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What is Going on Here!
By Todd De Haven
June 29, 2006

I am not an expert on cruising. As a matter of fact I have been on only one cruise, Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas. But I enjoyed it so immensely that I am greatly anticipating my second voyage sometime next year. I discovered that the experience of cruising simply defies the expectations, whatever they may be. In almost every case, the usual response of a first time cruiser is, "If I had known it was like this I would have started doing this years ago."

Unfortunately, I have also discovered that it is nearly impossible to sway the non-experienced person with negative pre-conceived notions about the cruise experience. I have tried to persuade friends and family to cruise with us, and to say they had misconceptions that were staggeringly inaccurate, and also impossible to change, is an understatement. It would be easier to convince Elie Weisel the holocaust never happened.

And it is precisely this negative misconception by some non-cruisers that makes it so easy to frighten them further into believing the worst things possible about the experience.

My first cruise left such an impression on me that I have since been voraciously reading anything I can find about ships. I am in awe of the whole concept of them. So, even though I am a novice cruiser, I am more than casually familiar with the majority of cruise-oriented web sites online, including the ones that I discovered are obviously "anti-cruise industry."

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I started reading these anti-cruise sites with an open mind. After all, with only one cruise under my belt it was possible there were aspects of the industry I did not know about. Yet, the more I read them the more I noticed a near absence of journalistic authenticity. It soon became obvious to me that by any measurable standard, these sites are wildly sensationalized and almost totally meaningless.

They appear to be greatly fueled by grotesquely skewed statistics provided by individuals who obviously have axes to grind. The leading "expert" they all seem to rely upon is a Ph.D., but in sociology, who has actually testified before Congress as their "expert" witness in statistics! More about him later but suffice it to say, he did not appear to be any kind of expert in my opinion.

In any case, I didn't pay these sites much mind as they are mostly small and unknown, until I started seeing more legitimate media reports that had actually been fooled into believing their hype.

The one that fueled me to write this article was a column I recently read on a travel web site, Tripso.com, which claims to be the "last honest travel web site." The writer, billing himself as a professional travel consultant, states in his article that although he has never been on a cruise, he would never go on one. Okay, that's his choice, unusual for a professional travel advisor in my opinion, but that is his right. A lot of other folks wouldn't cruise either, for that matter, but they don't describe themselves as travel professionals.

The sad thing was how he made his decision. It appears he based it largely on the obviously skewed reports on these various web sites without question. And that, my friends, is the bottom line here - he admitted he had never been on a cruise and he came to believe they are terrible, scary things based on what he read, while experienced cruisers almost always think they are the best things ever created.

The overwhelming number of those who cruise thoroughly enjoy the experience, as substantiated by the number who return, many of them time and time again. To validate this one need not be a statistician or even to have cruised. Just drop by virtually any travel agency and they will readily tell you of the phenomenal growth of the industry over the past ten years, growth that continues unabated. The fact remains that cruising has the highest satisfaction rating of any vacation/travel industry. And before I forget, what type of vacation does the professional Travel Consultant at Tripso normally cover as a journalist? Air travel. Hmmm, has anyone checked the satisfaction index for air travel recently?

OK, allow me to ask the obvious question. Assuming you have a completely open mind, to whom would you give the benefit of the doubt? Quite presumptuous, don't you think, to warn others to stay away from something they have never even tried? What then, would lead this travel "expert" to make such statements? Was it ignorance or did our "expert" just jump on the bandwagon of anti-cruise industry web sites and take them at face value? If so, what is wrong with that? I believe the answer is in the quality of the information these sites are providing.

If we were talking about smoking there is a mountain of evidence to prove smoking is bad for you. You don't have to be a smoker to know how bad it is for you (though far too many have found out). But, is there a mountain of evidence to prove that cruising is bad? No, and apparently that is the cruise basher's biggest problem. The fact is, all evidence indicates that cruising is by far the safest form of travel ever invented, and ranks the highest in satisfaction levels of all the travel possibilities.

So, to solve it this problem, the bashers have had to resort to creating their own "evidence" and statistics, which sadly only works because it feeds right in to every irrational misconception many cruise novices tend to harbor.

The Anti-Cruise Industry Web Sites
The number of web sites devoted to bashing the cruise industry is fairly small, thankfully, and they have one thing in common - fear-mongering as a means to stop the growth of the cruise industry because they have personal reasons for wanting to "get back" at it.

One site comes from an individual who had a family member go missing from a cruise ship and obviously refused to accept the most plausible reason for her disappearance. He is trying to "get back" at the industry, which he apparently feels was responsible for his loss.

Another individual got into the cruise bashing business by accident. By all appearances, she was looking for any topic for a web site that might attract a lot of readers so she could make money from pay-per-click advertising. The disappearance of George Smith on his honeymoon just happened to be dominating the headlines at the time.

A third individual actually wants his readers to boycott an entire cruise line because he wasn't satisfied with the manner in which a bartender addressed a request of his to turn down the volume on a public CD player. He not only has a web site of his own; he has written three anti-cruise industry books. Think about this. Say you went on a vacation to a theme park and had a bad experience. What would you do? Maybe write a letter of complaint and tell your friends and co-workers. But would you choose to make it a full-time job? Would you write three books? Would you dedicate your time and financial assets to making and maintaining a web site listing nothing but derogatory claims about the theme park industry? I doubt it.

And more than anything else, you certainly wouldn't go back and repeat the experience, would you? You would have to be crazy to do anything as contradictory as that, right? What if I told you that this person, who is the self-proclaimed expert all of these cruise bashers rely upon, has only one claim to any experience within the cruise industry at all, the fact that he has paid for and sailed on dozens of cruises? Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Ross Klein's Cruise Junkie Web Site
Cruisejunkie.com is the web site of Dr. Ross Klein, as mentioned he is a man who purports to be an expert on the cruise industry. Dr. Klein is a Ph.D. in Sociology at the 18,000-student Memorial University of Newfoundland, a university spread over four campuses, three in Newfoundland and one in Great Britain. Klein, the "expert," has even testified in front of Congress. I kid you not! Unfortunately for his anti-cruise colleagues he is the best expert witness they can find. So let's take a look at his web site.

Klein proudly points out that he is the author of three books on the pitfalls of cruising (although no sales figures for any of those books have been released). Still, I can find nothing whatsoever in Klein's background to suggest he has been even remotely professionally associated with the cruise industry. Let us, therefore, look at some of the claims he has made about the industry in his web site and other places and see if his conclusions about the cruise industry appear to be something an expert would say.

Environmental Issues
Even with my limited cruise experience, I know that most cruise ships launched since Royal Caribbean's Voyager Class ships in 1999 (Voyager of the Seas, Explorer of the Seas, Adventure of the Seas, Navigator of the Seas and Mariner of the Seas) are environmentally "green." Not so much as a toothpick is thrown overboard and even the only liquid discharged is treated water that comes close to meeting potability standards.

Yet Klein testified to congress that in two years, three cruise ships received Letters of Memorandum from the State of Washington concerning the discharge of effluent into the sea. The truth is, these cruise lines self notified the state, they were not "caught", and the discharged water had gone through an upgraded state of the art sewage treatment system that was pending the state's stamp of approval.

Now, Klein's web site lumps these incidences under the heading "Environmental Fines," yet since 2003 there have only been two alleged instances wherein a ship has discharged sewage in U.S. Waters. I say alleged because even according to Klein's own site, in neither case was a fine levied by any governmental agency. As a matter of fact, even if one incident is true, it wasn't even illegal, and I repeat - there were no fines.

As a matter of fact, many of the incidents listed in this "Environmental Fines" section are hearsay or anecdotal citizen complaints and in most cases wherein incidents are reported, he does not list the outcome. I'm ready to "bet the farm" that in the Washington State case, the new sewage treatment system was subsequently approved.

A heading like "Environmental Fines" where most incidences involve no fines are mere examples of the sensationalism behind Klein's web site. Under the same section Klein lists tour boats such as the Texas Treasure, a 9,332-ton casino vessel that only sails short day cruises. He lists "paper" violations many of which did not involve fines. Some incidents listed aren't even violations at all! Also under this section one finds more than a few of the "eyewitness" reports never officially documented by any agency.

In another section of his web site entitled "Incidents at Sea," Klein nevertheless also lists crimes, accidents and other incidents occurring on land - not at sea. He has a category for vessels under "Incidents at Sea" called "Ships/Cruise line" implying that all the vessels listed are cruise ships, yet nothing is further from the truth. He includes happenings on apparently anything above the size of a rowboat, including fires and the sinking of overloaded inter-island third world ferries. In short, many of the disasters and near disasters that Klein reports have absolutely nothing to do with the cruise industry at all.

Another heading which reads "known cases of persons falling or jumping overboard " from cruise ships is preposterous in its pomposity. No one has fallen from a cruise ship in modern history unless they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing.

Still, a graph on Klein's web site reflects a passenger going overboard even though his own explanation of the event reveals the man was prevented by security from even making it over the side of the rail. This incident is also one of many that is nothing more than an "eyewitness" report never officially reported, but which nevertheless made it into Klein's "statistics."

Klein's same graph reveals a passenger going over the side of a cruise ship on which he wasn't even a passenger!

What this shows is that his web site is mostly comprised of the "he said she said" conjecture style of reporting with a large dose of one sided, personal complaints. In essence, the amount of incontrovertible fact that can be found on there falls somewhere between slim and none. And yet this individual testified before Congress as an "Expert Witness."

Klein on Crime on Cruise Ships
Klein's testimony before congress involved primarily statistics, and was given with the intent to refute the testimony of a true professional statistician, Dr. James A. Fox. Klein presented a different interpretation of Fox's statistics which he claimed was far more accurate than Dr. Fox's simply because Dr. Fox was speaking on behalf of the cruise industry. Such a premise is ludicrous when one takes under consideration that his peers universally recognize Dr. Fox as one of the finest statistical analysts in the world. Klein on the other hand, has no known qualifications to present statistical analysis, and Klein is known cruise industry maligner. So why should a cruise-basher's "statistics" be any more accurate than those from a professional who was hired to do his job because he is the the most credible statistician the cruise industry could find?

Currently one of the biggest concerns confronting cruise novices is the "safety factor." These encompass everything from getting sick, being sexually assaulted, robbed, or even dying, either accidentally or otherwise. Klein countered Fox's statement that one is 17 times safer on a cruise ship than on land in the U.S. by saying one is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise ship than on land.

Now the anti-cruise segment has taken this sexual assault issue, using Klein's misguided "statistics" and run with the issue. Another basher actually trumped up the stat on a nationally released press release by trumpeting "one is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise than in a major U.S. city." How ludicrous and inaccurate can we possibly get? They can't even keep their own story straight.

Does sexual assault happen? Yes, it happens everywhere. But despite the false claims of this anti-cruise lobby, the chances of a sexual assault happening to any cruiser are so small only the most paranoid should refrain from a cruise. Much safer on a cruise ship than anywhere on land is what Dr Fox'x statistics conveyed on this issue.

Let me give the subject some perspective by stating something about such crimes where I live. I grew up in a town in the Southeast that currently has an approximate population of 16,000 and which is ranked in the upper half of the top 100 small towns in the United States in which to live. Among many other attributes, it is statistically quite safe to live in this town. Notwithstanding that fact, in 2006 there were fourteen arrests for sexual assault (including one rape) even here.

On March 27th, 2007, Deputy Assistant Director Salvador Hernandez of the FBI testified certain facts before Congress. From fiscal 2002 through February 2007, (a period in excess of five years) the FBI opened 258 cases of crimes on the high seas of which 184 involved cruise ships. Sexual assault represented the greatest percentage (55%) of crimes reported. Most of the sexual assaults occurred in cabins and over half of those were alcohol related. Fifty-nine percent were not prosecuted due to; lack of evidence, indications that the act was consensual, and/or contradictory victim/witness/subject statements. That translates to the FBI either prosecuting or referring for prosecution, in approximately only 60 cases of sexual assault spread out over the entire period. Statistically, a very safe environment as far as sexual assault is concerned.

Illness on Cruise Ships
On his web site, Klein states that well over 6,300 passengers on cruise ships became ill with gastrointestinal illness in 2006. For those unaware, Norovirus (or the Norwalk Virus) is a gastrointestinal ailment that is the second most common virus in the United States and is found not just on cruise ships. It is also called many other names including, "stomach flu." The cruise industry is the only facet of the hospitality industry required by the CDC to provide detailed statistics on the number of cases of gastrointestinal illness. That is why you read so much about "Norovirus" on cruise ships and nowhere else despite the fact that it is very common everywhere.

Now think; if over 12 million passengers will cruise this year, even if as many as 6,000 become ill with a gastrointestinal illness that puts your chances of getting sick at .05% of all cruisers (one in 2000). Regarding crime, if as many as 100 cruisers (itself a vastly inflated number) become the victim of a crime involving sexual or physical assault while on a ship, the fact is you are safer on a ship than you are walking down the street in your home town.

Klein's Cruise Expert Qualifications Summed Up
For the most part, Klein's web site and most of his links are crammed with disinformation, inference, innuendo and conjecture, not to mention more than a liberal dose of nothing more than gossip; all of which he lumps into his "statistics." Most obviously, "Cruisejunkie.com" is NOT the web site of any expert on the cruise industry.

Despite my concerted attempts, the only relationship that I have been able to establish between Klein and the cruise industry is, I am reliably informed, that Dr. Klein has been a paying passenger on approximately thirty cruises. This certainly does not provide justification for Dr. Klein to pass himself off as an expert on the cruise industry and almost certainly wouldn't qualify him to testify as an "expert" witness in a major legal proceeding. To provide a corollary, I have written probably over 500 newspaper columns dealing with one basic subject. While of course quite familiar with my subject, I certainly wouldn't for countless reasons, consider myself expert enough on it to totally condemn any legitimate industry associated with that subject.

I believe, however, I may have found what ultimately could be the reason behind Klein's crusade and if I'm correct, the reason is for me at least, incomprehensible. The start of his campaign against the cruise industry appears to correlate with the same time frame he received what he felt to be an unsatisfactory response to a complaint he made to an upscale cruise line about his perceived ill treatment by a bartender.

Over what any reasonable person would consider an insignificant tiff, Klein literarily foams at the mouth in his explanation of the event. He actually prompts everyone visiting his web site to not only boycott that particular cruise line, but also every product of the parent company which extends to hotels, resorts and travel agencies! To say that such is pomposity to the extreme has got to be among the world's grandest understatements. Therein lies the most plausible explanation I can detect for Cruisejunkie.com and one which simultaneously jerks the proverbial rug of legitimacy from beneath Ross Klein, among the cruise industry's most vociferous, yet most ill prepared, critics.

My Favorite Anti-Cruise Web site
When I discovered CruiseJunkie I was incensed, but it led me to yet another cruise industry bashing web site that has become by far my favorite target. While some such web sites make me angry, this one is often so sophomoric it becomes, unintentionally of course, actually quite funny.

My first question about all of these web sites is "who is behind this and why?"

In the case of Cruise Bruise, under "About Cruise Bruise" is found an article accompanied by what I as a former law enforcement instructor would describe as something akin to a mug shot of an unidentified middle aged woman with glasses. She is scowling at the camera and wearing some kind of hat and although she never bothers to identify herself, I presume she is the author of the page.

In the accompanying article, she states that Cruise Bruise was started a year before as a public service following her learning about the disappearance of George Smith. He was the young man who disappeared under very strange (and what many refer to as "sordid") circumstances from a ship in the Mediterranean while on his honeymoon. She states that it would be unfair to blame one hundred per cent of everything that happens on a cruise ship on the cruise lines. That's nice. Then she reveals her true agenda when she describes short "dirt cheap" cruises as making cruising available to every segment of society and thereby as a result, murderers, child molesters, thieves, arsonists and even terrorists. She digs her hole even deeper as she insults the overwhelming number of people of any age (yes including this 60 year old) who have ever stepped aboard cruise ships looking forward to a fun party atmosphere. She writes that such type of people "guarantee" (not my word folks, it's her's) that drug dealers, drunks and rapists will be aboard as well.

So, what do we have here? A woman who purports to be so upset about an incident involving someone she has never met that she decides to rise up and begin what amounts to a crusade "in the public interest" against an entire industry about which she obviously knows little to nothing. In the process, she manages to insult probably at least half of the entire population of the United States. And to top it off, she doesn't even state that she has ever been on a cruise! My reaction to that page was "Alright lady, now that you have managed in one paragraph to insult probably in the neighborhood of two hundred fifty million people, just whom are you wishing to attract to your web site?" This woman just doesn't shoot herself in the foot, she manages to blow off both of her legs!

So, who does run this site? The fact is that she goes to great pains to hide her true identity on the web site. There is an "about us" section that reveals nothing about her name or qualification to have a web site about cruising. There is a giveaway, however, in the advertising section (could it be that selling advertising is solely what this web site is about?) in which she gives the name J Huggard and an address in Tennessee. A subsequent Google on the name reveals a look at her only truly personalized web site: http://adsensetraveler.blogspot.com/ which shows that her business is building web sites about any topic at all and filling them with Google ads, known as "adsense" ads.

So what? There is a huge cottage industry of people creating web sites about any topic they can think of, with the sole goal of placing Google ads. She has a dozen such web sites, and claims no experience or expertise in any of them. She apparently does it all for the advertising and I doubt very seriously if she has even herself been on a cruise.

This is one lucky woman. She threw together a web site like most of us make a dinner salad and she managed to make it sensational enough that I have even seen it mentioned on Fox and other news network television shows. All of the cruise bashing web sites link to it. She even brags about the fact that she is now the webmaster for yet another cruise bashing web site - International Cruise Victims. Imagine an entire industry made up of selling advertising space on web sites that do nothing but bash an industry. You don't even need any knowledge of the topic, just regurgitate the same stories you see elsewhere, exchange links, hope for good search engine rankings, and sit back and collect the checks from the ads. You can read all about it on her web site. "Living the Ad Sense Dream" So what if thousands of innocent people get tainted in the process - she's making money!

There is one problem, however. Cruise Bruise doesn't have any Google Ads. It has ads from networks that are less picky about whom they associate with. In her Living the Ad Sense Dream blog she alludes to someone who apparently doesn't like her getting her Google adsense account de-listed.

Why am I so cynical? Well let's just say that maybe I'm leery of someone who creates an internet site as "a public service" by highlighting negativity, including the misfortune of others, with what to me, at least, is the obvious intent to profit from it. While perfectly legal, it goes against my sense of true morality while pretending to be ingrained with it.

So, it comes as no surprise that this web site has a complete page begging lawyers who make their living suing cruise lines to bid on the right to place ads all over her web site. That comes as a big shocker, now doesn't it?

The Sensationalistic Content of Cruise Bruise
A disclaimer for Cruise Bruise actually states that its purpose is to educate people so as to ensure everyone a safe cruise experience. Then why does every single page, article or description produced by the site that I have read, to me at least, go out of its way to instill the fear of cruising in anyone not familiar with the industry? Readers of the site who have never been on a cruise are likely to come away thinking that the average cruise ship passenger has a very good chance of being killed, maimed, or assaulted while behaving themselves and minding their own business.

Look at this example from her "cruise safety tips";

"With the cheap prices of cruises, and the growing popularity, you will find ship mates now reflect every cross section of society. You can count on coming into contact with levels of society, you have never even seen, much less dined with. That can include sexual offenders, theives, drug dealers, drug addicts, alcoholics, spouse abusers, child abusers, con men and women and everything from organized crime members to petty career criminals. "

Such a perception is blatantly untrue and I believe it's very wrong to foster it.

Many of the stories listed on the site actually concern events which occurred on land rather than at sea! Of those that do concern incidents at sea, many are marginal at best. The one below provides an example.

As one of the "Cruise Bruises" there's the report concerning a 31 year old male who states that he remembers being in the casino of a cruise ship having a few drinks and a good time. The next thing he knows, he's swimming in the ocean. The best part is that he hasn't the foggiest idea of how he got there! So, he concludes in his statement that someone spiked his drink with a knockout drug, despite the complete lack of evidence, any apparent reason or possible motive associated with such an act.

Just contemplate the plausibility of the above scenario for a minute. Thankfully a passing freighter rescued this young man following the longest swim he'll ever take. I assure you that while most stories are not as entertaining, a huge percentage of CruiseBruise stories are of this unsubstantiated sensationalistic ilk.

I especially love the video section wherein Cruise Bruise defines the majority with descriptions such as "awesome" (oh how I wish they would ban that term) and "terrifying." One video claims to depict winds they describe as so dangerous, they could blow someone overboard! Almost needless to say, the videos I viewed didn't in my opinion even come close to living up to the hype - especially since no one has ever been "blown over" on a cruise ship in modern history.

In another instance, instead of the promised storm tossed ships, one depicts a passenger wrapped up in what appears to be toilet paper and playing the role of the "Mummy" while walking down hallways followed by laughing pre-adolescents. Let me tell you, that sure was "terrifying" in more ways than one! Especially disappointing are the videos most interestingly titled which turn out not to be available.

Needless to say, it appears Cruise Bruise prints most of their stories following little to no investigation or follow up. The "National Enquirer standard" of "they said it therefore I can report they said it" applies. The other standard that obviously applies is incidents that are not anything beyond the norm such as mishaps, rude treatment, misunderstandings, injuries and illnesses that happen in every industry and every community throughout the country. I will admit that some really do highlight deficiencies within the cruise industry since after all, the cruise industry is an industry and problems are found in all industries. Still, this site and others like it underscore the fact that we live in a society where no one is evidently any longer held accountable for their own actions or behavior. People are not even expected to be accountable for so much as basic safety precautions, whether or not they happen to be on vacation -- especially on a cruise ship.

Backing Up My Point
Of course bad things can happen on cruise ships. But cruising is still the safest form of modern-day travel by far in almost any aspect imaginable. There have been very few injuries or deaths in the last 10 years that one can attribute to the fault of the industry. Do these sites mention that? No. They solely focus on the bad without even attempting to put any of their claims into perspective.

There are reportedly three million injuries each year in transportation-related accidents and approximately 40,000 fatalities. Quite possibly the majority of those injuries and deaths are primarily the result of individuals driving under the influence or as a result of not having the common sense to buckle a safety belt. I wonder how many of the zillion or so web sites out there that address such accidents and injuries are those primarily sponsored or funded by legal firms?

I guess you have to drum up business somehow, and maybe the sponsoring of web sites whose alleged reason for existence is to serve the "public interest" is one of them. But I happen to believe it is the unconscionable tactic of scaring the hell out of people by the use of totally unreasonable innuendo solely for the sake of making money.

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