Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

This week I have been visiting my parents in El Dorado, Arkansas.  It is always great to get back to my roots in my home town in Southern Arkansas - which has about the nicest and friendliest people in the country.

Yesterday I ran out to a local thrift store to look at vintage books and records (I found a 1958 Elvis Presley LP - G.I. Blues - for 75 cents!)  When I was looking through a rack of $2 shirts, I ran across a shirt that made me stop in my tracks: "Cruise Critic Member - www.cruisecritic.com"   There it was, emblazened on a nice blue shirt, hanging on the rack in a store in my land-locked southern town in Arkansas.

Yes, someone in my hometown in El Dorado was not only a member of Cruise Critic, but had thought enough of the on-line cruise community to own a shirt bearing the Cruise Critic name. 

I could not resist and took a photo of the shirt (photo left) with my Blackberry. 

Cruise Critic is the most popular cruise community in the world.  There are some 50,000 reviews of cruises and tens of thousands of community members who rate cruises, comment on which cruises are the best and the worst, and often are the first to report on cruise ship collisions and fires, passenger over boards and shipboard crimes.

In the short one year period my Cruise Law News (CLN) blog has been on-line, I have received more visitors from Cruise Critic members than any other site in the internet.

The Cruise Critic site has an enormous potential to effectuate positive change for cruise passengers and crew members.  The fact that there are good people in my little home town in Arkansas who are Cruise Critic members bears that out.  

• Comments (1)

The popular on line cruise community CruiseCritic.com recently ran an article "Top 10 Reasons To Cruise."  By the time I read reason number 3 - "Cruise Ships are Family Friendly" - I was repulsed enough that I felt compelled to explain why the Cruise Critic article was dangerously inaccurate.

Cruise Critic published the photo (below) of the "family friendly' environment touted on cruise ships, with the photograph courtesy of Royal Caribbean Cruises.  Unfortunately, Royal Caribbean has by far the worst problem with sexual predators of any line we have ever seen. Children have been targeted by sexual predators in child centers and raped after leaving the centers and trying to get back to the cabins.    

No parent would ever send their kids to a teen center or leave them alone in a cabin if they knew what this cruise line knows - that sexual assaults occur frequently on cruise ships.    

So here's the other side of the story - 10 Reasons Not to Cruise:

No. 1: Cruise Lines Are A Perfect Place To Sexually Abuse Children

No. 2: Cruise Ships Are A Perfect Place to Commit A Crime, And Get Away With It!

No. 3: Carnival, Royal Caribbean And NCL Are Corporate Felons

No. 4: If You Are A Victim On A Cruise Ship, The Cruise Line Will Treat You Like A Criminal

No. 5: If You Are Retired Or A Child, The Cruise Line Considers Your Life Worthless

No. 6:  If The Ship Doctor Kills You, Too Bad

No. 7:  Cruise Lines Exploit Foreign Crew Members, Like You'd Never Believe

No. 8:  Blackwater, Blackwater, Blackwater

No. 9:  Bunker Fuel - Nasty Tar Sludge!      

No. 10:  Cruise Lines Avoid All U.S. Taxes - Where Is Liberia?

Over the next ten days, we will discuss these issues in detail.  If travel agents are going to hawk cruises by advertising all of the reasons why you should take your family on a cruise, trust us that we will provide you with the other side of the story. 

Make your own informed decision how to spend your vacation with your family.   

Tomorrow, we will discuss "Why Cruise Lines Are a Perfect Place to Sexually Abuse Children."

Credits:

Photograph          Royal Caribbean Cruises (via CruiseCritic.com)

• Comments (1)