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"Everything the cruise lines don't want you to know" is the motto of this award winning maritime law blog authored by Miami lawyer Jim Walker.

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The U.S. and Canada both started issuing travel warnings for cruise vacationers. The U.S. started issuing travel warning at the end of December 2018 and Canada began issuing travel advisories two weeks ago.

The U.S. State Department also recently began posting warnings on Twitter regarding certain dangers about cruise ships and ports of call. Its Travel – State Dept‏  page links to an internet travel page addressing certain security issues on cruise ships and in port of call.

The page is titled Cruise Ship Passengers and lists certain steps which the State Department recommends taking “before the cruise” (research the destination, take your passport, obtain the necessary visas and obtain medical, emergency evacuation, and other insurance to cover unexpected travel expenses, etc.) as well as “during the cruise” (remain vigilant, limit your alcohol intake, ensure cabin safety and make sure the door and balcony are properly locked at all times, and store travel documents and valuables in a secure location, etc.).

Canada also just started posting similar travel warnings on its official travel page. The Canadian travel advisories includes many of same “common sense” issues about obtaining insurance mentioned by the U.S.  But like the U.S. site, Canada also warns it citizens to:

  • Avoid becoming the target of an assault or robbery by . . . staying in public areas when interacting with other passengers and ship staff;
  • Never leave your food or drinks unattended; and
  • Ensure cabin safety by keeping the door and balcony properly locked at all times.

I was particularly surprised to see the posting on Twitter this week from the U.S. State Department’s Twitter page ():

Researching the safety records of local tour operators may sound like a good idea, but the fact of the matter is that cruise lines don’t disclose the name or contact information of the local companies which operate the excursions. So it is impossible for cruise travelers to research the safety record of a local company, in the Caribbean for example, even if they wanted to. Yes, such local companies often use improper equipment (open air buses, no seatbelts, etc.) with unqualified employees (particularly bus drivers who drive recklessly), which can lead to accidents, injuries and even deaths, but there is zero chance of a cruise passengers ever learning this information despite trying to research the excursion beforehand.

Cruise lines also usually promote their cruise excursions as the “best,” using the “best” tour operators and the “best” equipment without clearly explaining that they cannot really vouch for the operators who will actually be taking families on the excursions.  After a passenger is killed or seriously in a cruise sponsored cruise excursion, like this case or this one, the cruise lines will always deny liability for the accident and claim that the local tour operator is an independent contractor for whom the cruise line has no control, despite their advertisements to the contrary.

The State Department also warns cruise tourists to be aware of crime in certain port of call (these type of warning are not new).  It provides links to safety and security issues in many port countries.  We recommend that families, who decide to cruise, review the State Department crime warnings carefully. Reading the local newspapers in port cities is also a good idea.  Many cruise lines routinely take their passengers into dangerous ports without warning, particularly in port in the Caribbean like Nassau.

For example, the State Department has repeatedly warned travelers to Nassau, Bahamas to avoid jet ski operators who have sexually assaulted several young women at the beaches in that destination. The State Department’s link below on Twitter is rather nebulous but the crime situation in Nassau (“exercise increased caution in The Bahamas due to crime” – CLICK MORE – “Violent crime, such as burglaries, armed robberies, and sexual assault is common, even during daylight hours and in tourist areas . . .   Jet-ski operators are known to commit sexual assaults against tourists, including minors”) can be easily accessed at the State Department’s website.

The new governmental warnings by the U.S. and Canada reflects the reality of ongoing dangers on cruise ships and in ports of call. These sites are worth reviewing and researching before a family thinks that they are embarking on a carefree cruise to an idyllic island in the Caribbean.

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Acting on a tip, Mexican authorities reportedly discovered an undisclosed amount of cocaine aboard the MSC Divina while the cruise ship was in port in Cozumel, Mexico.

According to the Riviera Maya News, Mexican federal agents located six packets of cocaine inside of a compartment behind a toilet in an undisclosed location on the MSC cruise ship.  The MSC Divina had previously sailed from Kralendijk, Bonaire on January 23rd, Willemstad, Curacao on January 24th, Oranjestad, Aruba on January 25th, Ocho Rios, Jamaica on January 27th, and George Town, Grand Cayman on January 28th before arriving in Cozumel yesterday. The ship is scheduled to arrive in Miami tomorrow.

There were no reported arrests of any of the crew members or passengers.

This is not the first time that drugs have been seized on a MSC cruise ship.

In November of 2018, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers arrested seven MSC crew members for smuggling cocaine into the port of Miami aboard the MSC Seaside. CBP officers reportedly found six kilos of cocaine and over $100,000 in cash. The Miami Herald covered the drug bust and identified the MSC crew members who allegedly smuggled the drugs.  MSC crew member Jamaican Damion Hawthorne (age 32)(from Ocho Rios) recruited South African crew members Londiwe Shange (age 27), Wandile Mhlongo (age 29), Thembeka Sokhulu (age 36), and Viwe Tshaka (age 23).  Jamaican Errol Roy Sutherland was also allegedly involved in the drug smuggling operation.

In 2010, eight people were convicted of attempting to smuggle over 75 pounds of cocaine (worth many millions of dollars) ashore from the MSC Orchestra when it arrived in Dover from Brazil.

In January of 2011, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Broward Sheriff’s Office with K-9 dogs raided the MSC Poesia at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale before it sailed and arrested a number of music fans on its Jam Cruise for a relatively small quantity of recreational drugs.

In August of 2013, the Spanish police arrested two crew members from the cruise ship MSC Magnífica, which docked in Spain on drug trafficking charges after they were caught with 15 kilos of cocaine on the cruise ship.

In November of 2013, a MSC crew member was implicated in a scheme to import ten kilos of cocaine from South America to Italy on the cruise ship MSC Armonia.

In March of 2014, the police in Brazil arrested a crew member on the cruise ship MSC Preziosa for smuggling cocaine.

I first read about this drug bust in Crew Center’s article Six Packages Of Cocaine Discovered On The Cruise Ship MSC Divina.

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Photo credit: la Fiscalía General de la República via Riviera Maya News.

The United States Coast Guard medevaced an 80-year-old passenger who was injured on a Carnival cruise ship on Sunday.

The Carnival Ecstasy contacted the Coast Guard station in Charleston, South Carolina on Sunday, January 27, 2019 and stated that a female cruise guests had sustained a head injury after falling and required emergency medical treatment off of the ship. The Carnival Ecstasy was approximately 55 miles east of Savannah at 9:15 p.m. at the time of the call from the Carnival ship.

The Coast Guard station dispatched a MH-65 Dolphin rescue helicopter which arrived at the cruise ship at around 10:20 p.m. and hoisted the woman and a nurse and transported them to Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah. The woman’s current medical condition has not been disclosed.

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Video and photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard video by U.S. Coast Guard District 7 PADET Jacksonville / Air Station Savannah via Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS)

The Oceania-operated Insignia failed its last sanitation inspection conducted by United States Public Health (“USPH”) inspectors on December 17, 2018, according to a crew member who wishes to stay anonymous.

The USPH reportedly gave the cruise ship a failing score of only 80, after the sanitation agency inspected the ship in Miami over a month ago. The crew member stated that the Insignia:

” . . .  failed USPH on December 17 in Miami with only 80 points which is a failure on the ship sanitation, food preparation and poor galley cleansing.  All crew, staff and officers was strictly told not to inform anyone since this could damage the company 5 star image.”

Today. the CDC published the report indicating that the Insignia in fact received a failing score of 80. You can read the report here. The report indicates that numerous food-contact surface areas on the ship were heavily soiled and  dusty and dirty; refrigerator units were not built to food equipment standards; and there were flies and other pests found in food service areas.  Potentially hazardous food items were stored and prepared at improper temperatures. Potable water bunkering was not properly tested for pH or halogen and the testing equipment was out of order.

Oceania has still not issues a corrective action report indicating that it has corrected the sanitation deficiencies.

Before this failed sanitation inspection, the Insignia was last inspected by the USPH in August of 2018 when it received a passing score of 98.

The USPH conducts sanitary inspection twice a year on cruise ships which call on U.S. ports. The Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is intended to monitor the cruise ship industry to “prevent and control the introduction, transmission, and spread of gastrointestinal (GI) illnesses on cruise ships.” A sanitation inspector can deduct points for dirty conditions in the galley or when food handlers work while ill, among other issues. An inspection score of 100 is considered perfect (although the inspector can still find some shortcomings); 85 or lower is considered a failing score.

Oceania markets the Insignia as a luxury cruise ship, with a capacity of 684 passengers (lower berths) or 824 passengers (all berths), with a crew of around 400.

The last cruise ship operated by Oceania to fail a USPH inspection was the Regatta in April of 2017 when it received a score of 84. In an article by TheStreet titled the 14 Worst Cruise Ships on the CDC’s Sanitary Inspection List, the Regatta was selected as one of the worst cruise ships from a sanitation perspective for lying to an inspector about a filthy espresso machine labeled “spare parts only;” the CDC report detailed “all of the very obvious evidence that this machine was in current use, starting with the wet grounds in the tray and ending with a small fly was in this area.”

The last luxury cruise ship to fail a USPH inspection was Silversea Cruises’ Silver Wind cruise ship in March of 2018. Among numerous other violations, USPH inspectors located food items and food service equipment hidden in crew member lockers inside a changing room near an engine and air conditioning unit. The Silver Wind received a score of 79.

Five and one-half years ago, Silversea Cruises was also caught ordering its crew members to hide perishable food in crew quarters aboard the Silver Shadow. In July of 2013, CNN aired a special program about the “hide and seek” games which crew members were ordered to play on the Silver Shadow cruise ship, where the ship routinely hid trolleys of food items in crew members cabins to avoid detection by USPH inspectors. We covered the story in our article Silver Shadow Fails Sanitation Inspection After Caught Hiding Filthy Conditions from Health Inspectors. You can watch a video about the cover-up aired by CNN here. The USPH issued a score of only 82 after that inspection

In 2015, two years after the disastrous 2013 inspection, the Silver Shadow failed again, with a score of only 82.

The Insignia‘s current score is lower than all of the failing scores received by the Silver Shadow and just a point higher than the Silver Wind‘s disastrous score earlier last year.

The Insignia received a score of 100 in July of 2017 and consistently received passing scores in the range of 88-98 with most scores in the 90’s for the past several years.  But the dirty galley conditions and failing sanitation score may result in some type of retaliation against those responsible for the supervision of the ship’s food and beverage department.

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Photo credit: By Ivan T. -CC BY-SA 3.0, commons / wikimedia.

A crew member has reportedly gone overboard from the Majesty of the Seas last night according to several passengers on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship.

This morning shortly before 8:00 a.m., we received the following message from a guest on the cruise ship:

“We are on the Majesty of the Seas. It was just reported that we will be late to get to port today because a crew member went overboard. No other information has been given to us. They said we assisted in the efforts last night to look, but no one was found.”

Another guest contacted us on Facebook around 7:00 a.m stating:

“Currently on Royal Caribbean majesty of the seas … search and rescue underway with coast guard for crew member that threw themselves overboard.”

The following information was also posted on Twitter:

Local news stations are reporting that the crew member is 26 years old. There is an active search and rescue operation underway around 37 miles east of the Miami area.

Two Royal Caribbean crew members and one officer from a Celebrity Cruises ship have gone overboard in the last two months. All three apparently decided to end their lives.

A Royal Caribbean crew member, also 26 years of age, went disappeared from the Adventure of the Seas at the end of November of last year.  He was subsequently identified as Jack Daniel Ackroyd, from Cotgrave (near Nottingham) England, who worked on the ship’s sports deck.

Another Royal Caribbean crew member, a performer identified as Arron Hough, age 20, of the United Kingdom went overboard from the Harmony of the Seas the day after Christmas.

A young Celebrity Cruises officer, Anton Ilichev hung himself on the Celebrity Millennium, on December 6, 2018.

It again appears that this Royal Caribbean cruise ship was not equipped with a modern auto man overboard system, which would instantly send a signal to the bridge and then track the overboard person in the water even at night.

Like other cruise lines, Royal Caribbean claims that it does not believe the available overboard detection technology is “reliable,” a conclusion refuted by numerous experts and manufacturers of state-of-the-art MOB systems.

Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain was quoted in an article in Quartz by Rosie Spinks titled People fall off cruise ships with alarming regularity. Can anything be done to stop it? He stated that MOB technology “is not yet at a viable stage,” despite effective systems like this and this.

As I have stated before, it never ceases to amaze me that a cruise line that collects over 8,000,000,000 (billion $$) dollars a year tax-free, and builds billion dollar Genesis class cruise ships like the Oasis of the Seas, Allure of the Seas,  Symphony of the Seas and the Harmony of the Seas, refuses to invest in such life-saving technology.

We have written before about Royal Caribbean’s dismal attitude about MOB systems and procedures relative to crew members – Royal Caribbean Unreasonably Delays Reporting Overboard Crew Member from Vision of the Seas.

During a period of less than three years between December 2009 and October 2012, at least twelve crew members jumped overboard or simply disappeared from cruise ships operated by Royal Caribbean/Celebrity Cruises. I wrote about the problem in an article titled “Is Royal Caribbean Working Its Crew Members to Death?”  The grueling schedule and long hours crew members are required to work 7 days a week, 30 days a month with no days off over the course of a 6 to 10 month contract, for far less than the U.S. minimum wage, often leave ship employees, who are already isolated from their families, exhausted and demoralized.

After a 22-year-old Serbian crew member, Nikola Arnautovic, a Carnival crew member on the Carnival Fascination, hung himself last year, a petition was started on Change.org – Save lives! Make psychologists compulsory for Carnival Cruise workers and 1 day off a week.

Just a few days ago, a crew website, the Crew Bar, published an article titled The Crew Need Your Help… which addressed the problem of crew member suicides and proposed significant changes to address the problem of crew member working conditions.

According to cruise expert Professor Ross Klein, 335 people have gone overboard from cruise ships since 2000.  26 people went overboard from cruise ships last month – an average of two a month.

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Read: Misery Machines and Crew Member Suicides.

January 25, 2019 Update: The crew member is Enis Mahic from Montenegro.

The United States Coast Guard medevaced a 40 year-old female passenger from a Carnival cruise ship on Monday, January 21, 2019.

The Coast Guard medevaced a woman who was suffering from abdominal pains from the Carnival Pride when the cruise ship was around 50 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina yesterday.

The Coast Guard stations in Elizabeth City launched a helicopter which hoisted the ill passenger, her spouse, and a nurse and flew then to Carteret Health Care Medical Center in Morehead City.

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Video and photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard video by Air Station Elizabeth City via Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).

 

A person (either a cruise guest or crew member) is presumed to have gone overboard from the Golden Princess according to a passenger on the Princess cruise ship.

Shortly after 6:15 p.m. EST today (10:15 a.m. Tuesday, January 22 – Australia time), a cruise passenger from Adelaide, Australia posted the following information on Twitter:

AIS data show the Golden Princess sailing toward Melbourne, Australia at the moment. It appears that the person went overboard last night in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia. The poster explains that the Princess cruise ship searched for the missing person last night and earlier this morning.

It is currently unknown whether the person is a guest or crew member, or how or exactly when the person went overboard from the cruise ship.  It remains to be seen whether the Golden Princess was equipped with an automatic man overboard (MOB) system which would have automatically sent a signal to the bridge if someone went over the rails via state-of-the-art motion detection / infrared and radar technology. Reliable systems available to the cruise line include the MARSS MOBtronic and PureTech systems, among others.

It is always a telling sign for cruise line like Princess to be searching the cruise ship and reviewing CCTV film to look for the missing passenger.  In such cases, the overboard person has usually been in the water long before he was eventually reported missing. Eventually the person may be seen in a snippet of film going overboard but the ship has sailed on for many dozens of miles when the officers finally review the CCTV.  Valuable time is inevitably lost due to the failure to install an auto MOB system.

The Golden Princess left Adelaide, Australia on January 7th for Kangaroo Island and Melbourne, Australia; and then to seven ports in New Zealand (Fjordland National Park, Dunedin,  Akaroa, Wellington, Gisborne, Tauranga, and Auckland, New Zealand – on January 19th) and was then scheduled to return to Melbourne, Australia on January 23rd and Adelaide, Australia on January 25th.

The last overboard from a Princess cruise ship occurred in May of last year from the Sun Princess which departed from Fremantle, Australia; a passenger went overboard when the ship was approximately 100 nautical miles southeast of Singapore.

According to cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein, 334 people have gone overboard since 2000.

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January 21, 2019 Update: A newspaper in Australia reports that the overboard person is a 22 year old male passenger. Princess says that it is searching on the ship and looking at CCTV images.

January 22, 2019 Update: Princess says that the young man went overboard around 2:00 a.m. on Monday, January 21st according to it after-the-fact review of CCTV on the ship. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said that Princess did not alert it of the missing passenger until around 9 a.m. on Monday, according to Newsweek.

“Thoughts and prayers” from Princess but no auto MOB system . . .

Photo credit: Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0 commons / wikimedia.

A couple from Northern Ireland were surprised when after boarding the Norwegian Jewel, they opened the door to their cabin (# 10039) and were confronted with strangers having sex on one of the beds.

The cruisers in question, Bobby and Mary Jackson, are from a small town north of Belfast and were about to begin their first cruise on what they hoped would be a dream vacation. According to the Sunday Post article titled The Boat That Rocked: Scots Holiday-Makers Stunned to Find Crewman and Mystery Woman Making Waves in Their Cruise Ship Cabin, the cruise couple was embarking on a cruise from Singapore to Thailand when they encountered the two strangers making jiggy jiggy in their cabin.

Ms. Jackson told the newspaper that she was “horrified, what I witnessed was extremely unpleasant.”

The attendant for their cabin subsequently identified the man as a crew member, although the woman engaged in the faire une partie de jambes en l’air was not identified. There is a question whether she was also a ship employee.

The couple complained to guest relations who explained that the ship was full but offered them a £100 ($128) on board credit, which they say “insulted” them. When the Jacksons contacted NCL after the cruise, the cruise line increased its offer of compensation to £200 ($257) each toward a future cruise. (Ms. Jackson also reportedly contracted a gastrointestinal illness during the cruise).

I have written about all type of foolhardy behavior during cruises – read Marketing “Sex at Sea” on Cruise Ships; I suppose that this couple received less than they bargained for on their first cruise, particularly at a cost of £4,800 (around $6,175).  But at least they were not with young kids who saw the spectacle such that they would had to explain for the remainder of the cruise what they witnessed.

NCL appears to be notoriously skimpy when issuing compensation for most inconveniences, if it does at all. But $500 in a credit to two guests for temporarily being delayed entering their cabin while amorous crew members did the deed, does not seem particularly unreasonable, although fresh bed linen would seem to have been in order.

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January 21, 2019 Update:  Here’s the latest – NCL now denied that the incident ever occured, as explained in an article titled Norwegian Cruise Line denies claim crew member used passenger’s cabin for sex.  “The thorough investigation undertaken, including full review of security footage of the corridor where the stateroom was located, does not corroborate the allegation,” the line said in the statement.  In its statement, Norwegian said it operated its ships at the very highest standards. “Any incidents that may fall below these standards are thoroughly investigated and actioned appropriately,” the line said.

The truth of the matter is that few cruise lines keep CCTV images for as long as 4 months, even when crimes are alleged to have occurred. And it does not appear that NCL conducted any type of serious, timely investigation, at least not until the story went viral . . . .

Photo credit: A.jo – Public Domain, commons / wikimedia.

Two German passengers from a the AidaPerla were reportedly attacked in a botched robbery in Castries, St Lucia yesterday morning, according to a local newspaper in St Lucia.

The St Lucia Times stated that “two young thugs pounced” on a mother and daughter from the German cruise ship when they exited from a park near the cruise port in Castries around 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning.

Two local, young men attempted to snatch a small bag from one of the cruise tourists. Their screams attracted the attention of other visitors to the park and the two robbers fled empty-handed, leaving the two German women with multiple abrasions due to the attack.

Earlier last week, several people were mugged in the nearby area including a couple who were reportedly robbed at gunpoint in the park (Serenity Park) in question.

In the video below, a news station in St. Lucia reports that armed bandits robbed a couple of their “bags, phones and wallets” a few days ago in the park in question. The security guard interviewed in the video was also reportedly robbed in the park as well.

Serenity Park is listed as one of the “things to do” by tourists, according to the city of Castries.

The violent attempted robbery comes at a time when the international media is focused on the murder of a British citizen, Robert Hathaway, who managed a marina south of the Castries’ cruise port. The Telegraph newspaper recently published an article titled Murder in Paradise: the Dark Side of Life in St Lucia which also focused on the murder of Mr. Hathaway’s friend, Roger Pratt, another U.K. citizen, who was killed by intruders aboard his yacht in St. Lucia several years ago.

Crimes against cruise tourists is nothing new for St. Lucia. In 2013, fifty-five Celebrity Cruises passengers (photo right) and two crew members were robbed at gun point in St. Lucia during a cruise sponsored excursion. Earlier,  fourteen NCL cruise passengers were robbed at a popular tourist attraction Anse-La-Raye Waterfall in St. Lucia.

NCL temporarily dropped St. Lucia as a port in 2010 because of attacks on cruise passengers which occurred on three occasions while the cruise passengers were sight-seeing on the island. In 2015, newspapers in St. Lucia reported that the president of the St. Lucia Vendors association was concerned that crime against passengers was again prompting cruise lines to consider dropping St. Lucia as a port of call.

Following several of the violent crimes against tourists, the St Lucia Tourist Board erroneously claimed that such dangerous incidents had “never happened before on the island,” as we pointed out in “Liar, Liar Pants On Fire? St. Lucia Tourism Board Denies Prior Armed Robbery of Cruise Passengers.”

In 2014, we named St. Lucia to our list (as #10) of the Top 10 Most Dangerous Cruise Destinations in the World. You can read reactions to that article by St. Lucians in the comments to the article in a local newspaper in St. Lucia titled “St. Lucia ranked in top 10 most dangerous cruise destinations in the world.”

St. Lucia reports that tourism has nonetheless increased in 2018 with 1.2 millions tourists, including 800,000 cruise passengers, visiting the island last year. Local politicians warn that crimes against tourists will have a chilling effect on tourism.

Many people who are inclined to defend the tourism industry in St. Lucia may say things like “crime happens everywhere” or point to violent U.S. cities like Chicago.  But the fact is that St. Lucia as a country has a per capita murder rate in 2017 of over 33 homicides per 100,000 (up from around 20 per 100,000 in 2012) and around 24 homicides per 100,000 in 2018 whereas an admittedly deadly city like Chicago has a 2017 per capita homicide rate of around 24 per 100,000. The U.S. as a country has a per capita homicide rate of less than 5 per 100,000.

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Image credit: Top – Goggle map; middle – DBS TV St. Lucia via the Times (following bus robbery) via YouTube; bottom – Castries cruise port –  stlucianewsonline; video bottom – MBC PRIME NEWS -St. Lucia 

Several guests aboard the Celebrity Summit have notified us that the cruise ship is currently unable to leave the port in San Juan, Puerto Rico due to what the guests understand to be either a “computer glitch” or “propulsion issues.”

The Summit was scheduled to leave San Juan yesterday  but has been unable to due to what the cruise lines often refer to euphemistically as “technical issues.”

The Cruceros Puerto Rico twitter page (translated) refers to unspecified “mechanical” or “electrical problems in the bridge.”

The website also states that the U.S. Coast Guard needs to inspect the ship before it is permitted to continue on its itinerary.

The Celebrity Summit is scheduled to have left San Juan yesterday on a twelve day cruise to St Croix, US Virgin Islands where it was suppose to call today, and then to Basseterre, St. Kitts; St Johns, Antigua; Willemstad, Curacao; Oranjestad, Aruba; Kralendijk, Bonaire; St Thomas, US Virgin Islands; Ponce, Puerto Rico and then back to Puerto Rico.

One passenger informed us that “hopefully (we) will be leaving the port tonight. They are giving everybody on board $100 room credit.”

A $100 on board credit (OBC) to be stuck in port for at least a day seems hardly fair.  Royal Caribbean also just announced that it is issuing a OBC of only between $200-$400 after the air conditioning to many cabins failed during a cruise on the Anthem of the Seas.   Royal Caribbean/ Celebrity must be re-thinking their attitude towards compensation following its generous full refunds to everyone on the Oasis of the Seas after a gastrointestinal outbreak.    

Celebrity’s corporate communication people sent the following to an inquiry posted on Twitter:

Power losses on cruise ships are a relatively common occurrence. In 2016, there were at least 18 power losses on cruise ships operated by the major U.S.-based lines.

The AIS information shows the Summit in San Juan. It remains anyone’s guess how long it will stay there.

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January 18, 2019 Update: Looks like the Summit is finally leaving port in San Juan tonight as of 9:13 p.m. per AIS.

Photo credit:  Yankeesman312 CC BY-SA 3.0