We first told you about passengers who missed their Royal Caribbean cruise earlier this week when Royal Caribbean was forced to depart San Juan, Puerto Rico earlier than scheduled due to the impending threat of Hurricane Irene.  

Today, Royal Caribbean has denied any responsibility for leaving 145 passengers at port to get Serenade of the Seas of the way of the storm three hours early.  Royal Caribbean contends that port officials began to limit harbor traffic at 12:30 pm on Sunday, forcing the ship to depart early.

Of the passengers left behind, 15 had purchased their airfare through Royal Caribbean and were subsequently given a hotel stay for two nights and flown to Aruba to join the cruise on the rest of its voyage.  The other 130 passengers, however, were on their own.  The reasoning, according to Royal Caribbean is, "Independent guests were advised of hotel availability in the area, but the expense was on them given that it was a weather-related event."

Furthermore, Royal Caribbean says there was simply no way of contacting the passengers in time to alert them to the change, “There was no way to notify our guests of this change in departure time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our guests, but this decision was made by the Port of San Juan to ensure the safe transit of all guests and crew through the port.”

It turns out Royal Caribbean isn't alone in this.  Another 300 passengers missed their Carnival Cruise when Hurricane Irene prompted the Carnival Victory to leave port four hours early.

Due to fear of Hurricane Irene impacting Serenade of the Seas, Royal Caribbean decided to leave San Juan, Puerto Rico earlier than the scheduled 8:30pm time.  The earlier departure time may have gotten the ship out of the path of the storm, but it stranded some Royal Caribbean passengers in San Juan after they claim they weren't made aware of the schedule change.

Passenger Nicole Washington of Baltimore, MD arrived at the docks Sunday shortly after 5, she found the gates locked and the ship gone.

“There was nobody there,” she said. “Everybody was gone and there was nobody there to tell me where the ship was.”

In a statement, Royal Caribbean spokesperson Cynthia Martinez explained the change, "On Sunday, due to the projected path of Hurricane Irene, and the weather forecast to reach San Juan, Puerto Rico that evening, authorities at the Port of San Juan limited traffic in and out of the port.  As a result, Serenade of the Seas was required to depart earlier than our originally scheduled time of 8:30 p.m.”

Washington did admit that she never checked into the cruise so according to Royal Caribbean, the line had no idea she was even in San Juan.

Martinez went on to say, “There was no way to notify our guests of this change in departure time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our guests, but this decision was made by the Port of San Juan to ensure the safe transit of all guests and crew through the port.”

Royal Caribbean had decided to move its Serenade and Adventure of the Seas ships out from San Juan, Puerto Rico in favor of Europe as part of a business decision to chase higher revenue and that move has some in Puerto Rico worried about the relevance of the cruise industry to the island.

The executive director of the Tourism Company, Mario Gonzalez Lafuente, said that Puerto Rico remains a major cruise port and denied that the relocation of two ships represents a crisis for the industry in the country.

He said that the information circulated earlier this week and Tourism had advance. "It's a business decision that has taken the company Royal Caribbean to do this next year."

He said that both ships will return to Puerto Rico for the high tourist season in the winter of that year, which covers the months of November to May.

He added that other Royal Caribbean ships, which he identified as the Freedom of the Seas and Navigator of the Seas will continue their regular visits to San Juan and are not affected by the above decision.

According to Gonzalez, returning or coming for the first time to Puerto Rico the following cruise ships: · Carnival Dream, · Celebrity Silhoette, MSC Poesia, Norweigan Sun, P & O Artemis, Grand Princess, Azamara Journey, Freedom of the Seas, Navigator of the Seas the Disney Fantasy, which is scheduled to start their visits in late 2012.

According to statistics from the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association, last year 2010, nearly 15 million passengers took cruises in the Caribbean, an activity that generated over $ 2.200 billion in revenue for the region.