Pittsburgh-area passengers among hundreds sickened on Caribbean cruise

A cruise ship is back home in Florida after more than 200 passengers got sick on the high seas.

They came down with a stomach illness on Royal Caribbean's "Independence of the Seas" this week.

Several people from the Pittsburgh area were on the cruise ship.

"It was just terrifying -- just the amount of people that were coming in at the same time with vomiting and diarrhea and just looked ghastly, and it was 3 people trying to service them all. Just terrifying, especially if you're coming on with an underlying illness,” said Tracy Flores, a passenger on the cruise.

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Flores said her son, Andrew, is diabetic.

When he started to feel sick on the cruise, she thought it was his Type 1 diabetes, until they went to see the doctor on board.

"We brought him Wednesday night. We wheeled him in. They already had a full waiting room, and as we were sitting there, more wheelchairs were coming in. More wheelchairs were coming, everybody was puking everywhere. They were leaving to go use the bathroom, with diarrhea and it was just frightening,” Flores said.

Flores quickly learned her 15-year-old son was one of hundreds who came down with the stomach illness.

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A letter was passed out, saying that during the sailing a small percentage of guests on board experienced gastrointestinal illness, which was thought to be norovirus.

Royal Caribbean said there were more than 5,000 passengers on board and 332 cases of the illness were reported.

Luis Mendoza of Shaler was one of them. He said he felt so ill, he didn't leave his bed for 24 hours.

"They actually announced that there was possibly some kind of stomach virus going around the ship and if you didn't feel good to your stomach to go down to the first floor where the nurses were and they would check you out, but I knew i couldn't make it down there. That's how bad I was feeling," he said.

Mendoza said he thinks the number of ill people was higher than Royal Caribbean's estimate because of people like him who were too sick to report to the nurse.

The ship pulled back into Port Everglades early Saturday morning

It was deep cleaned and set sail again later in the day.

Cox Media Group