saga cruise problems

Around 100 cruise passengers injured after ship gets caught in rough weather

Passengers on Saga Cruises’ Spirit of Adventure cruise ship were injured after getting caught in a storm over the weekend.

Around 100 of the roughly 1,000 guests on board got hurt after the ship’s propulsion safety system was activated while crossing the Bay of Biscay on Saturday, causing the ship to veer to the left and stop. The area, located off the coast of France and Spain, is notorious for its rough seas . 

“The ship remained safe at all times, but due to the impact of the storm some guests sustained injuries,” a Saga Cruises spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “All were treated immediately by onboard medical staff.”

The ship held its position to wait out the conditions. "It was quite frightening," passenger Jan Bendall told the BBC . "I'm not somebody who frightens easily ... it was quite dramatic."

Most of the injuries were minor, but five people were more badly hurt and required treatment in the vessel’s onboard medical facilities. The ship was wrapping up a two-week, round-trip cruise from Portsmouth, England, to the Canary Islands that departed on Oct. 24, according to CruiseMapper .

Cruise ship medical facilities: What happens if you get sick or injured (or bitten by a monkey)

“While the weather is clearly beyond our control, we want to offer our sincere apologies to all those affected who are now safely back, having sailed home in calmer seas,” the spokesperson added. Saga Cruises will contact guests about compensation.

The incident comes after a Carnival Cruise Line ship was similarly rocked by rough weather on its way back to the U.S. during a Bahamas cruise in May.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at [email protected].

Watch CBS News

100 cruise passengers injured, some "flung to the floor" and "holding on for dear life" as ship hits fierce storm on way to U.K.

By Emily Mae Czachor

November 9, 2023 / 10:55 AM EST / CBS News

About 100 cruise ship passengers were injured last week when a fierce storm — which had cut short their scheduled trip around the Canary Islands — ended up hitting the ship in the Bay of Biscay as it routed back to the United Kingdom. Five passengers needed treatment in onboard medical facilities for more serious injuries, while the rest were described as minor. 

Nigel Banks, the CEO of British company Saga Cruises, said Spirit of Discovery had safely returned to the U.K. and all passengers had disembarked in a statement to CBS News on Thursday.

"We have apologised to all our guests who experienced such difficult weather conditions; we know that this was a very distressing experience for them," Banks said in the statement. 

Spirit of Discovery was carrying roughly 1,000 passengers on a two-week journey from Portsmouth, in southern England, through the Canary Islands off the western coast of Spain. The 14-night  "Canary Island Quintet" cruise , operated by Saga Cruises, left from Portsmouth on Oct. 24 and completed the first nine days of its prepared itinerary before beginning to confront a bout of bad weather. 

Conditions prompted the ship's captain to cancel their next planned stop in Las Palmas, where they were due to travel from the capital of Fuerteventura, another place in the Canary Islands, on Nov. 2. Instead, Spirit of Discovery changed directions to route toward the northwestern tip of mainland Spain, where the captain intended to dock the ship at La Coruña.

But while en route to the Spanish seaside town on the edge of the Bay of Biscay, the captain received word that the port at La Coruña would be closed because of bad weather. Hoping to stay ahead of the storm, the captain decided to start routing Spirit of Discovery back to the U.K. earlier than originally planned.

Spirit of Discovery encountered massive, tumultuous waves while crossing the Bay of Biscay, a body of water bordering Span and France that is known at times for especially turbulent currents. While crossing the bay, the ship's propulsion safety system activated and caused it to jerk suddenly to one direction, which essentially brought the vessel to a halt. 

A social media user on X said their parents were passengers on Spirit of Discovery during the cruise. 

"My elderly parents on board the Saga Spirit of Discovery and have also had a horrendous time in the storm, including getting flung to the floor in the dining room with tables and crockery falling on them," the post read , adding, "Why did the captain rush from the Canaries into the storm?"

One passenger, Alan Grisedale, filmed the enormous waves that rocked Spirit of Discovery in the Bay of Biscay and shared the footage with BBC News . Grisedale said the force against the ship was so great that his wife was knocked over, and furniture was pushed around inside their cabin, the BBC reported . Another passenger on the ship recalled in comments to the BBC that "tables were flying" and waves were "throwing people around all up and down the place."

Jan Bendall, a 75-year-old passenger who had taken the cruise with her husband, told the BBC that Spirit of Discovery remained stationary in the Bay of Biscay for about 15 hours while "caught in the middle of the storm." Bendall said that she and her husband were "holding on for dear life."

Banks, the cruise line's CEO, said the crew did "everything we could" to keep passengers safe.   

"We operate to the highest health and safety protocols and every decision was made based on advice from the ship's Master and forecasts from our dedicated marine meteorologists," Banks said in his statement. "We did everything we could at all times to keep our guests as safe as possible and to support them through the storm, including expert medical attention for those injured. I want to thank our guests for their patience and understanding and all our crew, who went over and above to care for everyone onboard."

• United Kingdom

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Storm injures 100 cruise ship passengers in Bay of Biscay

Holiday cut short and vessel forced to return to the uk after ‘challenging weather conditions’, said saga cruises, article bookmarked.

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Passengers on board a cruise ship have described “holding on for dear life” as they were caught in a storm off the western coast of France.

Around 100 people suffered injuries when the Saga Cruises ship Spirit of Discovery was hit by bad weather conditions in the Bay of Biscay last weekend.

The majority of the injuries were minor, the cruise line confirmed but said that with five individuals needed treatment for more serious injuries in our medical facilities onboard.

As a result, the vessel cut short its 14-day cruise and returned to the UK last night (6 November).

Since disembarking in Portmouth this morning (7 November), passengers have spoken of their experience, some claiming they were told to remain in their cabins as the ship rocked in the strong waves.

Passenger Jan Bendall, 75, told the BBC that she and her husband were “holding on for dear life” during the storm and added: “It was quite frightening, I’m not somebody who frightens easily, it was quite dramatic.”

She described how the staff were “absolutely fantastic” and set up “a makeshift medical area” in the dining room to treat the injured while passengers were told to stay in their cabins for the rest of Saturday and Sunday.

There were around 1,000 passengers sailing at the time of the incident. The ship, which has been sailing since 2019, veered to one side as the propulsion safety system was activated when after the vessel found it itself in poor weather.

Were you, or anyone you know, on board Spirit of Discovery? Email [email protected]

After departing the UK for the Canary Islands on 24 October, the first 10 days of the 14-day holiday went as planned, but the final stop in Las Palmas was dropped when a storm was forecast.

A course was plotted to the port in A Coruna, in northwest Spain, but adverse weather forced it to close – with crew deciding to head back to the UK early. It was here, while in an area known for rough seas, that the injuries occurred.

A spokesperson for Saga Cruises said: “Spirit of Discovery was sadly caught in the challenging weather conditions this weekend, as she started her return to the UK. The ship remained safe at all times, but due to the impact of the storm some guests sustained injuries.

“All were treated immediately by onboard medical staff. While the weather is clearly beyond our control, we want to offer our sincere apologies to all those affected who are now safely back, having sailed home in calmer seas.”

Last month, an explosion on a cruise ship docked in the US, owned by American Queen Voyages, left one crew member burned and led to the evacuation of more than 200 people onboard .

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Saga hit by £61m loss as Covid takes toll on tours and cruises

Travel and insurance firm cut more than a third of its workforce in 2020

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Saga, the travel and insurance company for the over-50s, has revealed it made a £61m loss before tax last year after the Covid-19 pandemic prevented it from operating its tours and cruises and forced it to refund customers.

The company cut more than a third (36%) of its workforce during 2020, as it moved to slash costs, while it also raised £150m from shareholders in September.

The group is ready to restart its tours and cruises as soon as government restrictions allow and reported that there is significant pent-up demand from customers who want to travel.

In January, Saga became the first UK travel operator to tell cruise and holiday customers that they must be fully vaccinated to travel with them this summer.

Passengers who want to travel on Saga tours or cruises will be required to show a letter from their GP or their vaccination card to show that they have been inoculated against Covid-19, with two doses if required, at least 14 days before departure. They will also need to take a Covid test at the departure terminal.

Saga Group’s chief executive, Euan Sutherland, said the company had received “great support” for its two-vaccination policy for travel customers.

“Customers want to be comforted and cautious, and have extra peace of mind around tours and cruises,” he said.

“We don’t tend to send a lot of customers away in peak months of July and August, our customers tend to avoid those months, so it gives us a longer window and greater margin of error for the pandemic settling down.”

Asked whether it supported vaccination passports, the company said it would wait to see what the government introduced.

Saga reported pent-up demand among its customers for travel later in the year and said its cruises were 78% booked for this season, while its holidays were 83% booked for this year.

Total cruise bookings at Saga for 2021-22 and 2022-23 have reached £154m so far, compared with £128m at the the same point last year, which Saga says is a 20% improvement.

Sutherland said the company was retaining high levels of customers, with a majority of cruise-goers opting to receive vouchers rather than a refund, demonstrating their loyalty to the brand.

“Looking ahead, while we are mindful of economic headwinds and the potential ongoing impacts of Covid 19, it is clear that there is significant pent-up demand among our customer base, the vast majority of whom have now been vaccinated and are ready to enjoy post-lockdown freedom,” Sutherland said.

The group has made significant savings in marketing and administrative costs, which have helped it to reduce the rate it is burning through cash to about £6m a month, from closer to £8m.

More favourable debt repayment terms have been renegotiated for two of its newest cruise ships, including one it received in September 2020, to give it more financial flexibility.

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Cruise passengers were watching the weather forecast and begging their captain to head to port before the ship got caught in a severe storm

• Cruise passengers begged their captain to dock before the vessel got caught in a bad storm. 
• The travelers were worried about a bad weather forecast on the ship's path, The Telegraph reported.
• One hundred people were injured when the ship ran into a storm Saturday in the Bay of Biscay.

Passengers on board a recent cruise to the Canary Islands who were worried about a bad weather forecast begged the ship's captain to head to port, according to a report.

But the ship sailed on and got caught up in a terrifying storm that led to 100 people being injured on board.

The anxious travelers called on the captain to dock Saga Cruises' Spirit of Discovery ship after the vessel started to hit choppy waters as the cruise was returning to the United Kingdom and nearing the end of its 14-day "Canary Island Quintet" sail last week, the UK's Telegraph reported .

One guest, a 72-year-old only identified as Jayne, told the Telegraph that the ship was in rough seas as it traveled up the Portuguese coast and that passengers were concerned about storms forecast along the ship's course back to the UK.

"We said to the captain, this storm's coming, and we're going to hit it somewhere in the Bay of Biscay," Jayne said in an interview with the news outlet.

Related stories

Jayne said passengers suggested the cruise ship dock in Lisbon, Portugal, "but we were told that we can't go there because the maritime pilots are on strike," the Telegraph reported.

WATCH: BBC reports "tables were flying" as waves threw people "all up and down the place", say passengers on UK cruise ship 'Spirit of discovery' caught in storm. 100 people got injured as 30ft waves battered the ship windows. pic.twitter.com/NWZh2tL2ff — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 7, 2023

When Insider asked Saga Cruises for comment on Wednesday, its CEO, Nigel Blanks, said in a statement: "We operate to the highest health and safety protocols and every decision – particularly with regard to routes and potential ports of call — was made based on advice from the ship's Master and forecasts from our dedicated marine meteorologists."

Blanks added, "We did everything we could at all times to keep our guests as safe as possible and to support them through the storm, including expert medical attention for those injured."

The Spirit of Discovery was hit by a storm near France

As weather conditions worsened last week, the cruise, which was carrying 1,000 guests on board, decided to head back to the UK earlier than originally planned.

On Saturday, the vessel ran into a storm in the Bay of Biscay, an area off the coast of Spain and France known for its rough seas.

During the ordeal, the ship's propulsion safety system was activated, causing it to suddenly veer and come to a halt, resulting in the passenger injuries.

"A lot of people I spoke to thought they were going to die," one 80-year-old passenger told The Telegraph. "You had people ringing families and saying, 'this could be it,' due to the violent rolling of the waves."

The cruise is now back in the UK and all guests disembarked the ship on Tuesday.

Watch: Cruise ship captain breaks down 8 cruise ship disasters in movies and TV

• Main content

Saga cruise ship: 100 people injured as Spirit of Discovery caught up in storm

• Cruise ship
• Tuesday 7 November 2023 at 5:32pm

A passenger on board the cruise explains how the storm affected the ship

A passenger on board a cruise ship that sailed through a storm has described passengers being thrown around and being scared for their lives.

Around 100 people were injured on board Saga's Spirit of Discovery during its roundtrip to the Canary Islands from Portsmouth when severe weather hit in the Bay of Biscay.

Richard was onboard with his elderly parents and explained: "We were left floundering in the centre of this storm where we were advised to go to cabins...people were getting flung all over the place and there were breakages."

Guests were treated on board before the ship arrived back at Portsmouth on Monday evening (6 November).

Spirit of Discovery departed on 24 October on a 14-night ‘Canary Island Quintet’ cruise.

The ship was caught in the storm.

As weather conditions started to worsen on day 10, the call to Las Palmas was cancelled and the decision was made to continue onwards to La Coruna to get ahead of the approaching storm.

The ship's crew were then informed the port at La Coruna would be closed and they decided to continue back to the UK earlier than originally planned.

Spirit of Discovery's propulsion safety system was activated in the poor weather causing it to veer suddenly to the left, bringing the vessel to a sudden halt.

This led to 100 of the 1,000 guests on board being hurt with the "vast majority" suffering minor injuries.

Five people needed treatment for more serious injuries in the ship's medical facilities, according to Saga Cruises.

Richard, a passenger on board, said: "People were generally scared for their lives. Some had even written texts to their loved ones as they thought they were going to die.

"It was really choppy on Friday night and on Saturday we were getting flung all over the place...There were few injuries with elderly people."

He continued: "We were the only cruise ship in Bay of Biscay, all the others have either postponed their journeys or taken shelter because of the incoming storm."

Nigel Blanks, CEO of Saga Cruises, said: “Spirit of Discovery has arrived safely back in port and all passengers have disembarked and are on their way home.

"We have apologised to all our guests who experienced such difficult weather conditions; we know that this was a very distressing experience for them.

"We operate to the highest health and safety protocols and every decision was made based on advice from the ship’s Master and forecasts from our dedicated marine meteorologists.

"We did everything we could at all times to keep our guests as safe as possible and to support them through the storm, including expert medical attention for those injured. I want to thank our guests for their patience and understanding and all our crew, who went over and above to care for everyone onboard.”

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Lack of any offers on what is an expensive tour holiday.

Having just missed the 10% April offer, (we spent several days trying decide on tour location and tour operator), rather disappointed that no offers or discount could be made. I'm sure if we'd booked via a Local travel agent, we would have secured something, if only the necessary overnight airport hotel. Received a further email 6th May, advising Saga sales were dealing with my concerns and would I like to revise my review, but I've heard nothing. So no change to my review. Sorry.

Date of experience : 05 May 2024

Reply from Saga Travel

Hi, We're really sorry to hear about your disappointment with the booking process. We understand that our sales team are assisting you with your queries. We do hope that despite this disappointment, you have a great holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Southern Sights and Sounds…

My partner and I are just arriving back from the Tour to the Southern Sights and Sounds with Titan, our Tour Manager was Yvonne Sartain. We have had an amazing time, we visited lots of States and the trip lived up to our expectations. Yvonne our Tour manager was very attentive. Kind, organised, good fun and made the experience very special

Date of experience : 29 April 2024

Hi Theresa, Thanks so much for taking the time to share your review of your recent Southern Sights and Sounds tour. It sounds like you had a wonderful time with Yvonne and the team. We look forward you joining us on another Saga trip very soon, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Croatian Small Boat Cruising

We just spent a week cruising along the beautiful Dalmatian coast on the lovely 32 berth Amorena. Spotless boat, fantastic food and brilliant crew. Our tour guide, Bobby, was exceptional, knowledgeable and friendly, with a good sense of humour. Transport connections worked well . It was great to be picked up and transported back home , with none of the usual hassle of arranging to get to and from the airport. We would thoroughly recommend this holiday

Date of experience : 26 April 2024

Hi Greer, Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback for your recent trip. We're delighted to hear that you had such a great time and that Bobby and the team looked after you all so well. We look forward to welcoming you on another trip very soon, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Customer service shocking

Customer service shocking. I have now been holding on the phone for 20 minutes. They completed changed our airport from Heathrow to Gatwick, flight time and airline. From British airways to budget airline Easyjet. Pickup time now 3am!! We would never have booked such an early flight with the distance to the airport. I rang them on 26th April and was to receive a call back from a manager withing 48 hours . I had to ring them again on 30th as had no call back as promised. After speaking to a manager she assured me she would let me know if we'd get our rooms when we arrived after such an early start. She has neither emailed or rang. I also asked for my concerns to be up-scaled to the complaints dept. Again had an email to say someone would be in touch in 48 hours. Still waiting. Have now hung up and am extremely disappointed in their customer service. Did a river cruise last year with them and could not fault their service then. Even if they do sort us out I will never use Saga again.

Hi Linda, We're so sorry to hear this. This is clearly not the level of service we aim to provide. Your feedback has been passed to our sales managers who will investigate your concerns and contact you directly. We do hope we can restore your faith in us and that you have a great holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Not impressive

Not impressive. Long wait for getting to an actual person on the telephone was not good. 30 mins having to repeat myself etc. initial paperwork incorrect. Having to change room selection because the whole thing took so long to do - the rooms apparently "went" after being shown as available. so now have to sleep in same room (2 females) in twin bedded instead of 2 single rooms!

Hi Gill, Thanks for sharing your review. We're really sorry to hear about the issues experienced with your booking. This is clearly not the feedback we hope to receive. We understand that our sales agents are looking into the issues that you have raised with us. We do hope we can restore your faith in us and that you have a great holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Just returned from New Zealand South Island organized by Saga Tailor-Made and they did an excellent job. Logistically, from flights to hotels, car hire and train journeys, taxis to boat trips, the whole thing went flawlessly. From the moment we contacted Saga and explained what we wanted to do, their Tailor-Made team understood and put together a package of wonderful variety of hotels, lodges and apartments in great locations. The team flexed some details so that we stayed longer in some locations and re-graded where necessary, ensuring that the onward stops were suitably updated. All of the accommodation was of a very good quality, often unique in their way, and the hosts, staff and service were excellent throughout. We will definitely be using the Saga Tailor-Made service again.

Date of experience : 02 May 2024

Indian Summer Trains.

The overall experience was very good. Our tour manager Sanjeev Kumar has been excellent. The tour was very arduous, being at the tail end of the tourist season and the beginning of the hot season. One of our tour group was a lady with mobility difficulties who either used a motorised wheelchair or was very slow walking. A disproportionate amount of our tour manager's time was spent administering to her needs. The other group members pitched in to help whenever they could. For future reference this holiday package is not suitable for wheelchair users. The itinerary, food, transport and hotels were all very good. Jackie Adams and Ron Rhodes.

Date of experience : 27 April 2024

Hi Jackie and Ron, Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. We're sorry to hear that the pace of the tour wasn't suitable for all guest and that this had an impact on your enjoyment of the holiday. We do advertise the pace of the tour and request that guests advise of any additional requirements they have before travel. This is so we can ensure that the tour is suitable and so we can suggest an alternative if not. We're really pleased to hear that despite this, you had a great time and we look forward to you joining us on another trip. Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Online experience not good

Online experience not good. Waiting time on telephone booking too long. Prices not correct ever. Eventually agents exceptionally helpful.

Date of experience : 11 May 2024

Hi, Thanks for sharing your feedback for your booking experience. We're really sorry to hear about the issues encountered but pleased to hear that our agents were able to answer your queries and help you confirm your booking. We hope you have a fantastic holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

First time using Saga for a holiday.

First time using Saga for a holiday. As an older traveller having not travelled for some years I feel a bit rusty. I feel confident that you will take care of me & guide me through the holiday especially if something goes wrong.

Date of experience : 06 May 2024

Hi Pauline, Thanks so much for your review. We're really pleased to hear that you have chosen us for your booking and we hope you have a fantastic holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

I had a lovely holiday.

I had a lovely holiday the hotel staff and sago rep were always friendly and helpful. The food is very good and I love the area for walking and bird watching. I have been several times to El Rompido and hope Saga keep using it.

Date of experience : 09 May 2024

Hi, Thanks so much for taking the time to share your review. We're delighted to hear that you always enjoy your holidays with us and we look forward to you joining us again. Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Just returned from a fantastic holiday…

Just returned from a fantastic holiday with SAGA. Our drivers to and from the airport were excellent,prompt collecting us and making the long journey go smoothly. Flights with Croatian airlines were on time if not ahead of schedule and transfers to and from were great. Our ship the vessel Amorena was much better than expected. The cabin was clean and roomy enough. The food on board was of the highest quality, the staff were cheerful and did everything possible to look after us. The tour guide - Bobby was great - top bloke , looked after us all, extremely knowledgeable and with a good sense of humour. Croatia, an amazing country, friendly people,tremendous scenery clean, no litter anywhere. Loved it, would definitely go back.

Date of experience : 03 May 2024

Hi Mark, Thanks so much for sharing your review. We're delighted to hear that you had such a great time exploring Croatia and that Bobby and the team looked after you all so well. We look forward to you joining us again, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Recommendation

Having recently retired, my husband and I have decided to undertake the first of our 'holidays of our lifetime'. Our daughter undertook the initial research for us and recommended Saga (Tailor Made). Communications with Martin, our Saga Travel Consultant, have so far been very effective and timely. We are eagerly looking forward to our month long trip to New Zealand!

Date of experience : 07 May 2024

Hi Marie, Thanks for sharing your review of your booking experience. We're so pleased that you have chosen Saga for your trip to New Zealand and we hope you have a fantastic time. Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Telephone booking process easy

Telephone booking process easy, holiday unavailable to be booked online, "selling fast". This meant I couldn't see flight times on website prior to making call. Used ringback service, call returned within about 15 minutes.

Date of experience : 04 May 2024

Hi Louise, Thanks for sharing your review. We're really pleased to hear that our agents were able to answer your queries and help you confirm your booking. We hope you have a fantastic holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Just back from Costa Rica

Just back from Costa Rica and had a fantastic time. There were lots of opportunities for connections to be missed and transport to be late but every single vehicle turned up on time. Hotels varied but all were good. Thanks to Sharon Carr for making the whole holiday come together.

Hi John, Thanks for taking the time to share your review. We're delighted to hear that everything ran smoothly and that you had such a great experience. Your feedback for Sharon is much appreciated. We look forward to you joining us on another Saga adventure, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Poor Customer Service

I attempted to book a holiday to Japan on 2nd April, obviously as it was only 6 week away; various items had to be checked. Saga NEVER got in touch regarding the status of the booking, I rang on 4 separate occasions to check if the holiday was going ahead and this carried on for 3 weeks, before I was finally advised on the 25th May that I would not be going; but they knew on the 18th but didn't have the common curtesy to let me know.

Date of experience : 02 April 2024

Hi Roseann, We're really sorry to hear about your disappointment with the booking process. This is clearly not the feedback we hope to receive. We can assure you that your comments have been passed to our sales team managers for their information and review. We understand that our agents have been assisting you and have now confirmed an alternative trip. We do hope you enjoy your holiday and that we manage to restore your faith in us, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

SAGA has improved its customer phone service. Still needs to improve the food available at the hotels.

SAGA has improved its customer phone service substantially. For two years on the dozens of occasions I phoned, I used to have to wait 30 minutes to over an hour to be able to talk to someone on the phone regarding booking a holiday or having queries about an existing booking. Most of the time I just gave up waiting. Now it's much faster and more efficient and staff are far more helpful. The Titan guide we had on the latest escorted tour I went on, (Jordan including stays at Amman, Petra and the Dead Sea), was excellent. He was extremely well informed and entertaining and eager to help. He had 30 years of experience being a professional tour guide. The major criticism I have of SAGA/Titan holidays is that, the food is nearly always of a very average standard and not very appealing. I've often missed out on the buffet and gone off to a local restaurant. Everything else is usually very good and the tour manager/guides do an extremely good job.

Date of experience : 28 March 2024

Hi Malcolm, Thanks for sharing your review. We do appreciate your feedback and suggestions as these help us to identify areas for improvement. We're pleased to hear that overall you enjoyed your trip and we look forward to you joining us again, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Indian rail trip feedback

We were allocated a charming and responsive tour guide who made the most of the varied experiences available. The tour itself gave a good ‘taste’ of the Golden Triangle and although largely by train, this was supplemented with some good coach based visits. The guide was very knowledgeable in Indian history and provided excellent background to the key places we visited. Whilst the group was small(14), he managed a fairly diverse level of abilities very well. We were concerned that one group member took a disproportionate amount of support and this led to the tour guide going beyond a reasonable level of support. Given this person was virtually wheelchair bound and some of the pathways used were very uneven, I think there should have been a formal risk assessment prior to her joining the tour. I feel the fact that the tour manager gave so much extra, and other group members added their support was the only reasons the tour succeeded. Given the profile of SAGA clientele, more attention to risk evaluation is needed and the company should use the local knowledge of our guide to help in proactive assessment rather than be required to reactively respond. There was some cases (5/14) of diarrhoea in the group which implies some difficulties with the food available. The quality of the hotels was good overall.

Hi Glynis, Thanks so much for taking the time to share your review of your recent trip to India. We do appreciate your feedback regarding the food and the suitability of the tour for some of the guests. We do advertise the pace of each tour and request that guests advise us of any additional requirements, so we can ensure that the tour is suitable. We're pleased however, that you enjoyed the tour overall and we hope you will consider us for your future travel plans, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

Well done Saga a great experience when booking a holidayga is always very friendly and most…

Saga is always very friendly and most helpful, we always have Saga holidays because of their excellent service and advice

Date of experience : 13 May 2024

The booking process was very poor

The booking process was very poor, with calls repeatedly cut off, SAGA operatives having to be chased for responses, and last minute flight price increases. It took the eventual intervention of a manager to investigate and resolve matters relating to our booking, which we have now completed.

Hi Ian, Thanks for sharing your review. We're really sorry to hear about the issues experienced with your booking. This is clearly not the feedback we hope to receive and we can assure you that your comments will be passed to our Sales Managers for their information and review. We understand that you have now been contacted by a manager to address your concerns. We do hope that we have been able to restore your faith in us and that you have a great holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

There is no information on how to check in

There is no information on how to check in in the final travel documents. In FAQS on line it says to check in on line with Turkish Airlines but on the phone I was told I cannot do this and must check in when I get to the airport. I had the same problem last year when flying to Johannesburg. I was told on the phone that the group would be checked in at the airport and in fact I checked in myself at the airport with the help of a Saga rep. But others in the taxi had already checked in on line so this worried me as we were later than three hours before the flight when getting to the airport. So Saga, please put HOW TO CHECK IN on the travel documents so we know what to do.

Date of experience : 22 April 2024

Hi Mary, We're really sorry to read your review. This is clearly not the kind of feedback we hope to receive. The check in process depends on the airline you are travelling with and the type of booking you have. If you could please send your booking reference details through to [email protected], our team will contact your directly to answer your queries and address your concerns. We do hope that despite these issues, you have a great holiday, Best Wishes, Nick Saga Travel

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Saga passengers said last goodbyes as cruise ship hit ‘nightmare’ storm

They were promised a 14-day voyage to a “sun-kissed archipelago”. Instead, passengers on the Spirit of Discovery spent the weekend writing goodbye messages to their loved ones.

“It’s what nightmares are made of,” said Richard Reynolds, 60, a passenger who was aboard the ill-fated cruise liner. “The whole experience was horrendous. Waves were coming up to the fifth storey windows, people were screaming and furniture and plates and glass were flying in every direction.”

The Saga Cruises ship Spirit of Discovery was on a 14-night cruise to the Canary Islands when disaster struck last weekend.

The ship had to cancel a visit to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as the weather worsened and was instead heading towards A Coruña on the northwest tip of Spain

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Saga floats idea of selling stake in ocean cruises arm

The over-50s travel and insurance specialist could outsource the operation of its two ocean cruise ships under plans being explored by its board, Sky News learns.

City editor @MarkKleinmanSky

Friday 26 January 2024 00:36, UK

Saga is exploring ways to release money from its ocean cruises operation which could involve selling its two flagship vessels or offloading the entire business under a licensing arrangement.

Sky News has learnt that the heavily indebted company, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, is working with advisers on a range of potential options, which also include selling a stake in the division.

City sources said on Thursday that the process, which has been under way for a number of weeks, had yet to reach any firm conclusions.

They added, however, that Saga's board had determined that its ocean cruises arms, which operates the Spirit of Adventure and Spirit of Discovery, offered the likeliest route to unlocking substantial new financing.

In November, Sky News revealed that Saga, which specialises in providing insurance and holidays to the over-50s consumer, had drafted in bankers from Lazard to advise.

Saga, which is scheduled to update the City on trading next week, has been labouring under the weight of a large debt pile for years.

In the autumn it tapped its chairman, Roger de Haan, for a £35m, adding to the substantial sum of money it owes him.

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Reviving the sale of its insurance underwriting division, which was on the cards a year ago, is not thought to have been ruled out altogether.

However, more realistic alternatives are said to include selling and leasing back the two cruise ships, which are now operating at near-capacity, selling a stake in the division or outsourcing its operation to another cruise company under a licensing deal.

The evaluation of new corporate activity by Saga's board comes ahead of a £150m bond repayment which is due in May but which is understood to be repayable from money lent by Mr de Haan.

In its interim results announced last September, Saga's balance sheet was saddled with net debt of more than £650m.

The company's shares have fallen by nearly a fifth during the last 12 months, leaving it with a market capitalisation of just over £200m.

Mr de Haan, the company's former chief executive, was parachuted back in to lead a turnaround in the summer of 2020, investing £100m as part of a broader capital-raising.

That came after it spurned a takeover bid from private equity investors.

At the start of last year, it unveiled a global website called Saga Exceptional, aimed at providing advice and services to over-50s consumers.

However, it has been forced to contend with a change of leadership in recent weeks following the resignation in November of chief executive Euan Sutherland.

He is being replaced by finance chief Mike Hazell.

A large part of the company's current travails relate to conditions in the motor insurance market, which it said had been impacting its ability to generate cash and reduce debt.

Saga had also been in talks to sell its underwriting business to Open, an Australian insurer, but failed to finalise a transaction.

Mr de Haan, the son of the company's founder, had already lent Saga £50m before extending that to an £85m facility earlier in the autumn.

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Shares in Saga closed on Thursday at 146.8p.

A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment.

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Debt-laden Saga cruises into unchartered waters

Debt-laden Saga has said it is 'exploring opportunities' for its cruises business – which could even result in its sale.

The company, which specialises in insurance and holidays for over-50s, said it was looking at a 'partnership agreement' as it tries to drive down its spiralling debts.

A spokesman said: 'The board is exploring opportunities to optimise Saga's operational and strategic position in cruise, where exceptional demand for its boutique Ocean Cruise offer means it is operating at close to capacity.

'No decision has yet been made and there can be no certainty that any partnership agreement will occur. A further announcement will be made in due course, as appropriate.'

Saga refused to rule out a sale and it is understood that all options are on the table.

The update, which sent shares soaring 6.3 per cent, or 9.2p, to 156p yesterday, came after Sky News reported that Saga was considering selling its vessels or dumping the business under a licensing arrangement.

This is ahead of a £150m bond repayment due in May and the ongoing pressure of its £650m debt pile. The company did not expand on what a new 'partnership deal' would entail.

Its two flagship vessels, Spirit of Adventure and Spirit of Discovery, run cruises around the British Isles, the Mediterranean, the Nordics and the Caribbean, with prices ranging from £1,300 to £15,000.

Saga was reportedly in talks to sell its underwriting business last year to Open, an Australian insurer, but the deal failed to get over the line. The motor insurance arm has suffered in an era of high inflation, ultimately pushing up the price of payouts.

Analysts at Peel Hunt this week said that the travel arm has 'turned a corner' but added that the company needed to consider restructuring the insurance business.

Saga is expected to update shareholders in a trading statement next week.

This will be the first update since Euan Sutherland stepped down as chief executive in November. He was replaced by Mike Hazell, who was the group's chief financial officer.

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Kevin costner on ‘yellowstone’ contract dispute: “i lived up to it”.

The actor and filmmaker offers his first extended comments on his falling out with the Paramount Network hit's producers.

By Rick Porter

Rick Porter

Television Writer

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Kevin Costner says he was ready and willing to move ahead with Yellowstone in accordance with his contract on the show — but that the production wasn’t ready at the appointed time.

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“I haven’t felt good about it the last year, what with the way they’ve talked about it. It wasn’t truthful. So now I’m talking about a little bit about what the real truth of it was,” Costner said in a lengthy interview with Deadline . “I made a contract for seasons five, six and seven. In February, after a two- or three-month negotiation, they made another contract. They wanted to redo that one, and instead of seasons six and seven, it was 5A and 5B, and maybe we’ll do six. They weren’t able to make those.  Horizon  was set in the middle, but  Yellowstone  was first position. I fit [ Horizon ] into the gaps. They just kept moving their gaps.”

Costner said he worked for 43 days on the first half of Yellowstone’ s fifth season, which aired in late 2022. He left the set of Horizon to shoot the second half (which is scheduled to premiere in November ), but according to him, scripts weren’t ready.

“And then things imploded,” he said. “You’ve been reading one version [of what happened] for a year and a half. I left my movie to be on time for them for [season] 5B. I left exactly when they wanted, and it made it hard on me. It turns out they didn’t have the scripts for 5B. They needed four more days just to complete the first eight episodes. I left early to give them what they needed to have a complete eight, and I felt bad that the audience didn’t get 10. They didn’t have the scripts for anything else.”

Coster admits to being displeased with the way the story has played out, but he also says he’d return to the series if he’s asked. “If they’ve got so many other things going on, maybe this circles back and it’s a really cool two seasons,” he said. “Or end it, if the writing’s there and I’m happy with it. I’m open to that. But I took a beating over these guys not speaking up for me and allowing crazy stories to come out. I’m not happy about that. But if the writing is there, I will be there too.”

When confirming the end of  Yellowstone , Paramount Network announced   2024  as the first-ever  Yellowstone  sequel ; a present-day story to take place after the events of  Yellowstone  that would continue exploring the  Dutton family dynasty  with new characters and locations, as well as some existing characters, per the release at the time. It was given a straight-to-series order. The network also announced  another prequel,  1944 , which would follow in the footsteps of limited series  1883  and  1923 , the latter which has been renewed for a forthcoming second season.

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With Arms Wide Open

How did creed, the most hated band of the 1990s, become so beloved—and even cool i sailed the seas with thousands of fellow lunatics to find out..

It’s high noon on a blazing April day, which is the ideal time to be sitting in an Irish pub aboard a cruise ship the size of a small asteroid. The bar is called O’Sheehan’s—yes, pronounced “oceans”—and it’s located deep within the belly of the boat, just above the teppanyaki joint, the sake bar, and the lustrous duty-free shops. This consciousness-altering diorama of infinite seas and cloying Guinness-themed paraphernalia is where I meet Colleen Sullivan, a 46-year-old woman with a beehive of curly red hair and arms encased by plastic wristbands. She wants to tell me how Creed changed her life.

A few moments earlier, Sullivan dropped one of those wristbands on my table—an invitation to talk. It’s lime-green and emblazoned with pink lettering that reads “Rock the Boat With Creed.” I slip it past my hand and sidle up to her booth. Sullivan uses one nuclear-yellow-painted fingernail to hook back the wristbands on her right arm. Underneath is the pinched autograph of Scott Stapp, the band’s mercurial lead singer, enshrined in tattoo ink. This, it seems, is not her first rodeo.

We are both here for “Summer of ’99,” a weekendlong cruise and concert festival for which Creed—as in the Christian-lite rock band that sold more than 28 million albums in the U.S. alone and yet may be the most widely disdained group in modern times—is reuniting for the first time in 12 years. Roughly 2,400 other Creed fans are along for the round-trip ride from Miami to the Bahamas, and the rest of the bill is occupied by the dregs of turn-of-the-millennium alt-rock stardom. Buckcherry is here. So are Vertical Horizon, Fuel, and 3 Doors Down, the latter of whom hasn’t released an album since 2016.

To celebrate, Sixthman, the booking agency responsible for this and many other cruises, has thoroughly Creed-ified every element of the ship. The band’s logo is printed on the napkins and scripted across the blackjack felt. The TV screens at the bar are tuned to a near-constant loop of Creed’s performance at Woodstock ’99. The onboard library has been converted to a merch store selling Creed hoodies and shot glasses. The stock music piped into the corridors has been swapped out for Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel,” Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy,” and 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite.” When I turn on the closed-circuit television in my cabin, a channel called New Movies plays Scream 3 and Can’t Hardly Wait . And four elevator doors in the boat’s central plaza are plastered with the words “Can You Take Me Higher or Lower?” Sixthman pulled similar stunts with 311’s “ Caribbean Cruise ,” Train’s “ Sail Across the Sun ” cruise, and Kid Rock’s notoriously debauched “ Chillin’ the Most ” cruise—the Kid Rock cruise also took place on the vessel I’m on, the Norwegian Pearl . The idea is to teleport a captive audience back into the dirtbags they once embodied and to a simpler time, when Scott Stapp controlled the universe.

Sullivan tells me that her relationship with Creed overlaps with her sobriety story. She first became a fan of the band in the late 1990s, when “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open” were soaring up the Billboard charts. Then, Sullivan started using, and her appreciation for the divine proportions of those songs faded in service of more corporeal needs. Years later, after Creed broke up and Sullivan got clean, she returned to the music and discovered a dogma of her own: Maybe she had been put on earth to love Stapp—and Creed—harder, and with more urgency, than anyone else in the world.

“He helped me grow with those old Creed songs,” she tells me. “When I saw Scott for the first time live, he had just gotten clean too. I’d go to the shows and there would be tears streaming down my face.” Her left arm contains another Stapp tattoo, with the words “His Love Was Thunder in the Sky” scrawled up to her elbow, surrounded by a constellation of quarter notes. It’s a lyric taken from a 2013 Stapp solo song called “Jesus Was a Rockstar.” The singer Sharpie’d it onto her body himself.

“Summer of ’99” is Creed’s second attempt to reunite, after it disbanded in both 2004 and 2012 amid clashing egos and substance issues. The band couldn’t have picked a better time to get back together. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of an extremely unlikely Creed renaissance, redeeming the most reviled—and, perhaps more damningly, most uncool —band in the world. For much of the past 20 years, hating Creed has been a natural extension of being a music fan: In 2013 Rolling Stone readers voted the group “the worst band of the 1990s,” beating out a murderers’ row of Hootie and the Blowfish, Nickelback, and Hanson. Entertainment Weekly, reviewing Human Clay , the band’s bestselling album and one of the highest-selling albums of all time, bemoaned the record’s “lunkheaded kegger rock” and “quasi-spiritual lyrics that have all the resonance of a self-help manual.” Meanwhile, Robert Christgau, the self-appointed dean of American rock critics, wrote Creed off as “God-fearing grunge babies,” comparing the group unfavorably with Limp Bizkit.

The disrespect was reflected more sharply by Stapp’s own contemporaries. In the early 2000s, Dexter Holland, the frontman of the Offspring, played shows wearing a T-shirt that read “Even Jesus Hates Creed.” After leaked images of a sex tape filmed in 1999 featuring Stapp and Kid Rock and a room full of groupies made it onto the internet, Kid Rock retorted by saying that his fans didn’t care about the pornography but were appalled that he was hanging out with someone like Stapp. The comedian David Cross, who embodies the archetype of the exact sort of coastal hipsters who became the band’s loudest hecklers, dedicated swaths of his stand-up material to bird-dogging the singer. (One choice punchline: “That guy hangs out outside a junior high school girls locker room and writes down poetry he overhears.”) Then, in 2002, after a disastrous show in Chicago at which a belligerently drunk Stapp forgot the words to his songs and stumbled off the stage for 10 minutes, four attendees unsuccessfully sued the band for $2 million. Holland’s shirt didn’t go far enough—at the group’s lowest, even Creed fans hated Creed.

All this acrimony plunged Stapp into several episodes of psychic distress. His dependence on alcohol and painkillers was well documented during the band’s initial brush with success, but after Creed’s short-lived reconciliation, Stapp spiraled into a truly cavernous nadir. In 2014 the singer started posting unsettling videos to Facebook, asserting that he had been victimized by a cascading financial scam and was living in a Holiday Inn. That same year, TMZ released 911 calls made by Stapp’s wife Jaclyn claiming that he had printed out reams of CIA documents and was threatening to kill Barack Obama. But these days, Stapp—who announced a bipolar diagnosis in 2015—appears to be on much firmer ground, and the band has reportedly patched up some of those long-gestating interpersonal wounds.

But with time comes wisdom, and in 2024 neither the critical slander nor the troubling reports about Stapp’s mental state are anywhere to be found. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Creed is good, a shift that, as Stapp told Esquire , “just started happening” around 2021. The new paradigm likely solidified the next year, when Creed’s mythically patriotic post-9/11 halftime show, played on Thanksgiving in 2001, began to accrue latter-day meme status. The set was ridiculous and immaculately lip-synced by Stapp and company. Yoked, shirtless angels spin through the air, and cheerleaders pump out pompom routines synchronized with “My Sacrifice,” all while the live broadcast is interspersed with grim footage from ground zero. It’s garishly, unapologetically American, issued just before the unsavory decline of the Bush administration clicked into place. Today both of those relics—Creed and the unified national optimism—are worth getting wistful about. “This is where we peaked as a nation,” wrote football commentator Mike Golic Jr., linking to the video.

Creed nostalgia has only proliferated further since the resurrection of that halftime show. The band’s guitarist, Mark Tremonti, told the hard-rock site Blabbermouth that he’d recently noticed athletes bumping Creed as their “ go-to battle music ,” and in November, an entire stadium of Texas Rangers fans belted out “Higher” to commemorate their team’s World Series victory . Earlier this year, a viral remix of “ One Last Breath ” even began pulsing through some of the hottest parties in New York. The band has clearly crossed some sort of inscrutable cultural Rubicon and thrown reality into flux—up is down, black is white, and, due to a sublime confluence of biting irony and prostrating sincerity, Creed fucking rocks .

All this means that the inaugural edition of the “Summer of ’99” cruise is buoyed by very high stakes. It has been 12 long years since Creed last played a show, and the cruise is intended to be the dry run for a mammoth comeback tour that is scheduled for 60 dates, through summer and autumn, in basketball arenas and hockey stadiums across North America. The only remaining question is whether the band can keep it together. I’m there in a commemorative Creed Super Bowl halftime T-shirt to find out.

Several flights of stairs above O’Sheehan’s, the day before I meet Sullivan, I find Sean Patrick, a giddily beer-buzzed 34-year-old from Nashville who is standing in awe of a Coachella-sized stage that looks downright sinister on the pool deck. Creed is playing two shows this weekend, and the first is set for the very minute the boat leaves port and escapes Miami for the horizon. This means that everyone who purchased a ticket to “Summer of ’99”—which ranges from $895 for a windowless hovel to $6,381 for a stateroom with a balcony—has ascended to the top of the ship, preparing for Creed’s rebirth in a wash of Coors Light tallboys.

As of two days ago, Patrick was unaware he would be attending this cruise. Everything changed when a friend, who was on the waitlist, received a call from Norwegian Cruise Line informing him that a cabin with his name on it had miraculously become available. Patrick was suddenly presented with the opportunity to spend a tremendous amount of cash, on very short notice, to witness this reunion amid the die-hards.

Unlike Sullivan, Patrick doesn’t possess one of those highly intimate histories with the band, flecked with tales of trauma and perseverance. Still, he fell in love with Creed—even if it was only by accident.

“I think it started as a joke. The songs were good, but there was definitely a feeling of, like, Yeah, Creed! ” he tells me. “But then, next thing you know, you find yourself in your car, alone, deciding to put on Creed.”

The majority of the passengers on the Pearl have never been burdened with Patrick’s hesitance. Their relationship with Creed is genuine and free—cleansed of even the faintest whiff of irony—and, unlike Patrick, they tend to be in their late 40s and early 50s. The woman standing ankle-deep in the wading pool with a Stewie Griffin tattoo on her shin unambiguously loves Creed, and the same is probably true of whoever was lounging on a deck chair with a book, written by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, titled Get It Together: Troubling Tales From the Liberal Fringe . Two brothers from Kentucky who work in steel mills, but not the same steel mill, tell me that loving Creed is practically a family tradition: Their eldest brother, not present on the boat, initially showed them the band’s records. Tina Smith, a 48-year-old home-care aide from Texas, crowned with a black tennis visor adorned with golden letters spelling out the name of her favorite band, loves Creed so much that she embarked on this trip all by herself. “This is my first cruise and my first vacation,” she says, proudly. (Smith is already planning her next vacation. It will coincide with another Creed show.)

Passengers I encounter that are a generation younger are clearly acquainted more with Creed the meme than Creed the band. These are the people who vibe with statements like “Born too late to own property, born just in time to be a crusader in the ‘Creed Isn’t Bad’ fight”—especially when they’re arranged as deep-fried blocks of text superimposed over the face of Keanu Reeves as Neo. If the establishment brokers of culture once settled on the position that Creed sucks, then it has been met with a youth-led insurgency that seems dead-set on shifting the consensus—if for no other reason than to savor the nectar of pure, uncut taboo.

Many members of this insurgency are aboard the Pearl , and they’re caked in emblems of internet miscellany that scream out to anyone in the know. Consider the young man, traveling with his father, who is draped in a T-shirt bearing the Creed logo below a beatific image of Nicolas Cage circa Con Air , or the many fans who wander around the innards of the Pearl in matching Scott Stapp–branded Dallas Cowboys jerseys, a reference to that halftime show. In fact, the best representatives of sardonic Creed-fandom colonists might be the youngest collection of friends that I’ve met on board. They are all in their 20s, most of them work in Boston’s medicine and science sectors, and each is dressed in a custom-ordered tropical button-down dotted with the angelic face of Scott Stapp in places where you’d expect to find coconuts and banana bunches. A week before “Summer of ’99” was announced, the four of them made a pact, via group text, that if Creed were ever to reunite, they would make it out to see the band play, no matter the cost. Their fate was sealed.

“I hated Creed. I thought they were terrible,” says Mike Hobey, who, at 28, is the oldest of the posse and therefore the one who possesses the clearest recollection of Creed’s long, strange journey toward absolution. “But then I started listening to them ironically. And I was like, Oh, shit, I like them now .”

His point is indicative of a strange tension in this new age of Creed: If “the worst band of the 1990s” is suddenly good, does that mean all music is good now? Is nothing tacky? Have the digitized music discovery apparatuses—the melting-pot TikTok algorithm, the self-replicating profusion of Spotify playlists—blurred the boundaries of good and bad taste? Am I, like Hobey, incapable of being a hater anymore?

This is what I found myself thinking about when Creed took the stage, right as the Miami skies began to mellow into a late-afternoon smolder, and put on what was, without a doubt, one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen. The scalloped penthouses of Miami’s gleaming hotel district passed overhead as the Pearl ’s rudder kicked into gear, and Scott Stapp—looking jacked and gorgeous, chain on neck and chain on belt, flexing toward God in a tight black shirt—launched into “Are You Ready?,” the first song of the afternoon, his baritone sounding, somehow, exactly like it did in 1999. “Who would’ve thought, after our last show in 2012, our next show would be 12 years later, on a boat?” Stapp said. He is risen, indeed.

I later hear from Creed’s PR agent that Tremonti, the guitarist, was more anxious than he was excited to get this first show in the books. I also gather, from Stapp’s representative, that photographers are mandated to shoot the lead singer during only the first two songs of the set, before he begins to “glisten” (her word) with sweat. But if nerves were fraying, Creed conquered them with ease. The members of the band were enveloped by an audience that had paid a lot of money to see them, and in that atmosphere, they could do no wrong. They blitzed through a variety of album cuts before arriving at the brawny triptych of “Higher,” “One Last Breath,” and “With Arms Wide Open,” pausing briefly to wish Tremonti, who was turning 50, a happy birthday. (Stapp wiped away tears afterward, a genuinely touching moment, considering that during their first breakup, Tremonti had compared his years collaborating with Stapp—who was then in the throes of addiction— with surviving Vietnam .) Given Creed’s historic proximity to the Kid Rock brand of red-state overindulgence, I half expected the concert to detonate with violent pits and acrobatic beer stunts, but nothing remotely close to mayhem occurred. This crowd was downright polite—chaste, even—as if it had been stunned by the grandeur of Creed.

“He tried to dance pogo ,” says a disappointed German woman, basking in the pool after the show, gesturing toward her husband. Both of them explain to me that pogoing is the German word for “moshing” and that, even more astonishingly, Creed is huge in their native hamlet, just outside Düsseldorf.

“It’s a reunion after 12 years!” says her husband. “Everyone should be dancing pogo .”

Nothing about Creed’s music has changed in the past decade, which is to say that many of the quirks that people like Hobey once used to mock the band for were on brilliant display during its first show back. But the truth is that little of the smug hatred for the group has ever had much to do with the music itself. Creed’s first record, 1997’s My Own Prison , was nearly identical to the down-tuned angst of Soundgarden or Alice in Chains, drawn well inside the lines of alt-rock radio. (It earned a tasteful 4/5 rating from the longtime consumer guide AllMusic.)

The problems arose only after the band started writing the celestial hooks of Human Clay , solidifying its superstar association with other groups chasing the same crunchy highs with machine-learning efficiency: Nickelback, Staind, Shinedown, and so on. Post-grunge was the term music journalists eventually bestowed on this generation, and in retrospect, that was the kiss of death. Creed was suddenly positioned as the inheritor of the legacy of Kurt Cobain, the godfather of grunge, who bristled at all associations with the mainstream music industry and hired the notoriously bellicose Steve Albini to make Nirvana’s third album as sour and uncommercial as possible. Stapp, meanwhile, has long called Bono—he of the flowing locks, billionaire best friends , and residencies in extravagant Las Vegas monoliths —his “ rock god .” Creed’s sole aspiration was to become the biggest rock band in the world, and for a few years there, the group actually pulled it off. Cobain’s grave got a little colder.

Post-grunge steamrolled the rock business, reducing its sonic palette to an all-consuming minor-chord dirge. Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” went quadruple platinum in 2001, eventually sparking a furious period of retaliation from the underground. (You could make the argument that the rise of the Strokes or the White Stripes or the indie-rock boom writ large is directly tied to the vise grip Creed once held on the genre.) Before long, music aesthetes adopted a new term, rather than post-grunge , to refer to the Creed phenotype: butt rock . In fact, by the late-2000s, the hatred of Creed had been so canonized that when Slate published a rebuttal —in which critic Jonah Weiner asserted that the band was “seriously underrated”—the essay was considered so “ridiculous” and contrarian as to single-handedly inspire the viral and enduring #slatepitches hashtag, instantly prompting parodies such as “ Star Wars I, II, & III, better than Star Wars IV, V, & VI .”

But, frankly, when I revisit Weiner’s piece, many of his arguments sound remarkably cogent to modern orthodoxies. “Creed seemed to irritate people precisely because its music was so unabashedly calibrated towards pleasure: Every surging riff, skyscraping chorus, and cathartic chord progression telegraphed the band’s intention to rock us, wow us, move us,” he writes. Yes, these easy gratifications might have been unpardonable sins in the summer of 1999, capping off a decade obsessively preoccupied with anxiety about all things commercial and phony. But now even LCD Soundsystem—once the standard-bearer of a certain kind of countercultural fashionability—is booking residencies sponsored by American Express. We have all become hedonists and proud sellouts, and with Creed back in vogue, it seems as if the band’s monumental intemperance has become a feature rather than a bug.

That does not mean Stapp no longer takes himself, or his art, seriously. The singer’s earnestness—some might say humorlessness—has always been a cornerstone of Creed’s brand, and there are millions of fans who will continue to meet him at his word. They brandish personal biographies that intersect with Creed’s records; they finds lines about places with “golden streets” “where blind men see” more inspiring than corny, and many of them are etched with the tattoos to prove it. But in the band’s contemporary afterlife, when all its old context evaporates, Stapp has also attracted a community eager to treat Creed like the party band it never aspired to be—the group of licentious pleasure seekers Weiner wrote about. They’re all here, sprinkled throughout the boat, ready to drink a couple of Coronas and shred their lungs to “My Sacrifice.”

After wrapping up the first night of the cruise, Creed, along with the rest of the bands on the bill, was scheduled to administer a few glad-handing sessions on the weekend itinerary. On Saturday, Tremonti chaperoned a low-key painting session while the Pearl floated into the Bahamas at a dock already crammed with other day-trippers. (Our boat was parked next to a Disney cruise, and when we disembarked, in direct earshot of all the young families, the PA blasted Puddle of Mudd’s “She Fucking Hates Me.”) Tremonti keeps busy: The previous evening, he had judged a karaoke tournament—on the main stage—alongside 3 Doors Down lead singer Brad Arnold. Toward the end of the competition, Tremonti grabbed the microphone for a rousing cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” which I’d like to think served as a tribute to Creed’s own tenaciousness.

Stapp, on the other hand, is slated for exactly one appointment mingling with the masses: He’ll be shooting hoops with some of the more athletically oriented Creed adherents on a helipad that doubles as a basketball court near the rear of the boat. Stapp is, by far, the most famous person on board, evidenced by the security detail that stands guard on the concrete. So I take my seat on the bleachers and watch him casually drain 10 free throws in a row in mesh shorts under the piercing Atlantic sun with the distinct tang of contractually obligated restraint. Afterward, Stapp slips back into the mysterious alcoves of the ship, while an awed buzz of fans—hoping for a selfie, an autograph, or a split second of euphoric surrender—tail him until they are sealed off for good. It is the one and only time I see him cameoing anywhere but the stage, drawing a stark contrast to the other musicians on board, who flit between the casinos, restaurants, and watering holes in the guts of the Pearl .

This makes some sort of cosmic sense. Stapp, to both his detriment and credit, has never embraced the flippancy that so many other people wanted to impose on Creed. “Sometimes I wish we weren’t so damn serious,” he said in a memorable Spin cover story from 2000, at the height of his mystique. “My agenda from the beginning was to write music that had meaning and was from the heart. You can’t force the hand of the muse.” If you’ll excuse the ostentation of the sentiment, you can maybe understand how someone like Stapp might not be able to feel like himself when he’s orchestrating photo-ops around a free-throw line with that same young man dressed in his Nic Cage–themed parody Creed shirt. He seems to find nothing trivial about Creed’s music. The threat of irrelevance shall never tame him. You cannot force the hand of the muse.

Unfortunately, Stapp’s remoteness is also why Kelly Risch, a 58-year-old from Wisconsin with streaks of ringed, white-blond hair and glam-metal eye shadow, is currently fighting back tears in the Atrium, the ship’s lobby and central bar. Risch is sipping mimosas with her sister Shannon Crass, and, like so many of the others I have spoken to on this cruise, they each have matching Creed tattoos memorializing a personal catastrophe. Twenty years ago, Risch suffered a massive blood clot in her leg and almost died. Crass printed out the lyrics to the latter-day Creed ballad “Don’t Stop Dancing”—a song about finding dignity in the chaos of life—and pinned them in Crass’ intensive care unit during her recovery. Today the chorus is painted on their wrists, right above Scott Stapp’s initials.

The sisters were two of the first 500 customers to buy tickets to “Summer of ’99,” which guaranteed them a photo with the band at its cabin. This is why Risch is crying. The photo shoot came with strict rules, all of which she respected: no Sharpies, no hugs, and no cellphones. She’d hoped for a moment, though—after spending $5,000 and traveling all the way from the upper Midwest, after clinging to life with the help of Creed, and after waiting 12 long years to have the band back—to thank the singer for his comfort. But Stapp, even indoors, was wearing dark, face-obscuring sunglasses. She didn’t even get to make eye contact.

“He’s so great with the crowd. He’s so engaging onstage,” says Crass. “I think that’s why this is disappointing.”

The two sisters are determined to make the most of the rest of their vacation. The Pearl will be pulling into Miami tomorrow at 7 a.m., and there are plenty more mimosas left to drink. I tell them I’m going to speak with Stapp, and the rest of Creed, in an hour. Do they have anything they’d like me to ask?

“Tell him not to wear sunglasses during the photos,” they say.

Creed is finishing up the meet-and-greet obligations in a chilly rococo ballroom, paneled—somewhat inexplicably—with portraits of Russian royalty. The band members have been at this all morning, after a late night finishing off the second performance of their two comeback sets. A molasses churn of Creed fans, all sea-weathered and scalded with maroon sunburns, weaves through a bulwark of chairs and tables toward the pinned black curtains at the rear.

Creed has this down to an art. The band is capable of generating a photo every 30 seconds, and afterward, the fans exit back down the aisle, with beaming smiles, their brush with stardom consummated. Stapp chugs a bottle of Fiji water and holds out his hand for a fist bump after the last of those passengers disappear. A crucifix dangles above his navel, and an American flag is stitched to his T-shirt. He’s still wearing those sunglasses.

I am given just 15 minutes to ask questions, in a makeshift interview setup against the portside windows, under the watchful surveillance of the entire Creed apparatus—both PR reps, a few scurrying Sixthman operators, the photographer, and so on. I ask what their day-to-day life is like aboard the “Summer of ’99,” in this highly concentrated environment of super fans, with no obvious escape routes. Stapp says that he has spent most of the time on the cruise “resting and exercising,” while Brian Marshall, the band’s bassist, told me he executes his privilege of being one of the band’s secondary members by frequenting the sauna and steam room. Throughout the weekend, Marshall is hardly recognized.

Scott Phillips, Creed’s drummer, confirms my suspicions about the cruise’s demographics. The ticket data reveals that a good number of the passengers aboard are under 35 years old. I’m curious to know how the band members are adjusting to this new paradigm shift, and if they wish to settle common ground between the post-ironic millennials and the much more zealous Gen Xers, who bear Creed insignias on their calves and forearms.

“People are drawn to our music for different reasons,” Stapp says. “That’s probably why you have the guys you were talking about, who want to chill and drink light beer and scream ‘Creed rocks!’ and the others, who have a much deeper, emotional impact.”

“And maybe, at some point, with the light-beer guys, it does connect with them,” Phillips adds. Stapp agrees.

But, really, the reason I’m here is because I want to ask Stapp a question I’ve been curious about for the entirety of Creed’s career. The band’s bizarre odyssey, from its warm reception among youth groups across America to the bloodthirsty backlash that met its success to this current psychedelic revival, has all orbited around a single lasting question: Why is Scott Stapp so serious? Could he ever mellow out? Does he want to? Surely now is the time. If Stapp allocated some levity for himself, then so many of the bad things people have said about him would be easier to process. Who knows? Maybe he’d have an easier time getting his arms around the current state of Creed, a group that is now, without a doubt, simultaneously the coolest and lamest band in the world. Why must he make being in Creed so difficult?

“It’s just who I am,” he says. “It’s what inspires me. It’s where I come from. And it’s tough, because you have to live it. That’s the conundrum of it all. That’s the double-edged sword. If I started writing [lighter material], there would be a dramatic shift in my existence.”

There’s a break in the conversation, then Stapp asks me to identify the name of the new Taylor Swift album. The songwriter’s 11 th record has dropped like a nuclear bomb while we’ve all been out to sea, but data restrictions mean that nobody on board can access Spotify or any other streaming service. The Norwegian Pearl serves as a butt-rock pocket dimension: The biggest story in pop music simply can’t penetrate our airtight seal of Hinder, Staind, and so much Creed. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department ,” I reply. Outside of my fiancée, he is the only person on the entire cruise I will speak to about Taylor Swift.

“That’s what I feel,” he says, without a shred of artifice. “I connect with that title.”

Later that evening, I climb to the top of the Pearl for a final round of karaoke, where fans keep the spirit of 1999 alive for a few more hours. The bar is more hectic than it’s been all trip—everyone is willing to risk a hangover now that Monday is all that looms on the horizon. The host asks a guest if they intended to sing “Torn” by Creed or “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. “I assume Creed, but Natalie would be a fun surprise.”

The playlist is more diverse than I expected. We are treated to both Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’ ” and Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.” Brandon Smith, one of the very few people of color aboard the cruise, crushes Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.” A lanky kid from St. Louis unleashes a Slipknot death-growl into the microphone. A queer couple quietly slow-dances on the otherwise empty dance floor. And a 16-year-old, teeth tightened by braces, orders his last Sprite of the night. “Rockers are the most awesome people!” shouts one transcendently inebriated guest over the clamor of his Rolling Stones cover. “Creed is awesome!” On this one thing, at least, we can all agree.