Cruise Sickness Strikes Over 140 Royal Caribbean Passengers

Passengers aboard the Navigator of the Seas have reported gastrointestinal sickness while on their July 4-11 sailing to Mexico. The cruise sickness affected over 140 passengers and crew. The sailing had 3,914 passengers and 1,266 crew members on board.

Symptoms of the cruise sickness include diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps. The cause is unknown, but norovirus is the most common cause for these symptoms on cruise ships. 

In response to the cruise sickness, Royal Caribbean has done a deep sanitation of the ship which includes disinfecting public areas, isolating those with symptoms, increased hand washing stations and hand sanitizer, and heightened food handling procedures like removing self-service at buffets.  

While norovirus isn’t exclusive to cruise ships, the cruise industry is trained and ready to handle cruise sickness when it happens to quickly, and effectively stop the spread of the illness. In fact, only about 1% of all reported norovirus outbreaks happen on cruise ships.

This will be the 18th gastrointestinal cruise sickness reported for 2025, and the second for a Royal Caribbean ship. 11 of those 18 have been reported as norovirus. The virus is easily spread through food, water, and on surfaces and is highly contagious.

Cruise ships typically follow land based patterns for sickness and norovirus is no exception. There has been a rise in reported norovirus outbreaks from last year as reported by the CDC. 

“While the number of recent cruise ship outbreaks has been higher than in years prior to the pandemic, we do not yet know if this represents a new trend,” the health agency told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. “However, CDC data show a newly dominant strain is currently associated with reported norovirus outbreaks on land. Ships typically follow the pattern of land-based outbreaks, which are higher this norovirus season.”

The 7-day round trip cruise for the Navigator of the Seas left from LA/Long Beach and visited Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico before returning to California. 

The Navigator of the Seas homeports in LA/Long Beach, California and offers regular cruising to Mexico. She is a Voyager class vessel that can accommodate up to 4,000 passengers with 1,200 crew members, although she apparently had 66 more crew members on this sailing.