After four and a half days with no running water, toilets or air conditioning and limited food, victims of the latest Carnival Cruise debacle disembarked in Mobile Thursday night.
The cruise did not sound as fun as they look in a Kathy Lee commercial:
After power went out, passengers texted ABC News that sewage was seeping down the walls from burst plumbing pipes, carpets were wet with urine, and food was in short supply. Reports surfaced of elderly passengers running out of critical heart medicine and others on board squabbling over scarce food.
Unlike in Caddyshack, something tells me that the object floating in the pool was not a Baby-Ruth.
Passengers compared the cruise to being trapped in a port-o-john for five days.
But hey, it was a free port-o-john cruise, since Carnival is refunding the price of the cruise. Wait, that’s not good enough? Carnival is throwing in $500 per passenger.
That works out to about $4.63 per hour for the approximately 108 hours that the passengers were trapped in sewer-like conditions. It was like cruising in that pipe the guy used to escape Shawshank Prison.
I’ve read where Carnival is basically protected from lawsuits by clauses in its passenger agreement. But it’s decision to only pay $500 to the cruise victims is bad business even if they can legally get away with it. Carnival needs to multiply the $500 by 10, at least.