Carnival Splendor passengers disembark in San Diego - USA Today

Relieved passengers wheeled their suitcases down the gangplank of a disabled cruise ship Thursday, cheering as they finally touched land after three nightmarish days adrift with limited food, backed-up toilets and dark cabins. Pulled by six tug boats and escorted by Coast Guard cutters, nearly 1,000-foot Carnival Splendor reached the dock at about 8:30 a.m. PT. The first group of passengers walked down a ramp about an hour later, dragging rolling suitcases behind them and entering a tent on the dock. With the ship's elevators out of order, port officials estimated it would take about four hours for everyone to leave the ship.

"I love being back on land," said passenger Ken King, who turned 42 on Thursday.

King said he and his traveling companion were celebrating their birthdays on the cruise, so Carnival chose them to be in the first group off the ship.

"The staff was excellent. Only a few people on board were rude. The food was horrible. Starting at 5 a.m. on Monday, we didn't have toilets for 13 hours," King said.

Chris Harlen, a dental technician, offered a quick description of his experience after disembarking with his wife and two children, ages 10 and 8.

"It was gross when the toilets weren't working. What can you do?" Harlan said. "There were a lot of people getting smashed off warm beer."

About 100 people onshore cheered loudly as the ship reached shore, while all along the harbor, tourists, joggers and fishermen stopped to snap photos.

Among the crowd of onlookers waiting at the port are two sisters who flew in last night from Kansas City to sell T-shirts they printed for the occasion.

"I Survived the 2010 Carnival Cruise Spamcation" the blue shirts read.

Lissa Letts said she doesn't know anyone on board. She said she and her sister were stranded in Europe by the volcano earlier this year and had T shirts printed for themselves marking the event. "Everybody wanted to buy them, so we thought these folks would like some shirts too," Letts said. She was selling them for $20 each.

For the past three days, the giant cruise ship Carnival Splendor — with a small city of nearly 4,500 passengers and crewmembers aboard — has been without power 55 miles off the coast of Punta San Jacinto, disabled by an engine fire that has made the ship the focus of a military relief effort and worldwide attention.

As tugboats sent to rescue the Long Beach, Calif.-based vessel pulled it closer to shore and within cellphone range Wednesday, some of the 3,299 passengers aboard began calling family, friends and news outlets with firsthand accounts of increasingly miserable — and smelly — days without basic services such as hot food, air conditioning and, for a time, working toilets.

"It's nothing like anyone expected," said passenger David Zambrano, a technical operations employee of Denver's KUSA-TV, in a report filed to the station. "You stand in line for two hours just to get your food because everybody goes to the same place to pick up their food. Then once you get your food, you look for something to do. People are playing cards. People are standing around, just kind of talking. They're getting to socialize."

Instead of dining on lavish seafood buffets, passengers have been fed Spam, canned crabmeat and Pop-Tarts, which are being ferried to them by U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopters from the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier that reached the ship after being diverted from training off Baja California.

Two Detroit-area women, Angela Evans and Natalie Martinez, said the ship still has no electricity, no air conditioning and no hot water, and their windowless inside cabin is pitch black, according to Greg Alexander, Evans' boyfriend, who finally talked with her on a crackling cellphone connection Wednesday afternoon.

"They're fine but worn out emotionally," he told the Detroit Free Press. "The first couple days were a nightmare."

Cruise Director John Heald says the thousands of guests on the ship "have risen to the obvious challenges and difficult conditions onboard." His comments were posted in a blog on Carnival's website.

He says he's been making a lot of announcements from the bridge to keep everyone informed of the situation.

Because of the lack of power, ship-to-shore phone service, cellphone and Internet service on the ship went down after the fire early Monday, leaving passengers unable to communicate with loved ones back on land. Carnival says it got limited phone service restored Wednesday, and allowed passengers to make outbound calls home on ship phones at no charge.

Phone service, cellphone and Internet service on cruise ships are done via satellites.

Until Wednesday, passengers also were unable to use their cellphones to call home because the ship was too far from shore-based cell towers. When the Carnival Splendor got closer to land, some passengers began receiving intermittent cell signals.

She says weather conditions are favorable for the operation, but the tugs will have to take special care because of the massive size of the ship and because it's completely without power.

As the Splendor is slowly pulled back to shore, there are many questions concerning what caused the fire and how it disabled the entire ship. And cruise industry analysts already are debating whether the stranding of one of the industry's newest, most modern vessels will have a long-term impact on what has been one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel business.

"When the Splendor arrives back in port, there's likely to be considerable media coverage of very unhappy, sometimes angry people whose vacation went awry," says Mike Driscoll, editor of Cruise Week, a leading industry publication. "The so-called Spam cruise may sound funny to some outsiders watching TV, but it's not funny to those who were on it."

'Any ship can burn'

The fire broke out early Monday in the ship's aft engine room and took about three hours to extinguish, according to a Coast Guard timeline. It left the ship dead in the water with limited power. Carnival says no one was injured in the incident, but the Splendor's main generators were disabled and efforts to restart them failed.

The ship was one day into a seven-night voyage from Long Beach that was to include stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Carnival says some shipboard programming, including children's programs and entertainment, have been provided since the fire. Some cabin toilets remain inoperable, but engineers have been able to restore toilet service in most cabins and all public bathrooms, the cruise line says. Because there was no power, the ship also had no propulsion system to help steady itself. The passengers who called to shore on Wednesday reported that the ship was rolling with the waves more than usual, leading some passengers to get sick.

Food provisions quickly became unusable because of the lack of refrigeration, prompting the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy to launch a relief effort. On Tuesday, the USS Ronald Reagan arrived nearby with 60,000 pounds of supplies it has been ferrying to the Splendor by helicopter.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Greg Hicks tells USA TODAY that the supplies were purchased by Carnival Cruise Lines. Hicks says the aircraft carrier, which has a crew of 5,000 to 6,000 people, has an operational cost of $1 million a day. He says he doesn't know whether the Navy will seek reimbursement from Carnival.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which on Monday diverted the 378-foot cutter Morgenthau from a routine drug enforcement patrol to help the stranded cruise ship, won't be charging for its services, Coast Guard Lt. Patrick Montgomery says.

"We don't put a price tag on safety at sea," says Montgomery, who declined to provide a daily cost of the Coast Guard's relief effort. "The Coast Guard went out there to help a vessel in distress. We do not charge to assist a vessel in distress."

The Coast Guard says it landed a team on the Splendor on Monday, and that the team concluded the ship's passengers and crew were safe. The Morgenthau has remained with the crippled ship and is following it back to the USA. The ship is being towed by two tugboats Carnival hired out of Ensenada, Mexico.

Carnival president and CEO Gerry Cahill said the "very surprising" fire began in No. 5 of the ship's six generators. He said a "crankcase split, and that's what caused the fire. It was isolated to the aft generator room." He said technicians from the ship's builder, Carnival, the Lloyd's insurance firm and others will inspect the ship's damage, and that the vessel will be repaired in San Diego.

"This fire has occurred on one of the newest, most advanced and largest cruise ships in the world," notes longtime industry watcher Peter Knego of MaritimeMatters.com, adding that it also comes just weeks after the implementation of stringent new international fire safety laws that have forced a generation of older ships into retirement.

"It just shows that any ship can burn — or sink, for that matter — and underscores the importance of good maintenance, up-to-date alarm systems and proper safety protocol," Knego says. "By all accounts thus far, it appears the ship's officers and crew have done everything by the book."

A 'PR nightmare' for Carnival

Travel agent Carrie Finley-Bajak of Cruise Holidays in Mission Viejo, Calif., worries about the impact passengers getting off the ship with tales of woe will have on the line's image.

"Carnival has a potential PR nightmare to deal with," she says.

An even bigger issue for Finley-Bajak, who caters to the California market, is the impact the damage to the ship will have on cabin availability and pricing of cruises in the region, assuming the Splendor is out of commission for a significant period.

Cruise lines have been reducing the number of ships based along the West Coast for trips to Mexico as they expand operations in more lucrative areas such as Europe, and only a few operate regularly out of the Los Angeles area and San Diego.

"The Splendor is a major player in the seven-night Mexican Riviera (cruise) market," Finley-Bajak says. "With the removal of the Splendor's berths from the overall inventory base, demand for other products will be higher with less inventory, and thus higher prices."

Should repairs to the Splendor take more than a few weeks, the holiday vacation plans of thousands of people could be in jeopardy, she says.

Carnival has canceled the next voyage of the Splendor, which had been scheduled to begin on Nov. 14 in Long Beach. Passengers booked on that trip will receive a full refund plus a 25% discount on a future cruise, the line says.

Carnival has a history of improvising well in tough times.

The line's first ship, the Mardi Gras, famously got stuck on a sand bank off Miami during its maiden voyage in 1972. To appease passengers who included influential travel writers and agents whose support (or lack thereof) could make or break the start-up line, Carnival quickly opened up the bar for free drinks. Soon, all was well.

"The incident passed without much notice to anyone on board," Knego says. "Carnival went on to become the biggest cruise line in history."

For years afterward, the line even served a special drink commemorating the event, the Mardi Gras on the Rocks.

This time, an open bar was part of Carnival's damage-control strategy, too. The bars aboard the Splendor are serving free beer and wine, the cruise line says.

Carnival also announced that everyone on the stricken ship will receive a full refund of their cruise fare, reimbursement for additional travel costs such as airfare, and credit for a free future cruise — a level of restitution that is highly unusual in the business.

"We sincerely apologize to our guests for this unfortunate situation and offer our thanks for their patience and cooperation during this challenging time," Carnival's Cahill said in a statement. "The safety and comfort of our guests is our top priority, and we are doing everything we can to allow them to return home as quickly as possible.

"We know we've ruined their vacations," Cahill said, "so we thought the best thing to do was to give (passengers) their money back, make them whole, then give them their vacation back" with free tickets for another cruise.

Passenger fares on the Carnival Splendor vary according to cabin size, but generally range from $400 to $1,000 per person to for a week-long cruise that includes food and entertainment.

Veteran cruise seller Stewart Chiron of CruiseGuy.com says he doesn't expect a long-term impact on cruise bookings from the incident. If anything, he says, it should tell any nervous travelers that ships are well-equipped to deal with major events such as a fire.

"Passengers on board Carnival Splendor may be uncomfortable, but they're safe," Chiron says. "Based on available information, the fire was quickly contained."

Nightmarish events on cruise ships typically have not had a long-term impact on bookings.

Last year a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, the Norwegian Dawn, lost power in the Caribbean for more than a day in an incident that passengers reported quickly became unbearable. And in 2006 a fire on a Princess Cruises ship in the Caribbean left one passenger dead. Neither incident caused a measurable decline in bookings.

The Cruise Lines International Association forecasts the industry will carry a record 14.3 million passengers this year, up 6.4% from 2009. In 2006, the number was 12 million.

"These types of things do happen once in a while, and historically speaking, there's a blip, but that's all, sometimes not even a blip," Driscoll says. "Experienced cruisers understand this is extremely unlikely to happen to them."

Contributing: USA TODAY's Bill Welch in San Diego, Calif., The Associated Press

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