The Cruise Ship and Cruise Line Discussion Thread!

[Ccron10]

Costa's '30 per cent off' compo offer leaves survivors stunned

 

So they almost killed you on your last cruise, and if you survived they're offering you a 30% discount on a future cruise! And if you're really lucky, they might even throw in a bucket of Bud!!!!!

 

The amazing thing is that in both the '98 Ecstasy fire and the '10 Splendor fire Carnival offered passengers a full refund plus a complimentary future cruise. In neither of those cases was anyone's life in real danger, nor did people lose all their possessions and in many cases have to swim to shore. A 30% discount is just insulting.

It said 30% off on future cruises. Even so, that is still insulting because I doubt that many of these people are going to want to sail on a cruise ship, let alone a ship owned by Carnival. Little by little their rep. is being ruined. I wonder how much it could hurt them?

[ahecht]

Costa's '30 per cent off' compo offer leaves survivors stunned

 

So they almost killed you on your last cruise, and if you survived they're offering you a 30% discount on a future cruise! And if you're really lucky, they might even throw in a bucket of Bud!!!!!

 

The amazing thing is that in both the '98 Ecstasy fire and the '10 Splendor fire Carnival offered passengers a full refund plus a complimentary future cruise. In neither of those cases was anyone's life in real danger, nor did people lose all their possessions and in many cases have to swim to shore. A 30% discount is just insulting.

It said 30% off on future cruises. Even so, that is still insulting because I doubt that many of these people are going to want to sail on a cruise ship, let alone a ship owned by Carnival. Little by little their rep. is being ruined. I wonder how much it could hurt them?

 

I know it's 30% off a future cruise. My point was that in the much-less-serious incidents they offered a refund plus a 100% off a future cruise.

[SharkTums]

I have been following this aspect to the story as well, they are gonna have a very hard time trying to sue from the United States... the cruise line is Italian, the ship is Italian registered and the accident occurred off the Italian coast, many say it can't be argued from the US.

 

US Lawyers will NOT have trouble suing! It's what they do best! They'll partner with some Italian firm, represent all the Americans and probably come out pretty well.

 

I agree with others, what is Carnival thinking!?!?!? They've offered MUCH better compensation for much less severe issues. Refund and 30% off a future cruise is the most insulting thing I can think of!!!!

[Swiminn6]

Haha WOW! Only 30% off. I don't even feel bad for Costa anymore. They deserve everything there going to get and then some..

 

EDIT: Did anyone get this? They found another body raising the death toll to 13.

 

Divers, meanwhile, pulled out a woman's body from the capsized Costa Concordia on Sunday, raising to 13 the number of people dead in the Jan. 13 accident.

[ajinaz]

Also was on the Ecstasy in '98 when it caught on fire. Didn't love that as much.

 

Woah - wait... what? Please tell me you have photos of this!!!!!!!!

 

I do have pictures somewhere but I don't recall that they were interesting at all. The weird thing about it was that the captain basically pulled the same thing as Costa captain. He announced that everything was under control. You could actually see the ship on fire from the beach but the captain told us (and the Coast Guard) that everything was fine. We were forward on the ship and only experienced smells similar to burning a pot on the stove. People on shore saw more than we did as everyone was moved forward. We could actually see smoke coming from the back of our ship on TV. Pretty surreal. There was a party atmosphere on board.

After an afternoon sitting off shore they towed us back in to port and put us up in a nice hotel. The next morning we flew to Grand Cayman and spent our vacation there. When we got back and flew over the port the ship was gone. I think it sailed under its own power to Freeport or Newport News or somewhere close by. Apparently it looked way worse than it was. It was back in service really fast.

As others have said, they took good care of us. Drinks were free on board and food was plentiful. We got a full refund and a free cruise that we used the next year on Destiny. Very fair in my opinion. However, others sued for more. Don't recall how that turned out.

 

The 30% off thing is ridiculous in my opinion. Carnival Corp management has changed significantly since then though.

[tntornadox]

What you see is Costa mishandling this in every way possible, as has been noted, CCL (the line) has typically offered much better compensation in the past for much less serious incidents on their ships... but Carnival Corporation is keeping its distance from this mess.

[cal1br3tto]

I agree with everyone else; that sounds completely tactless. I can understand offering discounts due to bad service or a trying situation. But not in a case like this.

[odene497]

My initial idea of compensation for your cruise ship literally sinking would be free cruises for life. Not a 30% off coupon.

[AllenA07]

US Lawyers will NOT have trouble suing! It's what they do best! They'll partner with some Italian firm, represent all the Americans and probably come out pretty well.

 

From what I understand the reason that they would want to bring the suit in the US is that we don't limit recovery whereas I guess Italy does. I have very little opinion on the legal matter here because I don't know a thing about Italian law, but I can comment that it doesn't seem like it is going to be easy for the US to gain Jurisdiction over this matter. My guess is that those passengers are stuck in Italian courts. With that said, if I get a phone call tomorrow to lead the class action suit against Costa (other then being surprised and confused) I would be happy to help, and then would fund the TPR Carnival Cruise.

 

I've been on a 7 day Carnival Cruise (Went on Conquest) and I loved it. I had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat. With that said however the only other cruise I've been on was on RCCL and that was only a 3 day. Comparing a 7 day to a 3 day just doesn't really work in my mind so I've never really tried. Later this year I've got a 7 day cruise on Mariner of the Seas planned. I'm very curious to see how I'm feeling about that Carnival cruise from a few years back after going with RCCL for a 7 day. Everybody I've talked to has told me how much more I'm going to enjoy Mariner.

[robbalvey]

Mariner is a great ship! It's the ship we did for the Robb's 40th Birthday TPR Cruise!

[OCJ48]

Does anyone think this could be the death of Carnival? I'll admit it's an awfully big company, but with the facts coming out the way they are, I know I would never consider taking a Carnival cruise, and I can't imagine I'm alone.

[SharkTums]

^No.

 

Bookings are actually doing quite well right now! All this did was get rid of the dumb people that didn't really want to cruise or wouldn't have cruised to begin with. To everyone else it reminded them to book a cruise!

 

I've seen prices go up since the accident, and they're saying that the Med could be expensive this Summer because now they're down a ship! I could see it hurting Costa, but even that will be minimal.

[OCJ48]

^Interesting, I honestly wasn't expecting that.

[kunpc1]

If everything I've heard in the past didn't persuade me to avoid CCL ships/cruises... This did! This is such a huge incident, it's hard to wrap my head around such a huge ship "sinking". Looking at the pictures taken from the satellites just blew my mind. It really helped emphasize the scale of this accident.

[snoflake15]

Further recordings have been released of the captain denying there was any need to abandon ship. The suggestion is that if they called 'abandon ship' they would be forced to pay compensation. If true then that plus the above article about their attempts to settle is disgraceful.

 

The captain is now saying that Costa told him to do the 'sail past' for publicity. Well it certainly worked.

[edh]

Does anyone think this could be the death of Carnival? I'll admit it's an awfully big company, but with the facts coming out the way they are, I know I would never consider taking a Carnival cruise, and I can't imagine I'm alone.

 

Im sorry but that logic makes no sense. How can you base a decision to not take a cruise due to a error the captain made on a ship only related to Carnival because the company owns it. With that logic you obviously wont ever take a Princess, Holland America, or Cunard cruises. Accidents happen, but you can't blame a company as a whole for one mistake a captain made.

[BeemerBoy]

Does anyone think this could be the death of Carnival? I'll admit it's an awfully big company, but with the facts coming out the way they are, I know I would never consider taking a Carnival cruise, and I can't imagine I'm alone.

 

Im sorry but that logic makes no sense. How can you base a decision to not take a cruise due to a error the captain made on a ship only related to Carnival because the company owns it. With that logic you obviously wont ever take a Princess, Holland America, or Cunard cruises. Accidents happen, but you can't blame a company as a whole for one mistake a captain made.

Easy. The same way I could avoid flying American or United in the wake of learning about drunk, and/or overworked pilots. If a major company, whose primary focus is on transporting thousands of passengers from point A to point B, shows negligence in its operating procedures (which includes the daily supervision and compliance of its pilots/captains), then sure, it's reasonable to be skeptical of the entire company.

 

Common sense would obviously reason that you're still fairly safe anytime you take a cruise, but still, there's nothing wrong with putting that whole company under a microscope, or avoiding it altogether.

[Chroniq]

Will this be the end of Carnival? NFW

 

From a liability standpoint, Their insurance deductibles are between 90 and 100 million (This entire incident could cost the insurers up to 10 times that)

 

From a PR standpoint- The US media (the country the majority of cruisers come from) isn't really covering the fact that this is essentially a Carnival ship. I bet if you asked a friend, that happened to be a casual cruiser, they wouldn't even know Carnival was involved (or for that matter what other companies Carnival owns)

 

From a booking standpoint, this is the "wave season", The busiest time of year for cruise bookings. From the anecdotal evidence I've read, bookings remain very similiar to last years levels, but with less discounting.

 

 

-chris "if the gulf oil spill didn't kill BP, this certainly won't kill Carnival" con

[robbalvey]

Does anyone think this could be the death of Carnival? I'll admit it's an awfully big company, but with the facts coming out the way they are, I know I would never consider taking a Carnival cruise, and I can't imagine I'm alone.

 

Im sorry but that logic makes no sense. How can you base a decision to not take a cruise due to a error the captain made on a ship only related to Carnival because the company owns it. With that logic you obviously wont ever take a Princess, Holland America, or Cunard cruises. Accidents happen, but you can't blame a company as a whole for one mistake a captain made.

Really? You actually believe this? You do realize that this isn't a "Oops! I spilled my drink on you" kind of accident, this is an "OH FU*CK!!! WE JUST DESTROYED A HALF BILLION DOLLAR MASSIVE STRUCTURE AND KILLED SIXTEEN PEOPLE IN THE PROCESS!!!" incident that hasn't happened to this scale in 100 years!

 

Something like this should never have happened. While I agree that this accident should not stop anyone from taking another cruise, nor will this "kill Carnival", the blame ABSOLUTELY lies on the parent company of Carnival. If they had their finger on the pulse of their subsidiaries, like they should, this "accident" could have totally been avoided.

 

And it disgusts me to hear that "Carnival is now launching a company wide investigation into the other cruise lines operating practices." Wait, what?!?! You mean you don't already know? Is the parent company really so stupid that they need to go call Princess and Cunard and say "Um, hey guys....um...how do you... you know... 'do stuff?' We'd really love to know!"

 

I worked for Activision for many years, and they owned several big studios all over the world. There wasn't a single point in time where Activision had no clue what projects their companies were working on, or how they were run.

 

It's Carnival, maybe not the "cruise line", but Carnival the parent companies fault for this incident. Why was that guy, who it's now come out that he's had personality issues, ever put in charge as captain of a ship and thousands of peoples lives? Why was there not a muster drill on day one? How were the staff trained so poorly as to tell the guests to go back to their cabin? You might be "captain of a cruise ship", but that doesn't give you a ticket to "do whatever the hell you want to!" As captain, the expectation is that "you are the most responsible person on this ship!" How was this man allowed to be in such a position? Carnival, how? He's your employee. You hired him. You put him in that role. How was that allowed to happen?

 

These are ALL issues that should be sorted out at the parent company level, and procedures put in place at the top, that then should be handed down to each of the cruise lines, and then most importantly FOLLOWED UP on!

 

This isn't rocket science. This is "how to run your business 101."

 

Seriously Carnival...what the hell?

 

--Robb

Edited January 24, 2012 by robbalvey

[Meteornotes]

^What he said. How anyone could possibly defend Carnival in this situation amazes me. There are just so many things wrong here, so many things that should NOT have happened, so many things that WOULD not have happened if they had policies in place. Not to have a muster drill on the first day is an insane error that should have never happened. And that's just one of many things.

 

I know people love Carnival because it's cheap and there's endless crap beer and whatever, but seriously, there is no way the company can be defended as more and more comes out about this story. They're the parent company, the blame lies with them.

 

dt

[OISU8P]

Isn't it illegal to skip the muster drill? I know when I took my cruise a few years back they where hard set on everyone attending. Is this just a US thing and just recommended elsewhere (Since I left a US port) or just another long line of screw ups on this ship? Why would they not cover such a simple exercise that is yet so important for people?

[robbalvey]

^ It IS illegal to skip the muster drill. What happened on this ship wasn't that anyone skipped it, the muster drill wasn't scheduled until the SECOND DAY of the cruise! That's just completely insane to me, and apparently this is Costa's standard operating procedure. In one of the reports it was said that "Carnival wasn't aware of this practice", which on one hand they were trying to distance themselves from Costa, but on the other hand, there's no excuse for them "not knowing" as it's THEIR FREAKING COMPANY!

 

I've never been on a ship where the muster drill wasn't the VERY FIRST THING you did, sometimes it even took place before the ship actually left the port!

[PCW_Nut]

Muster Drills are 100% required by law. "By international law, a passenger muster drill must be conducted by the ship within 24 hours of departure" (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muster_drill).

 

I second your view Robb, it's insane that it wasn't done on the very first day. Does a flight crew tell you where the life vests and emergency exits are when its already half way into the flight? I myself have never been on a cruise before, however will be in February of 2013. This incident does not scare me off nor should it scare anyone off. Accidents happen, hence the definition of an accident.

 

Carnival needs to step up and take the reigns back on some procedures it seems.

[robbalvey]

Muster Drills are 100% required by law. "By international law, a passenger muster drill must be conducted by the ship within 24 hours of departure" (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muster_drill).

Wow, that still nuts though! I had no idea it was "within 24 hours." That means that a ship could leave at 6pm one evening, and not be required to have their muster drill until 5pm the next day!

 

Technically, I guess the ship was still within the legal guidelines? Still seems crazy to me. I wonder if after this accident, those rules will change.

[PCW_Nut]

Technically, I guess the ship was still within the legal guidelines? Still seems crazy to me. I wonder if after this accident, those rules will change.

 

I guess if they can determine the Muster Drills not being complete were responsible for any of the lives being lost then they should highly consider changing the law to state it must be complete before leaving the port, which just seems like it should be the case anyways.