Disabled Carnival Splendor reaches the shore by Zuzana Zelenakova

It is a dream of many people to spend holiday aboard cruise ship headed to some exotic location. Now, imagine your trip that you worked so hard for does not go as planned and services aboard the ship you were looking forward to are drastically reduced. That is what happened to passengers aboard cruise liner Carnival Splendor after an engine fire earlier this week. The two tugboats have been pulling 952-foot ship towards San Diego Bay. It is expected that the cruise liner reaches the port late Thursday. 4,500 passengers and crew members are all safe, only exposed to challenging conditions. An Access to the Internet is not possible and also cellphone conncetion was lost unti! l Wednesday. Main attractions aboard the ship, the pools and casinos, were closed and there was only cold food served. "Obviously it has been a challenge but let me tell you the most important facts and those are that the ship is safe, the guests are safe and that nobody was injured," said Cruise Director John Heald who has been making a lot of announcements in recent days as he tried to keep passengers informed about the latest development of the situation. Basically everything powered by electricity went out after a Monday morning fire, that means no hot water, no air-conditioning, and so on. Generators kept at least toilets working. People tried to pass time somehow, playng different games, singing or just chatting. "So really, all we're doing is just kind of hanging out on a boat waiting for the next mealtime," said David Zambaro, one of the passengers. "It's almost like a diet cruise because we've been eating salads and fruit and small sandwiches," he said. Passengers ! will be given some refunds and also free replacement tri pas G! ary Cahi ll, Carnival CEO, said.

related story (sgx18579): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_cruise_ship_fire;_ylt=AmLbLyUv...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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