There have been a number of articles about Royal Caribbean initial efforts to down-play the effects of the storm which rocked the Brilliance of the Seas off of the coast of Egypt last week. The cruise lines corporate office here in Miami are electronically linked to the cruise ships and instantly receive electronic images and video transmitted from the
I have been critical of Royal Caribbean’s PR skills over the years, thinking that this particular cruise line’s credibility is at the bottom of the cruise industry. So when RCCL announced after the terrifying storm which rocked the the Brilliance of the Seas and injured its passengers that the cruise ship "had full power and was operating as normal" and that no
I am fascinated regarding what travel writers and cruise experts write about these days.
Gene Sloan’s blog on USA Today called CruiseLog features a debate on which Royal Caribbean cruise ship is bigger, the new Allure of the Seas or the Oasis of the Seas. I suppose comparing the gargantuan Excess of the Seas with the monstrous Indulgence of the Seas (with over
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.
The internet has been a buzz today with the release of closed circuit television video (CCTV) of the interior of the P&O Cruises’ Pacific Sun, which ran into a bout of heavy weather in June 2008.
A number of passenger were injured. You can clearly see one young lady smash her face into a column at the 47 second mark in the
In the last eleven months since I launched Cruise Law News (CLN), I have written what I thought were thoughtful and carefully researched articles about the cruise industry. But most of my most favorite blogs about the most important issues facing cruise passengers received little feedback and only a few hundred readers.
I have found
This has been another exciting week in the strange world of the cruise industry. I thought that I would spend this Friday recapping some of the interesting cruise stories this week.
Cruise Shills?
The week started with the travel site Tnooz picking up our article Cruise Crime and the Indifference of Travel Writers and asking Are Travel Writers Shills For The Cruise
This was a historic week in the world of cruising.
Congress passed the Cruise Vessel and Safety Act, which will help make cruising safer for U.S. families. Cruise lines will be required to install peepholes in cabin doors, maintain anti-retroviral medications and rape kits for victims, improve crime evidence handling procedures and – for the first time in
Last week was another rough week for Royal Caribbean.
First there were repeated outbreaks of the nasty norovirus aboard the Jewel of the Seas which sickened hundreds of unsuspecting passengers. Then there was the embarrassment of a Royal Caribbean employee with a criminal record stealing private information from Royal Caribbean computers regarding Royal Caribbean customers so her career-criminal-of-a-husband could break into their
Last November, Princess Cruises invited a number of cruise fans and travel writers on an all expenses paid cruise where they were encouraged to tweet wonderful things about cruising with Princess. The group used the hashtag "#FollowMeAtSea."
When a large billion dollar corporation provides "reporters" with a free cruise, and plies them with champagne and free i-pods, free publicity is the result. You know
In 2003, Mrs. Dianne Brimble (photo below) was smiling and waiving when she boarded P & O’s Pacific Sun cruise ship with her daughter for a vacation of a lifetime. Less than 24 hours later, she lay dead on the cabin floor of fellow 
passenger Mark Wilhelm who had given her the drug GHB. When he was finished with
This week I attended “Cruise Shipping Miami” – formerly known as “SeaTrade” – at the cavernous Miami Beach Convention Center. An intern at the firm, Caitlin Burke, also made her first appearance at the convention. Caitlin wrote a senior thesis at the University of Florida entitled “Qualitative Study of Victimization and Legal Issues Relevant
An article this morning caught my eye: "Newest and Biggest Cruise Ship: Oasis of the Seas." The article contains the usual "wow-look-how-big-it-is!" style of writing which is most typically associated with travel agents. You know, those travel agents doubling as authors whose interest .jpg)
in describing this monster-of-cruise-ship is hopelessly intertwined with obtaining commissions by selling cruises.
Then I realized
Over the last four years, there have been an incredible number of high profile stories regarding the cruise industry: the "missing honeymooner" case of George Smith IV on Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas, the cover-up of Merrian Carver’s disappearance from Celebrity Cruises’ Mercury cruise ship, and the case of Laurie Dishman who, after she was sexually assaulted, was handed a trash
Those of you who have followed my blog over the last three months know that I have been hard on Royal Caribbean. I think that this cruise line treats its injured crew members terribly, and it has 
handled the problem with sexual assaults on its cruise ships even worse. I also think the Oasis of the Seas is
At this moment, the Oasis of the Seas is sailing with newspaper reporters, travel writers, cruise bloggers, and other cruise enthusiasts. They are tweeting their observations on Twitter under the hashtag #oasis.
One of the tweters is @johnnyjet who has a nice travel portal called JohnnyJet.com. He posted a photograph of the Royal
When I was in high school in the early 1970’s, my prep school provided students with an opportunity to read the English version of the Russia newspaper Pravda. The thought was that we 
should be reading every perspective to develop a complete understanding of international issues.
Officially referred to as the "Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist
Cruise lines which are in touch with their market understand the need to be versed with all aspects of Social Media 2.0. Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, and YouTube all present an inexpensive and highly effective way to get a company’s message out to the public. This is particularly important in times of crisis management, such when a fire breaks out or a bout of swine
