Last September, a 21-year-old woman on board a Royal Caribbean cruise ship fell overboard and lost her life. In a recently filed lawsuit, the woman’s mother says she was kept under guard in her cabin for days after the incident and that she was not allowed to leave her room or contact her other children. [More]
cruises
Royal Caribbean Passenger Says Crew Wouldn’t Let Her Leave Her Cabin After Daughter Fell Overboard
By 4.17.13
Carnival Triumph Poop Cruise Passengers Reach Land Safely; Rescue Bus Breaks Down
By 2.15.13
If you were one of the passengers on the Carnival Triumph Poop Cruise, how could things possibly get worse? When passengers disembarked from the crippled ship at the port of Mobile, they got a hug and a ride from their loved ones right from Mobile, or climbed on buses bound for Galveston, Texas or New Orleans. After days stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, what the passengers needed was another travel delay. That’s what they got when one of those buses broke down. Well, at least this time they were stranded on land. [More]
Carnival Triumph Tow Rope Breaks, Prolongs Passengers’ Misery
By 2.14.13
The passengers of the Carnival Triumph (probably) never imagined that they’d get to extend their trip by several days. They certainly didn’t picture themselves living like 19th-century steerage passengers, if 19th-century steerage passengers had cans of Pringles and defecated in plastic bags. [More]
Stranded Carnival Cruise Passengers Will Be Stuck On Hot, Smelly Ship For Two More Days
By 2.12.13
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]
Victims Of Costa Concordia Crash Say Carnival’s Directors Share Blame With Ship Captain
By 1.14.13
When the Costa Concordia crashed into rocks off the coast of Italy, its captain was allegedly the one who decided to risk the tricky maneuver that was the ship’s undoing. But lawyers for the victims’ families say he isn’t the lone wrongdoer, insisting on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy that the cruise line bosses at Carnival share the blame for promoting those kinds of ship salutes. [More]
Illness Forces Woman To Cancel Cruise, But She’s Not Ill Enough To Make Travel Insurance Claim
By 12.4.12
UPDATE: TripMate has provided Consumerist with a statement, which has been added to the bottom of the post. [More]
Grab Discounted Cruise Tickets During "National Cruise Vacation Week"
By 10.18.11
If floating in a boat is well, what floats your boat, this week would be a good time to check out discounts on cruises. National Cruise Vacation Week will be going on until Oct. 23, with some possible great finds for travelers. [More]
Carnival Cruise Becomes Vacation Nightmare
By 8.18.11
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]
Getting Drunk And Releasing The Anchor On Your Cruise Ship Is Not Hilarious
By 11.30.10
Drunken antics aboard a cruise ship are nothing new. But some intoxicated chicanery goes beyond trashing your stateroom after a few too many tequila sunrises on the Lido deck. Take for example the moron aboard a Holland Cruise ship who thought it would be all laugh-tastic to release the ship’s anchor while the vessel was cruising in international waters. [More]
Stranded Carnival Passengers Won't Reach Land Until Thursday
By 11.10.10
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]
For Your Next Vacation, Try Norwegian's Exciting All-Upsell Cruise
By 10.13.10
Jarrod tells Consumerist that his father-in-law recently traveled to Alaska with Norwegian Cruise Line. His biggest gripe was that everything a passenger could do on board, including purchases in the gift shop, carried an automatic 18% gratuity. This would be acceptable if the service were good enough to justify a tip at all. But Jarrod notes, “[Room stewards] knew they were getting an automatic 18%, so why work for it?” [More]
Carnival Cruise Line Now Charging Fee For Good Steak
By 10.6.10
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]
Cruise Line Employee Used Reservation List To Determine When To Rob Vacationers
By 6.14.10
I guess you could try to prepare your robbery schedule based on Foursquare and Twitter updates, but a former Royal Caribbean Cruise Line employee found a much easier way: she accessed the cruise line’s reservations list, wrote down the addresses of passengers and the dates they’d be on the cruise, and handed the list off to her husband. She’s being charged with 24 counts of burglary, while her husband will be charged soon. [More]
Crazy Cruise Line Telemarketer Pulls Out Every Trick In The Book
By 3.8.10
John Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News was badgered last week by a telemarketer who wouldn’t take no for an answer. He decided to keep her talking for a while to see how many ways she’d try to get him to hand over his credit card number for a “free” cruise. Here were all the tricks she used during her sales pitch. [More]
Royal Caribbean Sees No Problem With Twin Beds For Anniversary Trip
By 10.8.09
Wes and his girlfriend took a Royal Caribbean Cruise for their anniversary, but the experience was more stressful than blissful. Apparently, according to the cruise line, an appropriate stateroom for a couple is an L-shaped room with twin beds. Where the beds are bolted to opposite walls. While appropriate for a ’50s sitcom, this was not what Wes had in mind for a romantic vacation.
Cruisers Say Carnival Failed To Deliver Wine, Searched Cabin After They Complained
By 9.28.09
An anonymous couple wrote in to tell us about how they ordered a couple bottles of wine on a Carnival cruise, but were dismayed to find only one had been delivered. After they complained at the service desk and got their wine, they returned to their cabin to find a Carnival employee searching their cabin, telling them she was following policy.
Royal Caribbean: Give Us $800 Or Find Another Ship
By 7.5.09
Royal Caribbean told Mary Hoefs at check-in that her family wouldn’t be allowed to board unless they paid $800 on the spot, even though Mary had paid for the cruise in full four months earlier. Royal Caribbean later refunded $400, but why did they choose to kick off Mary’s cruise with extortion? The answer, inside…
Carnival Cruises Is So Over That Swine Flu Thing
By 5.16.09
Pack up your maracas, Carnival is returning to Mexico! The cruise line wasn’t happy with putzing off the California coast, and the CDC says that swine flu isn’t deadly enough to keep us out of Mexico forever. By the end of the month, souvenir-seeking Americans will again be able to down margaritas and scoop up trinkets in Cabo, Cozumel, and Puerto Vallarta.
