I’ve written before about having covid on our recent cruise. The TV and internet sucked but Celebrity treated us very well. However, there are a few lessons to be learned from the experience.
For background, my husband was diagnosed with covid on the second day of our 10 day cruise (despite 4 vaccines/boosters). He was quarantined for 5 days. I realized that I had it too the next day but didn’t feel the need to see a doctor. I self-quarantined for the same days as my husband. The first day after the quarantined ended was a sea day. We went to Medical and my husband was cleared. He was later reimbursed for the cruise for the days he was quarantined.
The next day we had an excursion booked in Santorini. We reported to the theater, waited for our number to be called and lined up for the tender. When they scanned my husband’s card, he was flagged as quarantined. The crewmember told us to go to medical. We found an officer who called medical and was told it was fixed. We lined up again to be scanned and, once again, were flagged as quarantined, as were the people behind us. They were just off covid quarantine too. The officer we had talked to called again and, I don’t know what she said to medical but we were cleared. When we got to the buses, ours was already gone and we were told another bus was also on the excursion and we could take it. We gave our tickets to the tour guide and climbed onto the bus. We had a great visit to Oia and headed to the Akrotiri ruins. We had just started around the ruins when I started to feel unwell. I passed out twice and had to be taken to the hospital. As we were leaving the ruins, our tour guide started arguing with my husband that were weren’t on her excursion. He tried explaining it to her and then gave up, figuring that it was her problem. By the way, the people at the hospital were great. I was there for about 4 hours, given an ECG, had a blood test and was given 2 liters of fluids and electrolytes. It turned out I was dehydrated. The total bill was $440. We didn’t report the incident to the ship since it was resolved.
Lesson #1 – If you think you have covid, go to medical. If I had been diagnosed, I would have been reimbursed too.
Lesson #2 – If you are quarantined, make sure that medical removes the notation on your cruise card.
Lesson #3 – If you make a change to an excursion, make sure you explain it to the tour guide when you make the change. In our case, she must have figured it out since I got a call the next day from the ship telling me that they were reimbursing us for the excursion.