OLYMPIC SIZED LUGGAGE PROBLEM

Posted on 08/20/2016

Cindy Lloyd flew to Rio de Janeiro to watch her daughter Carli play for the US women’s volleyball team. Lloyd had a situation with her luggage; but not a typical one, where it was lost by the airline. She found out when she checked in to her accommodations on the Norwegian cruise ship that her luggage had been blown up.

The Lloyd family arrived in Rio later than they expected to, due to a series of cancelled and missed flights from Southern California. When they checked into the Norwegian Cruise Line ship where they were staying, as were other players and family members from the US men’s and women’s basketball teams, they were in a hurry to catch their daughter’s first match.
They checked in at the cruise terminal, showed their passports and checked in their luggage, expecting it would be in their rooms when they returned from the match.
Lloyd said that when the family arrived back to the ship, she was taken to a room where five or six people in uniform interrogated her for ten minutes. They told her they blew up her bag, when it was alerted to by bomb sniffing dogs.
Lloyd told the Times. “It was completely blown up. There was some clothing. They use some sort of wet bomb, I think, because everything was wet. Some of the clothes were salvageable, but some were melted. Some had holes. My American flag was melted. And all the toiletries with caps had their caps blown off.”
Lloyd said that the officials curiously gave her back her cell phone that they retrieved from the bag before blowing it up.
Lloyd told the Times that Norwegian has been very apologetic about the issue and has promised to reimburse her for the bombed items and suitcase. They’ve also given her sparkling wine and free food.
The woman showed good humour, talking to the media in her shirt with holes in it before getting a chance to buy something new.
But I didn’t want to have a story,” she said.
“Watching your daughter at the Olympics was a good enough story for me.”