A couple who have journeyed on 30 cruise ship holidays have found themselves stranded after breaking a golden rule.
Cruise ship holidays are truly like no other you can go on, full of immersive experiences on a massive floating hotel that often comes with on board streets full of shops as well as cinema screens and even ice skating arenas.
They're an engineering marvel and are rightly celebrated.
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But as with any particular holiday, they come with their own very specific rules that you might only truly understand by experiencing or listening to the experts on.
And for this particular story, it shows that experience is no guarantee of anything and stresses the importance of following departure times more than ever.
Sadly for Richard and Claudene Gordon, the experience of the 30 cruises they had previously been on ended up counting for nothing.
That's because the American couple, from Salt Lake City in Utah, were left stranded on a Mediterranean cruise around southern Europe.
It follows on from eight passengers being left stranded on an African island following an 'unfortunate' error.
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Travelling on the Norwegian Viva cruise ship with their family and close friends, Richard was just days away from celebrating his 85th birthday on-board.
But he and wife Claudene were left in the Spanish town of Motril on Monday (29 April) after a rain storm saw their bus back to port delayed by an hour.
Speaking to CNN Travel, Gordon said: "I am a very experienced traveler and have probably been on as many as 30 cruises during my lifetime.
"Never before have we ever missed catching a ship on time at a port. So we are not someone who abuses the system.
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"Our cruise began in Lisbon and we departed from Lisbon about one and a half hours after the scheduled departure at 4pm. Then the next night or two, at least a half-hour late from the dock, so it is clear that they do not always leave on the exact moment scheduled.”
One British cruise ship worker, Lucy Southerton, posted on her YouTube channel about the importance of following departure times.
She said: "When you're on a cruise it is very different to a hotel in that the hotel is going to stay stationary. It's not going to go any where.
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"The cruise ship will so you absolutely have to make it a priority to get back to the ship on time. Ask crew members about what the traffic is like in this port if you are thinking about you know getting a taxi to a certain destination because missing the ship could really put a damper on your vacation."
Richard and Claudene stayed in a B&B for the night before getting up at 3am to find flights to nearby Palma Airport on the Spanish island of Majorca, where Norwegian Viva was docking on Wednesday.
Thankfully for the couple, Norwegian Cruise Line offered a taxi from the airport to the ship to get them back on board.
After arriving back with their family on the ship, they said: "We really received the royal treatment today. They picked us up at the hotel in a beautiful black BMW limousine to take us to the ship.
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"There we were met by the head of ship services who escorted us inside the ship to meet the general manager of the ship, then they escorted us to breakfast, then they escorted us to our cabin.
“We simply told them that we were abandoned at the dock with no one to meet us or tell us where to go, and they said they have already complained about the harbour master who was supposed to take care of things for them.
"But of course the ship had not contacted us directly for two days so that doesn’t speak so well for them."
Norwegian Cruise Line said it 'worked closely with the local port agents to make arrangements for the guests to rejoin the vessel'.
Featured Image Credit: Planet One Images/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty ImagesTopics: Cruise Ship, Hacks, Holiday, Travel, US News, World News