Man packed up his life for ‘endless cruise’ only to be kicked off after 26 days
The Villa Vie Odyssey cruise had been advertised as an endless journey where people could buy cabins and live on board pretty much permanently, until earlier this week when they were ordered to disembark.
Cabin prices on board ranged from $119,999 (£90,000) to $349,999 (£263,000) to get on board the Odyssey ship, and people could rent cabins as well.
When it docked in Cambodia on Tuesday (27 October) everyone living on the ship was told they had just a few hours to pack up and leave.
Among the passengers were people who'd sold away their possessions in expectation that they'd live the rest of their lives on the ship, and one man who barely had a chance to enjoy his time on board was 57-year-old Joel Greiff, who only got 26 days on board.
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Speaking to Business Insider, Greiff said he'd planned on living on the Odyssey for 20 years or more travelling around the world, having stayed there for a few days to test it out and decided he'd like to get on board with this.
In August he left his Florida home and went on a farewell tour of his friends and family then boarded the Odyssey on 1 October, not even a month later he was being told to disembark for good.
He described getting involved with the arts and crafts, plays and karaoke being put on for the boat's residents and enjoyed himself, but he said he noticed the place wasn't in the same state as it had been last year when he went on board for four days.
Joel noticed that the ship's laundry wasn't being done as often, he now had to do it himself and the itinerary kept changing with the cruise ship sat at sea for a long time.
The man said they were told on the Sunday (25 October) that if Villa Vie didn't get money in a couple of days the voyage was over, the same message came the next day too.
He'd been heading back to the boat on the Tuesday at around 7am when he got the message to disembark by 2pm the same day, noting it was 'much harder' for those who'd been living on the ship much longer to pack up and go than it was for him.
Now he's renting a place a few hours from where the cruise ended and said he helped other passengers get their luggage from the ship and find somewhere to stay for the time being.
He'd get back on board the Odyssey if they found a way to make it work, which is not an opinion shared by all his fellow passengers.
While some of them say they've got 'no regrets' about how it turned out, others have decided that even if the ship does sail again they won't be getting back on board.
Some passengers never even made it on board, as Lisa McKay said she never even got to move into her cabin before the enterprise went kaput.
The 'endless cruise' founder Mikael Petterson has said he feels 'awful' about the way things have turned out, and put the blame on the rise in fuel prices from the war between the US, Israel and Iran.
He said this just made it too expensive for the ship to run and they failed to find new investors in time to keep going.
Topics: Travel, Cruise Ship
Joe Harker