Is Carnival Cruise lines just having a bad couple of years, or do they just suck?

[randomness]

The news about the Carnival Triumph and its recent troubles got me to looking into the line's recent record:

• On November 8, 2010, a fire broke out in the generator room of the Carnival Splendor and the ship lost most power.


• On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia, operated by a Carnival subsidiary, ran aground off Isola del Giglio, Tuscany. The ship capsized and partially sank, killing 32 people.


• In March 2012, the Costa Allegra, owned by Carnival Cruise Lines' Costa Cruises subsidiary, suffered an engine room fire and went adrift in the Indian Ocean.


• In February 2013, the Carnival Triumph, with 3,143 passengers aboard, suffered an engine room fire, leaving the ship adrift for days in the Gulf of Mexico.

Is this number of incidents normal for cruise lines? Is Carnival Cruise lines known to be more accident prone than other lines? They do have a large fleet, so I suppose it could just be random chance, but it doesn't seem like a good record.

I don't know the first thing about cruise lines and their reputations, so I'm asking.

Comments

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Silver Seas and Crystal are definitely the money to burn tier. Cunard is a bit more tricky.

Back in the old days (i.e. pre-1965), cruising was a very regimental system with first, second, and third class on the same ship (think Titanic which took it to the extreme). As the Americans have become more involved in the industry, a more egalitarian model was adopted as common spaces became open to everyone. I remember cruising on some very old ships in Hawaii awhile ago that were built in the 1950s. Very sturdy despite their size, but one of their peculiarities was that they were built for a class system and then converted making navigation on board weirdly difficult. What I find interesting, is the class system is starting to make its way back, though under a slightly different guise. Cruises give a great deal of perks to repeat customers creating a pseudo-class system and one that's almost invisible until you become aware of it.

Cunard, probably due to its British heritage, never really got rid of the class system, though its softened considerably in the past century. Those who have better staterooms also dine in better dining rooms and have similar bonuses. Nevertheless, you can get an inside cabin on a Cunard ship relatively cheaply as opposed to Crystal where everything is expensive.

Perhaps another way of looking at it is to observe the passengers' evening wear. On Carnival, they might have one formal night a week which means men might wear a jacket. On Cunard, except for the first and last nights of a transatlantic (when packing and unpacking is a concern), at least 80% of the men are in black tie.