Before you cruise

Before you choose your cruise, get a sanitation report on the cruise ship. That will help you know how the CDC scores that cruise ship’s sanitary conditions.

Prepare a ditch bag

A ditch bag is a small bag holding the stuff you may need if you have to ditch – ditch your room, ditch the ship, whatever. What goes in your ditch bag? IDs, passports, necessary medications, cash, spare credit card, spare eyeglasses, those kinds of things. Pack a few additional zippered plastic bags – to keep your medications and cell phone dry.

Ideally, the bag should be as small as possible and it’s especially useful if it can be thrown over your shoulder and worn under your life vest.

FYI: most life vests are equipped with a whistle and strobe light, so those are probably not necessary to store in your ditch bag. If you’re worried though, any outdoor equipment store will be able to sell you a strobe light that’s safe for water emergencies and a whistle.

Your in-room safe may not be that safe

So many of the cabin safes are left locked when passenger disembark that just about every crew member knows the bypass code for opening them. Your in-room safe may be fine for everyday items like your address book and tip money, and of course you shouldn’t be traveling with any real valuables that you aren’t wearing continuously. If you are traveling with something valuable, use the ship’s safe instead. There are records of what’s placed into and taken out of that safe.

Stay aware of your surroundings

It can be hard not to let your guard down on vacation, but it’s important to remember that unsavory characters lurk everywhere just like at home.  Sexual assaults, beatings, robberies, and more have and can occur – even on a cruise ship, which is, after all, a small self-contained city with thousands of passengers and crew members. Act as if you are in a city hotel rather than on a safe deserted island.

Watch the alcohol

Sure, you don’t have to drive home, but fights as well as stupid behavior can occur when you consume too much alcohol, as evidenced in 2010 by one passenger releasing the cruise ship anchor while underway.  Other reports of cruise ship brawls are further evidence that too much alcohol and too few security guards simply don’t mix. Gives new meaning to ‘you booze, you cruise, you lose’ doesn’t it?

Have travel insurance

As they are returning home, passengers on the Costa Concordia have told stories of having to jump into the water and swim to shore. Many made their own way to other towns and paid additional money to get back home. See how this disaster may have been made a little easier for the stranded passengers with travel insurance.

Related topics

Will Cruise Travel Insurance Sooth Traveler’s Jangled Nerves?

Will the passengers of the sunken cruise ship ever see their belongings again?

Why is the captain the last to leave the ship?

The reasoning behind the order of ship abandonment is that the captain is responsible for the passengers and cargo on the ship. In addition, legal title to a shipwreck hinges upon whether the owner has abandoned the vessel or not. Abandoned ships are fair game to treasure hunters and the first diver to take possession of the wreck typically gets to keep the bounty.

What constitutes abandonment depends on the particulars of the case, but typically a shipwreck has to be completely submerged for years with no attempt from the owners to salvage it before any court will declare it abandoned, but it’s unlikely that the Costa Concordia will ever be declared abandoned. First, much of the ship remains above water and second, the owners are making an active effort at recovery.

What will happen to the passenger’s sunken belongings?

More than 4,000 people fled the sinking ship and every one of them left behind what they brought on the boat: electronics, jewelry, clothing, and more.  Salvage crews began to work on the capsized ship already and if marine engineers are able to right the ship and tow it to safety, the owners may be able to collect property from the cabins and return it to the passengers and crew.

That’s what happened when the Empress of the North, operating by Majestic America Line of Seattle, ran aground southwest of Juneau Alaska in 2007 (although the reports of passenger care and was far different than those coming from the passengers of the Costa Concordia). In that situation, passengers also left the ship with little other than their personal identification and medication, but they were reunited with their belongings later.

What can passengers expect from the Costa Concordia operators?

Unfortunately, in the situation of the Costa Concordia sinking, there’s likely to be a lot of lost and damaged property and passengers can file claims with the cruise line for their missing possessions, but most cruise tickets limit their liability for lost or damaged goods. The standard cap is $150 and these contracts specifically exclude any liability for cash and expensive items like jewelry and electronics.

Passengers without travel insurance are likely to be very disappointed in what they eventually receive for their belongings. The baggage coverage with a travel insurance plan will have limits on individual items and expensive items as well, but the policy limits are typically much higher than that offered by the cruise line.

In addition, if a traveler scheduled their electronics and other expensive items on their homeowner’s policy, they may have some option for reimbursement there.

I have a future booking on Costa Concordia. What are my options?

Under more normal circumstances, if a cruise company has to cancel a departure, they will offer a full refund or an alternative voyage -– typically with some kind of incentive compensation or treats attached to make you feel better. Then, it’s your choice.

This, as you may imagine, is not a normal situation. If you have a future reservation on Costa Concordia, you’ll have to work with the Costa Cruises company. Depending on how far out your voyage is scheduled will likely determine how soon you are contacted by the company.

I have a future booking on any cruise line, Costa Cruises included, and I want to cancel. What are my options?

Some travelers may feel that until they know what went wrong, they don’t want to sail. What are their options for getting their money back?

The typical procedure for cruise trip cancellations are, very broadly: cancel with a certain number of months in advance, pay a cancellation fee, and you’re out. Cancel within a certain number of days or less of departure, or choose not to show, and all your money is lost.

It’s important to remember that most cruises involve costs that are outside the actual cruise ship charges – they also involve airline tickets, hotel reservations, and more.

By default, travel insurance doesn’t provide reimbursement when a traveler changes their mind and as sensational as the news reports are, that’s still what it is – changing your mind about the trip. Travelers with ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage with their policies, however, do have the option to cancel for 50-100% of their trip costs for any reason at all, including changing your mind.

Follow-up Warning: In most cases, travelers must purchase their travel insurance within a certain number of days of making their initial booking to have the ‘cancel for any reason’ option available. See the important notes about ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage.

Travel insurance would give you a ‘lifeline’ to call

While the immediate task of the cruise management company should be to help the survivors, as well as the relatives of the victims, helping that number of people is difficult for even the most well organized team. Travelers with travel insurance have a third-party to call for assistance – and these folks are trained to handle travel emergencies.

Arranging medical care or evacuation

Survivors who regularly take necessary prescriptions could be struggling to find replacements. Those who were injured or suffered hypothermia from the freezing water may be struggling to find medical help and may be facing foreign medical bills. Travel insurance assistance services can locate local medical care providers and even arrange for an evacuation.

Replacing lost passports and credit cards

Survivors of this bizarre tragedy were forced to abandon the ship, in most cases, with little more than the clothing on their backs. If they were lucky, they had a cell phone in their pocket. In the dead of night, these former passengers were virtually stranded in foreign country without their wallets, identification, passports, credit cards, cash, and more. Travel insurance services can help travelers replace their passports, obtain new credit cards, and even advance cash from their own accounts or from family.

Making new travel arrangements

As the survivors have begun returning to their homes, many tell tales of finding their own transportation to other towns, and having to rely on the kindness of strangers for temporary lodging. With travel insurance in their corner, stranded travelers have help finding and paying for alternative flights back home, lodging, and replacement clothing and personal items.

The ship carried approximately 4,000 people, three of whom are now confirmed dead and many (nearly 70) are currently missing. Some of those who are missing may, however, have swum to shore and have not been accounted for yet.

The Costa Concordia sailed from Civitavecchia near Rome on Friday morning. It apparently hit the rocks off Giglio late the first evening of the cruise.

According to current media reports, the ship’s evacuation drill was not scheduled until Saturday afternoon, so passengers were uninformed as to how best to evacuate. Some jumped into the sea after the life boats were delayed.

Cruise Ship Sanitation Reports

In the meantime, however, cruise ship travelers have definitive resource to find out how safe their cruise ship may or may not be:  the CDC maintains a Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) to assist the cruise industry on the prevention of the spread of gastrointestinal diseases on their ships. They post the most recent sanitation scores and reports for specific cruise ships on their website.

It operates under the Public Health Service Act and works by:

• inspecting cruise ships periodically and by unannounced inspections
• monitoring gastrointestinal illness outbreaks
• training cruise ship employees on public health practices

Plus, they provide health information regarding the cruise ship industry to the traveling public. For more information, read about the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP).

Research your intended cruise ship’s sanitation scores: enter the cruise ship, the cruise line, and choose the dates for which you want their scores.  In general, the higher the score, the higher the level of sanitation, but this score does not reflect the risk of getting some diseases.  A score of 86 (out of 100) or higher is considered good.

Alternative Cruise Ship Information and Cruise Travel Insurance

Alternatively, you can select the cruise ships with scores of 100 and review their reports.

In addition, the CDC provides updated outbreak information for international cruise ships and public health information for cruise ship travelers.

If you’re planning a cruise trip for 2012, be sure to review your health insurance policy and the coverage area to understand whether you will have health care protection on your trip. Also, remember that Medicare does not provide coverage outside the U.S. borders and if you have to be medically evacuated off the ship to receive medical care, having a travel insurance plan with medical evacuation coverage is a sure way to avoid a very expensive and unexpected bill.

So, we poked around in the Cruise Critic boards and found numerous discussions posted by cruisers about when the power goes out. Some of the more problematic situations cruise passengers encountered were:

• All the lights go out (in one passenger report, the emergency lights did not come on either)
• The air ventilation systems shut off (one passenger claimed her room got uncomfortably warm)
• The elevators were inoperable (causing big problems for one disabled passenger)
• The kitchens were inoperable (resulting in a limited food menu for a family)
• The ship loses it’s time slot to leave the harbor (the delayed departure didn’t cause too much trouble)

Floating adrift in the ocean with no lights, inoperable bathrooms, and little information is bad enough, but if you are on a cruise where this happens, what about the pre-paid scuba trip or Cathedral tour or the chance to swim with dolphins? The cruise operator is only responsible for repaying the payments you made to them, and not everyone else.

In this situation, unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that travel insurance can help you either. We reviewed a number of descriptions of coverage and even called one travel insurance provider to verify, but if your cruise ship’s power goes out and you miss a planned on-shore excursion as a result, you could be out of luck. Our recommendation is to work with travel suppliers that let you cancel your excursion if something happens, or let you reserve it for a small fee and pay the remainder when you arrive. That way, you’ll be protected in case you can’t get there.

Be sure to see our latest cell phone tips for cruise ships too – just in case you have to make that phone call.

But here’s the problem: you’re still paying international roaming rates.

Cell phones typically operate on land-based systems that work when the phone can be in contact with cell towers. On a cruise ship, your phone needs to access the satellites to reach the network instead. Some phones from various carriers don’t automatically connect to satellites either, so they use the cruise ship service which turns a cell call into satellite data, but that costs money and this is where they make a little extra off unaware cruise passengers.

It may not be clear in their brochures, but if you use your cell phone out of sight of land, you are automatically using the cruise ship’s service and you’ll be billed through your regular phone service at a cost that’s as high as $3-$5 per minute.

1. If you have a data plan in place, turn off your phone’s data roaming option so e-mail won’t be automatically downloaded at the roaming rates. Your data plan may be used if you receive text messages with image attachments as this traveler was surprised to learn.
2. If you have to make a call, wait until the ship docks so you can connected to the less expensive land-based cell towers. That is as long as your phone will work in that country; otherwise, you’ll be paying international rates.
3. Turn off your phone when you’re not using it. You’ll be charged for calls that ring through, but not those that go directly to voice mail when the phone is turned off.

Generally, a cruise line will volunteer vouchers for passengers to take a future cruise or earn on-board credits, but there are no regulations obliging them to any particular reimbursement. In addition, and according to Ed Perkins of Smarter Travel, the cruise lines are generally pretty stiff on what they offer passengers.

When Hurricane Irene pounded toward Puerto Rico this summer, Royal Caribbean and Carnival cruise ships stranded hundreds of travelers in San Juan. These two cruise lines treated those passengers very differently – Carnival paid for hotel rooms and flew them to their next port of call to rejoin the cruise (earning them a Hero rating by Cruise Critic), but Royal made that offer only to the small number of passengers who booked their air through Royal Caribbean (earning them a Zero rating by Cruise Critic). The remaining passengers were left to arrange their own accommodations and return flights.

We contacted a couple of travel insurance companies to find out whether travel insurance would have helped these passengers, and unfortunately, it would not. Being abandoned by the cruise ship isn’t the same as missing a connection to get to the departure or a trip cancellation. This situation appears to be one of those where the cruise ships are responsible for the passengers and if they let you down, you don’t have travel insurance to fall back upon.

See our traveler notes on what to do in the aftermath of a hurricane, and to protect yourself while traveling during hurricane season, take a look at our Hurricane Center: The Traveler’s Guide to Hurricane Season and remember hurricane season in the Atlantic isn’t over until November 1st!

While your unused trip costs will be refunded up to the plan limits, what about all the other pre-paid costs like theater or sporting event tickets you’ve purchased ahead of time?

MH Ross’s Bridge and Complete planshave a nice benefit that reimburses travelers for forfeited pre-paid expenses if they have to interrupt their trip and return home for a covered reason.The plan language for the Bridge plan looks like this:

“If You interrupt Your Trip for a covered reason, We will
also reimburse You, up to $300, for the amount of unused,
forfeited, non-refundable payments for shore excursions;
theater, concert or event tickets or fees; or sightseeing if such
arrangements are made during Your Trip and are to be used
prior to the Scheduled Return Date of Your Trip.”

Note: the Complete plan provides up to $500 in forfeited event fees.

Additionally, in the event a cruise or other travel supplier makes a change in your trip itinerary – one that prevents you from attending a pre-paid event or activity – after your scheduled departure date, these plans will reimburse you for those costs up to $250 as well.