Cruise Ship Bound for the Bahamas Heads Toward Chilly Nova Scotia Instead After Weather Wrecks Vacation

Cruisers looking forward to some fun in the Bahamian sun will instead experience some Canadian cold, after their ship was diverted due to extreme weather.

The MSC Meraviglia left the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in New York on Saturday, and already has made stops in Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine.

In a statement, MSC Cruises said the cruise had to be diverted "due to unseasonable and rapidly worsening weather that would have made it impossible to safely reach the southern Atlantic Ocean from New York City."

Heavy rain over the weekend ravaged the Bahamas and parts of the eastern seaboard, and caused flooding in New York's Tri-State area as well as parts of inland New England.

MSC Meriviglia is on its way to New Brunswick and Port Saint John.

The port took to X, formerly Twitter, to discuss the ship's impending arrival, noting it was expected Thursday.

"The only alternative would have been to take the more extreme step of canceling the cruise — and thousands of people's vacations — outright," the MSC statement explained.

"The complexities involved in obtaining last-minute berths for unplanned stops and provisioning the ship along its new route left sailing to Canada and New England as the only viable option."

The cruise line also offered passengers the chance to sail to new destinations or cancel the trip for future credit, "which allows them to put the full value paid for this cruise toward another at their convenience."

The cruise can accommodate up to 5,624 passengers and 1,608 crew members. MSC did not say how many passengers were aboard the Meriviglia.

Chris Gray Faust, executive editor of review site Cruise Critic, told ABC News other cruise lines also were impacted by severe weather.

Faust noted cruise lines typically have a "contract of carriage" clause that doesn't guarantee where the ship stops, and allows the cruise operator to make last-minute changes the itinerary for a variety of reasons, including inclement weather.