The video was shocking. Waves swept over decks and flooded in crew quarters, destroying the crew bar, and forcing some passengers to be evacuated into the theater as Carnival Sunshine got hit by inclement weather during a trip back to its homeport in Charleston, South Carolina.
Cruise ships rarely get caught in weather this rough as the cruise lines make every effort to sail away from storms. Ports regularly get skipped, and, in extreme cases, cruise lines will extend a trip in order to move their ships away from bad weather.
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Weather, however, cannot always be predicted, and while what happened to Carnival Cruise Line's (CCL) Sunshine was an extreme case, cruise ships do experience bad weather, and that does impact passengers.
As an experienced passenger -- I've sailed 26 times with Royal Caribbean and its Celebrity brand since 2019, as well as sailings with Carnival, MSC, and Virgin -- I've experienced bad weather multiple times. That's something many passengers worry about, so it's important to know what's possible before you board.
Image source: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Bigger Ships Equal Less Motion
Carnival Sunshine can accommodate just over 3,000 passengers at full capacity. That makes it a mid-size ship by today's standards. Royal Caribbean's (RCL) Wonder of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, can handle more than twice as many passengers: 7,084 across its 2,867 cabins.
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When it comes to stability during bad weather, bigger ships offer more of it. When I was on Carnival Conquest, a sister ship to Sunshine, we experienced some rough seas that led to the production show being modified to protect the performers. I could see the ship move and felt the motion from my interior cabin.
In similar bad weather on an Oasis-class ship, the shows went on as normal, and the ship seemed perfectly stable. That's not to say you never feel motion -- you are on a moving ship, but in central areas, it's not noticeable.
On larger ships, I try to get a room on a high floor in the front or the back of the ship. Those cabins will "move" more than ones in central locations on the middle floors. (Some of us like getting rocked to sleep, while others prefer not to have that feeling).
Rough Seas on the Celebrity Summit
Events like what happened on Sunshine are extremely rare, but they're more likely on sailings out of non-Florida ports. If you sail from New York, Baltimore, or Charleston, you have much longer stretches of open seas than you do on Florida sailings.
But rough seas are possible when sailing from Florida. Over Christmas, I sailed on Celebrity Summit, a small ship with a passenger capacity of around 2,100. On Christmas Eve the ship got hit with an unexpected storm that led to the outdoor decks being closed.
The weather had been somewhat rough during the day -- rough enough that all outdoor musical performances were canceled but not bad enough to close the pools. In the pool, you could see water sloshing from side to side, and by dinner time, the waves had picked up, and you could feel the ship move.
For those of us with "sea legs," the motion was noticeable but tolerable. For many onboard, however, that was not the case as people were notably "green" and the cruise line did discreetly put motion sickness bags in the bathrooms.
Realistically though, what happened on Summit that night is about the worst you can expect on sailings from Florida. And while you might face slightly rougher seas as a cruise line tried to return a ship to a northeast port, what happened to Carnival Sunshine is very rare.
Royal Caribbean, the only cruise line to employ a full-time meteorologist, James Van Fleet, recently parted ways with the experienced weather forecaster. After public backlash to that move, the company has put out ads looking for a replacement.
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