Photo of Jim Walker

Jim Walker

Everything the cruise lines don’t want you to know” is the motto of Cruise Law News, authored by Jim Walker.

Jim is the founding partner of Walker & O’Neill, a Miami-based maritime law firm that has represented more than 2,500 clients, including survivors who testified before Congress on cruise ship safety.

Frank Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, received compensation in the staggering amount of $36,400,000 in 2020, consisting primarily of nearly $18,000,000 in stock awards, according to a recent Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. The news was initially reported by the cruise trade publication Cruise Industry News.

CEO Del

Today, the cruise industry’s trade organization, Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), published a press release calling for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to lift its conditional sailing order (CSO) and permit cruise ships to resume sailing from U.S. ports effective July 1, 2021.  The CDC has reportedly quickly denied CLIA’s request and

After Royal Caribbean recently announced that it would require all adult guests to be vaccinated as a prerequisite to cruising from Nassau, an outspoken critic of the coronavirus vaccine began a call to boycott the cruise line.

Dr. Simone Gold, whose Titter handle is @drsimonegold, called the COVID-19 vaccine “experimental” and asked her followers

Carnival Corporation CEO Arnold Donald and other top Carnival cruise executives collected millions of dollars more in compensation in 2020 than in 2019 via stock awards, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week. Cruise Industry News summarized the compensation in an article titled Carnival Corporation Executives Made More Money

A fire broke out this afternoon on MSC Lirica cruise ship, according to a Greek reporter, Kerkyra Simera.  The MSC cruise ship has been moored in the port of the Corfu since January 30th.

The Greek website reports that as many as 38 firefighters with 13 vehicles and a firefighting boat with 8 firefighters

Several German newspapers are reporting that “two employees on the Odyssey of the Seas” have tested positive for COVID-19. The news of the coronavirus cases were reported by the Meyer Werft shipyard, not the owner (Royal Caribbean) of the new cruise ship. The “employees” were apparently hired by the shipyard (as opposed to crew members

A COVID-19 outbreak occurred last week on the Mein Schiff 2 German cruise ship which sailed to the Canary Islands, according to passengers about the ship. One of the guests aboard the ship, who wishes to remain anonymous, indicated that four other guests aboard the cruise ship tested positive for COVID-19 at the end of

Last Friday afternoon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enacted an order which requires all travelers to wear masks on public transportation in order to help control the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC defined travelers to include all “passengers and crew.” The order applies to travel by bus, train, plane, vessel and other conveyances,

Several news outlets in Italy report that a young Italian officer working on an AIDA cruise ship has not been accounted for after his family reported him missing. ShipMag reports that Alessio Gaspari, age 25, was employed by AIDA Cruises as a third deck mate serving on an AIDA ship. His family reported him missing

A number of Carnival Corporation cruise executives sold over 125,000 shares of CCL stock last week, according to forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to SEC forms, CEO Donald (left) sold 62,639 Carnival shares on January 14th for $1,300,000, at an average per price of $21.12 per share. The forms

AIDA cruise ships, including the AIDAmar and the AIDAperla, are suffering what has been described as an “immense” IT problem, according to a German newspaper  published today. Bild reports that the AIDA cruise line’s operations in its home port of Rostock, Germany have been affected by the failure of the company’s land based and shipboard

Senator Richard Blumenthal recently proposed legislation to strengthen cruise ship safety.

According to a press release from the senator’s office, the bill includes proposals designed to expand health and safety on cruise ships: “The bill includes language from Blumenthal’s Cruise Passenger Protection Act to strengthen a number of critical medical standards aboard cruise ships, including

As revealed in a blockbuster article by the Miami Herald today, several cruise lines were so concerned with losing three recent referendums pending before voters in Key West, that they “knew they had to do something to sway the public into voting no” so they “secretly funded (a) disinformation campaign.”

The three referendums would drastically