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Passengers report trouble on another Carnival cruise ship

By Tina Burnside and Ed Payne, CNN
updated 5:30 AM EDT, Thu March 14, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • The Carnival Dream is experiencing problems, passengers say
  • There's human waste all over the floor," passenger Gregg Stark says
  • An engine room fire crippled the Carnival Triumph last month
  • Class-action lawsuit alleges Carnival should have known "mechanical and/or engine issues"

(CNN) -- A month after a fire crippled a Carnival ship in the Gulf of Mexico, another one of the cruise line's vessels may be experiencing its own problems.

Multiple passengers aboard the Carnival Dream have contacted CNN, telling stories of power outages and overflowing toilets, all while docked in port at Philipsburg, St. Maarten, in the eastern Caribbean.

"We are not allowed off of the boat despite the fact that we have no way to use the restrooms on board," Jonathan Evans of Reidsville, North Carolina, said in an e-mail early Thursday. "The cruise director is giving passengers very limited information and tons of empty promises. What was supposed to take a hour has turned into 7+ hours."

The Dream was scheduled to leave port around 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Carnival CEO: 'We failed'
Lawyer on Carnival: 'You're out of luck'

Gregg Stark, who is traveling with his wife and two young children, told a similar story.

"There's human waste all over the floor in some of the bathrooms and they're overflowing -- and in the state rooms," he said. "The elevators have not been working. They've been turning them on and off, on and off."

An announcement over the ship's public address system said they were trying to fix the problem and were working on the generators, according to Stark. A few hours later, another announcement was made, saying the problem was worse than expected.

When told of the complaints, Carnival representative Vance Gulliksen said late Wednesday night he wasn't aware of a problem. Several subsequent calls to the cruise line went unanswered.

The U.S. Coast Guard said there were no reports of an incident, adding cruise lines typically give a courtesy call even when they're experiencing minor problems.

The Dream, which can carry more than 5,000 passengers and crew, sailed from Port Canaveral in Florida on Saturday.

The reports are similar to those that came from the Carnival Triumph last month.

READ: Crippled cruise ship returns; passengers happy to be back

An engine room fire left the cruise ship crippled and adrift in the Gulf of Mexico with more than 4,200 people aboard.

The schedule four-day cruise stretched into eight days as tugs pulled the vessel into port. Food was scarce and passengers sweltered in the heat with no air conditioning.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Carnival Corporation in the aftermath.

READ: How Carnival can clean up the PR mess

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