My wife and I came up with the idea last night that this would be a great time to book a Carnival cruise in the near future:
[ul]
[li]There will probably be great deals[/li][li]The cruises will probably be relatively uncrowded[/li][li]Problems with one ship do not necessarily mean Carnival itself is a cruise line to avoid, and Triumph will be out of action for a long time for repairs.[/li][li]The staff will be really on its toes and going out of its way to make sure the passengers have a great experience.[/li][/ul]
Any flaws in our logic? If a lot of people have the same idea though, that would remove the great deal/uncrowded factors from the equation.
Read up on Carnival, and issues on their ships. It’s not just the Triumph…they seem to not-infrequently have mechanical issues, not to mention outbreaks of Norwalk virus.
If I went on another cruise (I went on Norwegian years ago, and had a good experience), I’d avoid Carnival like the plague.
Gambler’s fallacy mixed in with some questionable assumptions.
Even if maintenance and mechanical problems on these boats were independent of each other (probably NOT true as there’s probably an overall corporate decision making process on how much maintenance to do on the fleet), your chances aren’t suddenly better because on an accident just happened. Just like the odds of flipping heads aren’t better or worse because you just flipped 5 heads in a row.
And if maintenance/mechanical issues are not independent from boat to boat or cruise line to cruise line, you can throw out the supposed odds altogether - it’s a rigged coin in this case.
Having just read Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, I can see that this is an issue that requires using Bayesian priors. I can’t say that I understand all the math, but you need to consider how likely it would have been that there would be a problem on a Carnival cruise prior to the recent incident, and then [insert mathematical formula here] add in the change to the probability based on the recent incident. This means that the recent incident definitely makes it more likely, rather than * less* likely that there will be an incident in the future, but not overwhelmingly more likely.
Then you have to balance that against your valid points 1, 2, and 4, and consider whether the risk of an incident is worth the price savings, lack of crowds, and increased attention.
Carnival doesn’t exactly have a sterling record as far as labor, environmental, and safety standards. They utilize a couple “flags of convenience” that don’t have the ability or inclination to Monitor safety, allowing the cruise lines to use a system of private, voluntary certification. At least the slackest of the slack, Liberia, got out of the FOC business.
But if you’re inclined to cruise with Carnival your chances certainly aren’t any worse than on any other day.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but IIRC Carnival Corporation owns ten of the major cruise lines.
AIDA Cruises, Germany
Carnival Cruise Lines, United States
Costa Cruises, Italy
Cunard Line, United Kingdom
Holland America Line, United States
Ibero Cruises, Spain
P&O Cruises, United Kingdom
P&O Cruises Australia, Australia
Princess Cruises, United States
Seabourn Cruise Line, United States
Carnival has had several other similar incidents in the past where one of their ships lost power and went adrift temporarily.
But having said that… I wouldn’t let what has happened recently stop me from booking a cruise, though I personally would pick Princess or perhaps Holland America.
The only thing that stops us from going nowadays is money; other than that, we loved our experience cruising. And if, as the OP siggests, the price comes down due to a bad incident, then so much the better for us.
You have to recognize that anything is possible, though many things are unlikely. I would personally rate an outbreak of Norovirus (not “Norwalk Virus”) as the most possible, if not so probable occurrence.
Speaking of which, if you go on a cruise and get ill --like, say, you suddenly get seasick— make sure you rush to a bathroom if you must barf, because if you do it in a public space, you could start a panic (over Norovirus) and (or so I have heard, someone with more cruise experience please confirm the accuracy) possibly find yourself confined to quarters for the remainder of the cruise as a preepmtive quarantine measure.
Note: They can and do change iteneraries as they see fit. In order to avoid a storm while underway, a cruise we went on cancelled the scheduled stop in St. John’s USVI and instead went to not-so-lovely Port Caneveral FL (not worth getting off the ship for).
Yep. When I worked for Royal Caribbean, the big-wigs from the corporate office would come up to AK and give us their annual presentation. When they got to the “competitors” section they always mentioned that Carnival was #1 in the world and owned many other cruise lines.
Doesn’t sound like a bad idea. After 9/11 my older brother and his wife said flights to paris were down to something like $100 and he regrets not going.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Carnival has large discounts after this, at least for a while.
I think the logic is reasonably accurate because all things being equal, I don’t think Carnival is significantly more likely to have maintenance or illness issues break out than any other ship, and following an incident like what happened to the Triumph, I’d say the staff would be extra attentive because they want to make the best possible impression following that disaster.
In 2010, I did a cruise around the Western Mediterranean on the Norwegian Jade. This was a cruise that did a big circle and both left and returned to Barcelona, Spain. After we landed in Barcelona, we got word they had a Norwalk outbreak on the previous cruise and they gave us the option of cancelling and getting our money back or delaying our cruise to another date. Having flown all that way, short of the ship sinking, we had every intention of following through. The Norwegian people went out of their way to protect everyone setting up extra anti-bacterial gel dispensers throughout the ship and requiring the kitchen staff to serve you the buffet food rather than you taking it yourself from the common bins. Other than this resulting in longer lines at certain eating times on the ship, we had no problems and it was a great cruise. In fact, I thing the Triumph had a temporary chilling effect throughout the industry, which combined with the poor economy, has dropped prices across the board. My wife and I are frequent cruisers and noticed sites like Travelzoo and Vacationstogo, which specialize in discounted cruise tickets, have a lot more bargains lately. We just booked our next one for 2014 for a Singapore to Hong Kong run on Celebrity…
