A family of nine was left stranded in a remote Alaskan town when their cruise ship abandoned them late last week.
The Gaults, from Oklahoma, decided to join extended family members for the reunion aboard the Norwegian Encore — which cost the group of 16 about $30,000.
But their trip ended abruptly after Joshua Gault’s family of nine disembarked on a Norwegian Cruise Line trip to the LumberJack show in Ketchikan, Alaska, KJRH said.
As the event drew to a close, he said he and his wife noticed a mad dash to get back on the bus that took them to the ship.
“We get on the bus and one of the participants says, ‘The bus is full and you know, you have to wait for the next bus,'” Joshua recounted.
However, the next bus never showed up.
The Gaults now claim that the ticket attendants didn’t actually check the slips – they allowed people from another ship to take their seats.
When they realized another bus wasn’t coming to rescue them, Joshua said they called the Port Authority and a van came to pick up the family – but it was too late.
They arrived at the port just in time to watch their clothes, medicine, passports and the rest of their belongings sail away without them, stranded in Ketchikan – a city more than 1,500 miles from Anchorage and nearly 300 miles from Juneau.
“You know, it’s been a nightmare,” Joshua said, describing how he was left with six young children and his 78-year-old mother-in-law – all of whom were on daily medication.
“We’ve all had to go off our cold turkey medicine the last few days because it was all on the cruise ship.”
And while most of their passports were carried off the ship, one was left behind – meaning the family couldn’t meet the Norwegian Encore at its next destination in Canada.
As they tried to figure out their options, Joshua said the cruise line fined $971 per person for missing the boat.
He described how he discovered nearly $9,000 had been charged to his credit cards as he bought flights and hotels to get home.
The Gault family ended up spending several days traveling to many cities and dealing with canceled flights and overnight stays at the airport.
They were also forced to pay for every little expense, “all the flights for nine people, all the meals for nine people, all the hotel stays,” Joshua said.
The Gaults have since returned to Oklahoma, with some family members testing positive for COVID.
“So yeah, we’re beat right now,” Joshua told KJRH. “We are unhealthy and beaten.
Still, Joshua and his wife Cailyn pressed the Norwegian cruise line for answers.
But when they called, Cailyn said, cruise officials just told them, “We’re still looking into it, we haven’t forgotten about you.”
“And I was like, ‘No, we feel like you almost forgot about us when you left us in the harbor and told us to work it out,'” she said.
Norwegian Cruise Line officials have since acknowledged that the family of nine “missed their time on board the ship in Ketchikan, Alaska due to a misstep by a local travel agency.
“When the guests did not return to the ship at the published time, we attempted to contact them but were unable to reach them.
“In view of this, we have alerted the local port agent in Ketchikan and asked that he assist the family in booking a hotel for the night.
“Since guests will not be able to disembark at the next port, in Victoria, British Columbia, the port agent also assisted guests in arranging flights to Seattle for the following day, July 13.”
Cruise ship officials added that they will reimburse the family for the out-of-pocket expenses they incurred, the fee they incurred from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and prorated compensation for the two cruise days they missed.
“As a gesture of goodwill, the company will also provide each of the nine guests with a Future Cruise Credit in the form of a 20 percent discount on the cruise fare that can be applied to the next cruise.”
The fiasco comes just months after a group of eight Norwegian Cruise Line passengers became stranded on a remote African island.
The passengers “missed their 3pm boarding time by more than an hour” after returning from a private tour on March 27, a spokesperson for the cruise line told DailyMail.com.
Their passports were then handed over to local port agents and the group of six Americans and two Australians were left on the island of São Tomé and PrÃncipe.
They began a desperate effort to return to the ship in the following days, flying across six countries to reach Banjul, Gambia, where the ship was scheduled to dock on April 1. However, adverse weather conditions meant that the ship never reached shore.
The group finally concluded their nearly 2,000-mile voyage to Dakar, Senegal, on April 2, where the cruise line confirmed they had re-embarked.