Carnival Cruise Line (Carnival) is again the cruise line leader in onboard crime, per the Q3 cruise crime data maintained by the Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT reported 47 crimes for all cruise lines from July 1 through September 30, 2025. In total, the DOT has reported 138 crimes so far this year.
The
An 80-year-old woman (grandmother Suzanne Rees) was found dead on October 26 after being abandoned on a cruise hiking excursion on Lizard Island, Australia. The woman was on the second day of a 60-day Coral Expeditions cruise.
The ship, the Coral Adventurer, did not notify authorities that the woman was missing until hours after
This past June, a 5-year-old girl fell overboard from the Disney Dream while the ship was sailing to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from the Bahamas. The girl’s mother was taking photos of her on the ship’s railing when the child lost her balance and fell backward.
The child fell through an open porthole into the water.
A crew member aboard P&O Cruises’ Arvia died on Sunday, October 26 after an accident in an elevator shaft. The accident occurred two days into the ship’s 14-night transatlantic voyage from Southampton, England to Barbados.
The Arvia made an unscheduled stop at A Coruña, Spain after the incident before continuing on its scheduled itinerary to
A crew member on the Viking Star was seen going overboard at 11:31 a.m. local time Monday, October 27th, according to Viking Cruises. The ship immediately started its emergency response and began searching for the crew member with the Italian Coast Guard.
The ship changed course and
The Oceania Insignia reported to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that 74 passengers and 1 crew member are sick with Norovirus. This is the first gastrointestinal (GI) outbreak for Oceania Cruises and the 20th outbreak across all cruise lines this year.
Twenty GI outbreaks are the most ever reported by the CDC
A man broke into the cabin of a female crew member in the middle of the night and sexually assaulted her on October 9th. The sexual assault occurred aboard Costa Cruises’ Costa Favolosa while the ship was sailing to Genoa, Italy.
According to local Italian news, the perpetrator used a magnetic key card to
A passenger went overboard from the Norwegian Jewel on Monday, October 20th. The Norwegian Cruise Line ship is currently on a 12-night transatlantic voyage from Barcelona to Miami. The incident occurred shortly after the ship departed from Ponta Delgada, Portugal.
The Norwegian Jewel changed course on October 20th, at 10:15 PM and began a 10-hour
Disney Cruise Line built its reputation as the safest, most family friendly vacation at sea. The data tells a different story.
According to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), sexual assaults and rapes on Disney Cruises have exploded over the past three years.
From 2019-2022, Disney had just one-to-three incidents reported each year. Those numbers surged
Ninety-eight people have fallen ill with norovirus aboard Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas, according to a CDC report on September 28th. The outbreak includes 94 passengers and 4 crew members on the ship’s one-way voyage from San Diego to Miami, which began September 19th and ends October 2nd.
This is the
A proverbial “rogue wave” struck the Vision of the Seas cruise ship a week ago, on September 20th 2025, as the Royal Caribbean ship returned to Baltimore from Bermuda. The incident caused the cruise ship to rock sharply, sending dishes and glassware tumbling across dining rooms and bars. A viral TikTok video of the incident
Royal Caribbean topped all cruise lines in crime during the second quarter of 2025, per the most recent crime report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT reported 43 crimes for all cruise lines from April 1st to June 30th, 2025, bringing the total reported crimes to 91 so far this year.
This
Last week, a cruise passenger on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship (some sources identify as the Norwegian Bliss) faced the indignity of becoming stuck in a water slide overhanging the water. The incident was captured on video, and then posted on TikTok. The short video clip shows the woman lying unceremoniously on her back
A Carnival Cruise Line passenger from Kingsport, Tennessee was arrested in Miami, Florida after federal authorities found child pornography on his phone according to court documents. Jason Alan Miller, 48, was arrested shortly after disembarking the Carnival Horizon and was charged with possession and transportation of child pornography.
At the port in Miami, Miller was
I am excited to share several updates we made to Cruise Law News that will improve the appearance and function of the site.
The biggest change is to our homepage. Instead of the single story blog format, the homepage will now show multiple stories at once. This change allows readers to quickly see all the
Four additional Filipino crew members, this time from the Carnival Pride, were detained and deported while in the Port of Baltimore, on September 7th, 2025, according to an account in the popular CruiseMapper. This brings the total number of Filipinos recently deported to well over 100.
A Filipino galley steward, who worked
A Carnival crew member, Reza Heta Pratama, was sentenced in New Orleans by a federal district court judge for possession of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Pratama, a citizen of Indonesia, was arrested in July 2024 when the Carnival Valor docked in New Orleans following a cruise to Mexico last summer.
Carnival instructed Pratama to
George Smith disappeared over two decades ago on July 5, 2005, from Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas. What followed was a mishandled crime scene, a family denied answers, and a case that forced the public to see how little accountability exists at sea.
George Smith was on a honeymoon cruise with his newlywed bride
