Princess Cruises Ship has Power Glitch

The Emerald Princess experienced a power outage on Sunday only 90 minutes after the ship set sail for a 7-night voyage to the Caribbean. The incident left the vessel at a standstill for more than 4 hours, and Princess Cruises, the owner and operator of the ship, says that they still don’t know what caused it.

The power for the 3,080-passenger vessel went out at about 6:30pm, shortly after departing Fort Lauderdale. This left the passengers with limited services and lighting for much of the evening, while the air conditioning didn’t work either. It took until nearly 11pm for the power to come back on.

Princess Cruises said in a statement that they are still trying find out why the power cut off. When the ship gets to St. Maarten on Wednesday, a technician will join them to help find out the exact cause, which they think could have been due to a computer glitch, the line continued. There was never any danger threatening the people on board or the ship itself during the incident, they added.

Due to the power outage, the schedule to call at Princess Cays, which is the private beach in the Bahamas owned by the company, was skipped. Princess Cruises says that they plan to compensate the passengers for this. They will give an update about the compensation after they have found out the cause and can assess the impact it has had on the itinerary, they added. The voyage is due to return on August 1 to Fort Lauderdale.