Cruise Ship Caribbean Princess Loses Power on Way Back to Port Canaveral

The cruise ship Caribbean Princess was without propulsion in the ocean for a short period of time today after the Princess Cruises ship lost power. The vessel had just visited Puerto Rico yesterday and was on its way back to Port Canaveral, Florida.

It’s always an unsettling feeling when a cruise ship loses power while at sea. This has happened to me only on one occasion, and just like in this case, it was only for a brief period of time.

Passengers reported a sudden, total blackout early in the morning that caused the vessel to drift while engineers worked as quickly as possible to fix the issue.

Two Blackouts

According to real-time reports from passengers on board, the outage happened in two waves. The first power failure hit early in the morning on June 5, shutting down the main engines and the air conditioning.

The captain of the 23-year-old ship quickly announced the total power loss over the public address system and said that restoration efforts were underway.

Within about 15 minutes, partial power and propulsion were briefly restored, but the fix was short-lived. Shortly after, the ship suffered a second total blackout.

A Cruise Critic user was sitting on their balcony enjoying the sunshine when the ship suddenly went quiet. After the second outage, the user posted:

“It’s about an hour since this began, ship mostly dark, not moving.”

Another passenger on Reddit noted that the second failure left the ship drifting:

“Now just floating around again and the ship is going to hit some winds on the starboard side. All room lights are out except for WiFi (lol).”

Family members on land were briefly able to connect with loved ones who were apparently located near the engine. One user shared:

“Their room is right above the engine and they are hearing so many voices. But not hearing enough to get an update before everyone else.”

Cruise tracking data originally showed the vessel limping along at just 2 knots while the crew stabilized the engine control systems.

Tracking data doesn’t show that the ship was necessarily “adrift” in the situation, as even at 2 knots the vessel kept heading in the right direction.

Crew Praised for Quick Response

Despite the lack of air conditioning and cabin lighting for roughly an hour, passengers reported that the atmosphere onboard remained calm and orderly.

Because Princess Cruises uses wearable Medallion technology to unlock stateroom doors, the ship’s emergency backup power prioritized keeping the internal Wi-Fi network online.

This allowed guests to remain connected as well. Onboard, one cruiser suggested:

“My guess is that wifi is just to keep people from freaking out and gives them something to do since everything is stopped on the ship.”

The crew on the 3,142-passenger ship were praised for keeping the mood light and professional during the outage.

One passenger summed up the mood by saying, “Air was off for an hour. Drinks never stopped being poured. Still better than most airlines can say with mounting delays and 45 minute taxi times… #cruiselife”

Other passengers agreed that the crew handled the situation perfectly. One even said:

“Even after the issues this morning, Captain and crew still managed to get ship generators all going and all systems back online. He made it to the scheduled Coffee with the Captain Q&A and answered questions in a way everyone could understand. Well done.”

Full power was successfully restored later in the morning, and the ship’s climate control systems were brought back online.

No Delay to the Itinerary

Whenever a cruise ship suffers an engine room issue, social media platforms are quick to bring up some of the worst scenarios possible. It gets clicks and generates buzz, and almost always brings up a certain show on Netflix.

But passengers on board Caribbean Princess were quick to limit any kind of hype of the situation.

One Caribbean Princess cruise passenger took to Facebook calm down any worried family members or friends:

“Hey, if you hear our ship —Caribbean Princess — lost power, it did, twice, this morning. Weird thing to wake up to. It lasted a few hours but all is fine. We are on schedule to disembark as planned in 2 days. Ignore the ‘STRANDED AT SEA’ drama posts. We’re fine. No poop cruise”

Aside from a few canceled early-morning activities, the onboard schedule was pretty must unaffected.

Current Status: Engines Running Fine

Real-time cruise ship tracking data on CruiseMapper confirms that the ship’s engineering team successfully resolved the issue, and the vessel is making excellent time on its return journey.

According to the latest tracking data:

“The current location of Caribbean Princess is in North West Atlantic Ocean cruising at speed of 19 kn (35 km/h | 22 mph) en route to Port Canaveral. The AIS position was last reported 1 hour ago.”

Moving at a healthy 19 knots, the ship is on track to finish its voyage completely on schedule.