. At first, Lajoyce said, her daughter was upset about her baby being on the ship, but she had since calmed down. Lajoyce said people were still moving around the ship and enjoying what it had to offer Friday evening, as it cruised back toward the Texas coast.
According to Carnival Cruise Lines, the ship will arrive Sunday morning as scheduled.
