Cruise | featured news

Carnival Corp. on Wednesday announced it will implement a $700 million-plan to upgrade its fleet and avoid incidents like the the disabling of the Carnival Triumph. The Carnival Cruise Lines overhaul --which is expected to cost $300 million--will include significant enhancements to emergency power capabilities, new fire safety technology and improved operating procedures, the company said in a release. The parent company, Carnival Corp, also will be making improvements to other ships in its line, including Princess, Holland America, Seabourn and Cunard. Overall enhancements company-wide could be as much as $700 million, said the company.

Carnival Corp. (CCL) is offering a Caribbean cruise for as little as $38 a night, less than a stay at Motel 6, after an engine fire on the Triumph stranded passengers at sea for several days. A four-night trip on Carnival’s Imagination, leaving Miami on April 22, costs $149 a person, including meals and some beverages, according to the cruise company’s website yesterday. The lowest nightly rate at the budget-priced Motel 6 chain was $39.99, according to an online ad.

Carnival, the world's largest cruise operator, has rejected a request from a powerful U.S. senator that it reimburse the U.S. government for the costs it incurs for rescuing the company's ships when they become disabled.

The violin played by the bandmaster of the Titanic as the oceanliner sank has been unearthed, a British auction house said Friday. Survivors of the Titanic have said they remember the band, led by Wallace Hartley, playing on deck even as passengers boarded lifeboats after the ship hit an iceberg.

Cruise Week editor in chief Mike Driscoll tells USA TODAY that the Carnival Dream incident "seems to be a technical issue that happens all the time on land ... at hotels" and is getting so much attention only because it happened a month after a fire on the Carnival Triumph. "But it's bad news for the cruise industry," he says, with the Dream and Triumph out of service at least temporarily and it might "cement in (some people's) minds a fear about cruises."

"You don't back a horse called Striding Snail, you don't name your boat Titanic II." Sound advice from a 1996 Beautiful South tune, "Little Blue." One man, however, seems hellbent on ignoring such plain folk wisdom in an audacious pursuit to rewrite history... A replica of the doomed ship Titanic will sail in 2016, says Blue Star Line chairman Clive Palmer.

Enough talk about drifting cruise ships with overflowing toilets -- that's cruising's rare dark side.

What could possibly go wrong? An Australian billionaire is getting ready to build a new version of the Titanic that could set sail in late 2016.

A Coast Guard official said Monday that the cause of the engine-room fire on the Carnival cruise ship Triumph was a leak in a fuel oil return line.

A former Orange County attorney has been arrested on suspicion of killing his ex-wife for financial gain in 2006 by strangling her and throwing her overboard while on a cruise along the Italian coast, authorities said.