Carnival’s latest cruise ship ordeal may not affect one of their consumer groups much at all.
Andrew Pisacano has already booked his Carnival cruise ship for Spring Break, and he plans on keeping it.
The 21-year-old statistics junior will be heading to Mexico from a port in Tampa for a five-night cruise. He said if anything, Carnival won’t let it happen again.
“If it does, we have a story to tell and a refund,” Pisacano said.
Last week, the Carnival cruise ship Triumph, which held about 3,000 passengers, was pulled into a port in Mobile, Ala. On Feb. 10, a fire in the engine room caused most of the ship’s power to stop functioning, according to ABC News.
Food supplies and medicine for elderly passengers were running short, and pipes had burst, causing sewage to leak into the rooms.
According to NBC News, passengers were instructed to relieve themselves in bags that the crew would come by to pick up.
Triumph passengers were reimbursed for the cruise, given a free future cruise and $500.
Despite the recent incident, Sirah Mora and Reynaldo Calzadilla don’t want to rule Carnival out as a future possibility.
Mora, an 18-year-old international studies freshman, said Carnival did a good job handling the situation because everyone was safe.
She said she and Calzadilla, a 19-year-old computer engineering freshman, had begun looking at Carnival cruises for this upcoming Spring Break but ultimately ruled it out because Carnival required one person in the group booking to be at least 25 years of age.
Both students said they first chose Carnival because of the price.
Calzadilla, who has been on two Carnival cruises already, said he believes students in general will react similarly to how he and Mora did. He said money is a big deal to students, whereas families with young children would probably be more concerned about safety.
Like Mora and Calzadilla, Pisacano was mainly attracted to the company’s prices.
He said he doesn’t think this incident will affect Carnival’s business in the long run, and the company is dealing with it well.
