A couple’s dream cruise to paradise suddenly took a nightmarish turn for the bizarre and the disgusting – and the duo is still reeling from their experience.
Pam and Ken Jackson were just a few days into a three-week sailing to the Caribbean onboard TUI Cruises’ Marella Explorer 2 when their thus far peaceful vacation descended into chaos.
While sleeping in their cruise cabin, the couple was awakened by a strange noise, which was immediately followed by a flood of kitchen waste and chewed-up food coming out of the ceiling.
“I just heard this whooshing noise, then this horrible slush came through the ceiling and covered me head to toe, and Pam was covered in it as well. The bed and all our belongings,” Ken recalled.
In video footage obtained by The Liverpool Echo, a steady stream of brown liquid can be seen flooding from the ceiling – drenching the bed, the walls, and the couple’s belongings.
In the clip, Pam can be heard exclaiming: “The lights are going on and off and everything. Oh it stinks, it’s everywhere. It’s on my slippers. It’s running down the walls.”
The sludge soaked everything in the room, including the couple – who hail from Bidston in the UK. They had been the unfortunate victims of a waste pipe bursting above their stateroom.
“We were covered head to toe and it smelled like vomit. It was macerated kitchen waste going down to the bilges to be offloaded on the next port, so it was really foul-smelling, and it was pouring out,” Ken continued.
“We stank something awful, and goodness knows what was in it apart from food waste,” he added.
This really is an unusual and unlucky incident – and the 1,814-guest Marella Explorer 2 has certainly not been to known to have an issue with sewage or flooding in recent years.
Although she is an older ship that was first built in 1995, she underwent a significant refurbishment when she joined the TUI Cruises’ fleet in 2019 and last visited dry dock for routine maintenance at the end of 2023.
The Saga Continues
Although members of the 843-person crew worked hard to resolve the situation to the best of their ability, it seems that the Jacksons just couldn’t catch a break.
Following the surprise flood, the couple were relocated to a new cruise cabin and crew members attempted to wash their dirty clothes for them – but both the laundry service and the new accommodations came with further issues.
“They took our clothes away and washed what they could, but in the process shrunk a lot of our clothes, particularly my trousers and a couple of dresses of Pam’s,” Ken explained.
The couple were okay with their new balcony cabin, but found that they had trouble sleeping because the bed wasn’t comfortable. Eventually they realized they had been sleeping on a mattress that had collapsed into the bed frame.
“After a couple of nights we had a look at the mattress and found it had completely collapsed, and they had piled about 10 or 12 mattress toppers on top of it,” Ken elaborated.
The couple were given a new mattress upon request, but it didn’t fit the curved bed frame correctly – so the replacement still wasn’t ideal.
Then a few nights later, the air conditioning in their cabin went kaput. This caused the temperature within the statement to reach a hot 28C (or 82 degrees Fahrenheit).
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TUI Cruises was apologetic for what the couple experienced and did provide at least a partial refund of the sailing and an additional £470 (or about $631 USD) for damaged clothing.
“We would like to apologise to Mr. and Mrs. Jackson for experiencing a broken pipe in their cabin during their Marella Cruises holiday,” A TUI UK & Ireland spokesperson said.
“We always do our best to ensure customers have the best possible holiday experience. We ensured that we promptly moved the customers to a new cabin, and also offered compensation, which has been accepted,” the spokesperson continued.
However, the Jacksons are still walking away unsatisfied – stating that they didn’t feel listened to and that the compensation doesn’t fully cover all of their damaged possessions, such as nicer fitness watches and wallets.
