On Jan. 26, 2012, in the United States, it became law that in the interests of public transparency, airlines publish pricing which includes all taxes. This law allows the people searching for airfares to see the total costs, rather than the airlines promoting seemingly low  fares,only for the consumer  to find the actual total cost to be considerably higher. From the consumers point [...]

Two Manhattan-based law firms vowing to defend all of the victims of the Concordia disaster may face hurdles in bringing a class action lawsuit to the U. S. court system. The two firms are (1) Proner and Proner, and (2) Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik LLP. Michael Bern filed a lawsuit for six passengers against Carnival [...]

Cruising as a travel option still has a far better safety record than driving or flying. The Costa Concordia tragedy has received an amazing amount of media attention, which comes as no surprise. The major consumer news media believe that a “newsworthy” story requires emotional impact, conflict, loss of life/property and/or novelty. This story has [...]

Note : This blog post (below)  was written prior to the Costa Corcordia tragedy, and originally intended to run last week. I held it back a week because I felt I had to consider what, if any, hand the general topic of the blog could have had during the Concordia incident. As the cruise industry has grown, and [...]

I originally wrote a blog on a different topic for today, but due to the tragic events involving the Costa Concordia this past week, I’ve chosen to lighten the subject matter of my blog this week. So, let’s talk about the “Cruise Cult”. I think it would most certainly be wrong to have thousands of [...]

We now know the ship DID hit the rocks during the sail-by just outside the two Le Scole reef islands. This did NOT seem likely earlier since no one reported the damage when it occurred – highly unusual. In fact, nailing down the timeline in this incident has been the hardest part. According to Costa [...]

We are not much closer to knowing exactly what happened with the Concordia now than we were on Friday. We do know there is a huge rock embedded in the port side of the ship’s hull – the side that is away from the shore where the ship is now laying on its side, with [...]

Over the years we’ve had quite a number of CruiseMates Group Cruises. They’re all great fun because of the comraderie, and the fun events that the host and groups organize. However, I believe the very best group cruise yet is coming up in 2012. It’s going to be a breeze… on the brand new Carnival Breeze. [...]

 People who have cruised previously are quite likely the #1 reason new people choose to cruise for the first time. Whether it’s family members pushing you to join them, or friends, or people in your work place, raving about how superb their cruises were, that’s likely the reason you set out on your first cruise. As devotees to the [...]