unfortunateThese are the kinds of stories you never want to hear: Two passengers aboard the Carnival cruise ship Spirit have reportedly gone missing, and are feared to be lost at sea near Australia. According to reports, there aren’t any lifesavers missing, which would indicate one of them had tried to rescue the other. Even worse, the couple was said to have gone overboard in shark-infested waters. [via AFP]
Now that Carnival Cruise lines has found its name irrevocably linked with Poop Cruises, the company has apparently realized it’s got some work to do — both on its public image and on all those ships that keep malfunctioning. Carnival announced today that it has plans in the works involving $300 million in improvements to its entire fleet. [More]
It’s only April and it’s been a banner year for Carnival. And while this latest cock-up doesn’t even approach the stinky scale of the stranded Poop Cruise, it nonetheless has some passengers ticked off. [More]
Having your name associated with a disaster like the Poop Cruise has got to be rough when trying to scare up new business. It appears Carnival Cruise Lines is feeling the sting of having a slew of recent troubled cruises, prompting it to drop its prices. How low can it go? One report had a four-night cruise for $149 per person — about $38 a night — which is less than a $39.99 night’s stay at a budget-priced Motel 6. [More]
Oh, Carnival, how do you need rescuing? Let us count the ways, or at least give a nod in the general direction of floundering ships like the Triumph (aka Poop Cruise) and the 2010 Splendor incident. All that help the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy gave to the cruise line in the last few years adds up to about $4.2 million, said West Virginia’s Sen. Jay Rockefeller in a letter to Carnival. So when’s the company gonna chip in toward that cost? [More]
It’s a battle of buzzkills, as two companies that seem intent on spoiling your good time square off for a shot at the WCIA semifinals. [More]
There is one spot left in the WCIA Anything-But-Elite 8, and these two companies are in a race to see who can get there slowest. [More]
You may remember the Carnival Dream, which had a backup generator malfunction while docked at St. Maarten and could have become another Poop Cruise nightmare. Passengers had already started to contact media outlets with harrowing accounts of overflowing toilets and being confined to the ship. Carnival quickly canceled the cruise and put passengers on a plane back to Florida. But what about passengers who couldn’t get on a plane, due to phobias or medical conditions? We recently learned that Carnival worked with competitor Norwegian and put surface-bound passengers in empty staterooms on a three-day cruise that happened to be traveling from St. Maarten to Miami. [More]
Yesterday we were shocked, simply shocked, to hear that yet Carnival cruise ship was having problems of the sewage-spewing nature. Passengers are scheduled to make it off the Dream soon without having to go through the days at sea the Triumph gang suffered through. But today is a new day, and with that new day comes fresh news of an entirely separate and beleaguered Carnival ship, the Legend. [More]
With the Carnival Triumph and its 4,000 passengers still being towed back to port following an engine room fire earlier this week, the cruise line operator has had to pull the plug on a dozen additional upcoming voyages for the ship. [More]
Things are getting pretty awful for the passengers and crew aboard the Carnival Triumph, which was set adrift on Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico after a fire in the engine room. How bad? Crew members reportedly had to pass out plastic bags so passengers can answer the call of nature, as the bathrooms are just too foul to stand. And they’ve still got two days at sea before tug boats can pull them into port in Mobile, Ala. [More]
Hurricane Sandy is messing with plenty of travel plans this week, including a seven-day Carnival cruise that was supposed to sail down to the Caribbean. The cruise company announced it would of course be canceling that boat trip, because no one wants to be on a large boat in the middle of a hurricane, and is instead offering a two-day trip to nowhere up the Chesapeake for $99. [More]
Jennifer and her husband went on a cruise for their vacation last month, but it wasn’t all that relaxing. They ended up less healthy and more stressed at the end of the vacation than at the beginning. It began with an asthma attack-inducing smoke-filled stateroom, and somehow actually got worse from there. Worse how? There was the food poisoning, accidentally being double charged for everything, and a ship employee who was almost comically insensitive to the fact that Jennifer uses a wheelchair. [More]
After several days without power, phones, air-conditioning or hot water, the 3,300 passengers and more than 1,000 crew members on board the Carnival Splendor finally reached land in San Diego on Thursday morning. [More]
Yesterday we told you about the 3,300 passengers stranded off the coast of Mexico in a Carnival Cruise ship left without power following a fire in the engine room. Originally, the cruise line had hoped to have the boat towed back to port by yesterday afternoon. Well, that plan didn’t work out. [More]
Like something from a ’70s disaster movie, 3,300 passengers on board the Carnival Splendor found themselves stuck out to sea off the coast of Mexico after a fire in the engine room. [More]
There once was a time where the price of a ticket on a cruise ship included on-board food. Eventually, cruise operators began adding specialty restaurants, where passengers paid more for foods not on the menu in the main restaurant. And then in 2008 we brought you the story about Royal Caribbean charging passengers a $14.95 surcharge for an “organic” NY strip steak that may not have been organic after all. Now comes a report that Carnival Cruise Line thinks its best steak and lobster dishes merit an $18 fee. [More]
A few different cruise lines took initiative and changed the itineraries of ships heading to Mexico in the near future. However, they won’t let customers who are uninterested in sailing to the tropical paradise of San Francisco rebook or get full refunds.
