A luxury cruise ship carrying more than 2,000 passengers whose holidays were ruined by a mass outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea arrived in Southampton this morning, a day earlier than planned.

Carnival Corporation, the American company that owns The Sea Princess decided to cut short the ship's seven-night European tour two days ago, after at least 200 passengers were struck down by acute gastroenteritis. More than 1,700 of those aboard were British.

Passengers were given a 30 per cent refund of their fare and a £150 voucher towards any further cruises with the company's Princess Cruises fleet, but holidaymakers said today that they were disappointed with the offer, describing a chaotic voyage in which they were confined to their cabins as the ship's crew struggled to contain the illness.

"It was a holiday from hell. That’s not even describing it. It was worse than that," said Philip Wilson, 50-year-old passenger from Radstock, near Bath, whose family of four all succumbed. "It was just a nightmare," he said.

Mr Wilson criticised the cruise company for allowing passengers to spread the illness, believed to be the highly contagious norovirus, and suggested that the ship's crew knew there was a problem before the ship left Southampton last weekend.

"They never told any passengers that they had norovirus on the previous cruise," he said. "The captain then told everyone. He said ’We tried to disinfect the ship in Southampton and obviously we didn’t do a good enough job’. He said that over the Tannoy to all the passengers.

"How would you feel if you had paid £2,000 for a cruise and spent seven days in a cabin with very limited food and drink? It was like being in a prison cell, except prisoners get treated better."

The virus marred a wedding, which was officiated by the ship's captain, even though he declined to shake the couple's hands, for fear of spreading the sickness. David Cordon said his wife Michelle's father was barely able to give her away.

"My father-in-law was especially bad and he was just able to walk his daughter down the aisle, then he had to go straight away. It’s such a shame, it spoilt the wedding and it has taken a great edge off the whole thing," said Mr Cordon, a sub-postmaster from Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

"It also upset my wife because it is supposed to be the biggest day of a woman’s life and it was tainted."

The illness comes just days after 70 passengers became sick on The Van Gogh, a cruise ship that was disinfected in Harwich, Essex, last weekend. Norovirus, a stomach bug, that usually lasts between 24 to 48 hours was blamed for an illness that affected 600 passengers on board P&O’s Aurora cruise liner in 2003.

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