Getting off a seven-day Caribbean cruise at 7:30 on a Sunday morning really doesn’t seem like the most pleasant plan: You wake up at dawn to finish shoving your still-damp bathing suit into your already full suitcase, then face the bright, harsh light of Chelsea Piers, only to fight off fellow cruisers for a cab on the West Side Highway. But the passengers on Norwegian Cruise’s Breakaway, who likely battled inevitable rum hangovers in order to leave their boat on time, had the added inconvenience of waiting an additional three hours in the Hudson River this morning.
That’s because, as CBS News reports, the ship’s propulsion system got stuck on its way into port, preventing it from reaching the pier. To solve the problem, the Coast Guard was called in to tug the 4,000-passenger boat to Pier 88, where it finally docked a little after 10 a.m.
As expected of New Yorkers fresh off a week’s rest in paradise, things aboard got a little hostile. Passenger Frank Fasulo said hundreds of people were waiting in line for hours to disembark: “People are coming [to] the elevators and trying to cut the line. Meanwhile, it’s already 200 deep, so they had to get some security guards to close down the elevators and direct the people where they were going.” All in all, another bad day for the cruise line industry.
