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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Mississippi River Oil Spill Continues to Thwart Carnival

Remember the movie Groundhog Day, where the character played by Bill Murray keeps experiencing the same day over and over again?

That, in a nutshell, is what's been happening to the poor crew of the Carnival Fantasy the past three weeks as the New Orleans-based ship grapples with an oil spill on the Mississippi River.

Every week it looks like the oil spill has been contained and the 2,056-passenger vessel will be able to get back into its berth in New Orleans. And every week something goes wrong at the last minute that keeps the vessel away.

Such was the case, again, this week as the Fantasy, returning from a five-night cruise to Mexico, was forced to disembark passengers in Mobile, Ala., instead of New Orleans for the third time in three weeks.

The diversion leaves the thousands of passengers on board nearly 150 miles away from where they expected to arrive (and where many have left their cars or scheduled flights for home). Carnival bussed the passengers back to the port of New Orleans.

The diversion also caused headaches for the thousands of passengers who expected to depart from New Orleans for the ship's next cruise to Mexico. Carnival will have buses on hand to take them to Mobile.

The oil spill occurred on July 23 after a collision between a tanker and a barge near New Orleans.

Carnival says that next week, for sure, the Fantasy will be back to operating out of the city.

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