Sickness decks hundreds of cruise passengers

Like a combination of disinfectant and vomit.

That's how a Royal Caribbean cruise passenger described the ship's smell after hundreds aboard fell ill.

Shannon Blace had boarded the ship in Cape Liberty, N.J., on Jan. 21 for with her fianc and 10 other friends and family members.

Of the 12, nine got sick, she said Monday night. One of the women in her group got sick twice.

By Tuesday morning, the number had risen to 10 when her fianc fell ill and was ordered quarantined in his room, she said.

It was supposed to have been a 10-day cruise. But the liner announced it was cutting it short by two days as a result of the outbreak.

The atmosphere in the ship's usually bustling promenade deck was subdued on Tuesday. "Everywhere you look, you see dreary sad faces," Blace said in a telephone interview. "Just unhappy people everywhere -- waiting to get back to New Jersey."

In all, 622 of the 3,071 passengers and 50 of the 1,165 crew members became ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They reported vomiting and diarrhea.

A CDC vessel sanitation program epidemiologist, a contract epidemiologist and an environmental health officer boarded the ship in St. Thomas on the U.S. Virgin Islands to study the outbreak and the response on the voyage back to Cape Liberty.

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Sickness decks hundreds of cruise passengers