MSC Cruises cracked down on passengers who broke newly implemented COVID-19 health and safety protocol as the cruise line's ships resume sailing after the pandemic shut the global industry down in March. 

On Tuesday, the cruise line denied a family from getting back on board the MSC Grandiosa after an excursion during which MSC Cruises says they broke from the "social bubble" put in place to avoid the spread of coronavirus. The Grandiosa departed from Genoa, Italy, Sunday on what was billed as the first Mediterranean cruise after Italy’s pandemic lockdown.

"We had to deny re-embarkation to a family who broke from their shore excursion yesterday while visiting Naples, Italy," Paige Rosenthal, spokesperson for MSC Cruises, told USA TODAY Wednesday.

Full story here.

I fucking love cruises. It’s like all the laws they make and the ways they execute them are 200 years behind schedule. You don’t follow social distancing on shore? Too bad. We maroon you. We pull the plank. You walk home! No ship for you! I love it! 

On this esteemed blog, we so rarely critique cruise ships for being too strict. Oftentimes it’s the opposite. We critique them for their disease ridden ships and lengthy brawls that harken back to an older, simpler time. The time of blood feuds, feudalism, plague, loose moral standards, and you guessed it, a far abbreviated life span. But not this time! This time MCS cruise line is on the other end of the spectrum!

These guys were like, “you know what happens if you leave the castle walls. You know what happens if you hunt the king’s boars,” They raise the drawbridge baby. Don’t have any of your things? Sorry! You’re on the wrong side of the moat! The moat, in this case, of course being the ocean. 

Look I’m not siding with these passengers. It sounds like they were idiots. We just don’t hear about people being left all that often anymore. Banishment, exile, marooning, all terms we are fairly unfamiliar with! Thank goodness for them they’re in that part of Europe beloved by spoiled US college students (myself included) where you can travel through every country without flashing a passport. Even so, it’s not the easiest time to travel! 

I guess when it comes down to it we have to look at the facts. You, nor anyone else, should ever get on a cruise ship, now, yesterday, or ever, without assuming you’re going to get fucked over. I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be less than a cruise ship right now, except for maybe a bike rally in South Dakota (oh shit did I say that out loud?). How does that medieval saying go? “Live by the sword, die by the sword?” or as I like to say, “Get on the cruise, die on the cruise.”