You’ve likely seen the video of the Carnival passengers brawling in the Galveston, Texas, cruise port this week. Sadly, that footage, which shows a large group of cruisers assaulting each other as they disembarked from Jubilee, is not particularly shocking in 2025. Unfortunately, egregiously bad behavior among cruise ship passengers is becoming more commonplace.
This most recent melee comes just days after the arrest of a Royal Caribbean passenger. That 18-year-old man, along with some friends, beat a fellow cruiser unconscious in an elevator aboard Liberty of the Seas.
The assault began after the victim’s wife asked a group of rowdy teenagers to stop jumping in the elevator. Instead of just settling down and happily continuing their vacation, the teens launched a vicious physical attack on her husband. The crew brought the victim to sick bay. Security took the predators to the brig, where they stayed until the ship docked in Port Everglades.
Now, the barely adult ringleader faces felony battery charges and a lifetime of consequences for his impulsive behavior.
The steady stream of reports of poorly-behaved cruise ship passengers is enough to make anyone wonder what’s going wrong.
I looked at the cruise ship crime statistics that the Department of Transportation provides each quarter to the FBI. You can, too. What you’ll see is a significant uptick in reported serious crimes on cruise ships since the pandemic. Some cruise passengers seem to have forgotten common etiquette — or they just don’t care.
So, could the bad behavior of fellow passengers ruin your next cruise?
With hundreds of cruise ships carrying millions of passengers every month, the data shows that statistically, your odds of encountering a bad actor are still very small. But for the cruise passengers who do, the statistics don’t matter.
As a consumer advocate and travel ombudsman, I know from my case files that many altercations have their beginnings under similar circumstances. Here are some of those trigger events and what you can do to avoid or deflect a situation before it escalates to something we might read about in the news the next day.
Pool chair battles frequently lead to scuffles and more
Cruise ship passengers often argue and become involved in altercations about lounge chairs. Many passengers follow the rules and only claim their chair when they’re ready to sit in it. Unfortunately, some of your fellow cruisers ignore lounge seat etiquette and run down to the pool area at the crack of dawn, putting some kind of placeholder on a row of chairs while they go back to bed, eat breakfast or even go on an excursion.
Other cruise passengers frequently become quite disgruntled over chair hoggers. This often leads to unpleasant verbal confrontations poolside.
Ernie T. had a bit more than an unpleasant confrontation over poolside chairs on his last cruise with NCL. He had a full-blown fist-fight.
After exchanging some words with the fellow passenger, Ernie says the other guy used a slur to refer to him. In turn, he admits that he lost his temper and started slugging the other man. Crew members broke up the altercation, and Ernie voluntarily disembarked at the next port of call — permanently. The fellow passenger declined to press charges.
Ernie says that although Norwegian Cruise Line never formally informed him of his placement on the Do Not Sail list, he has never been able to book another NCL cruise.
Related: Cruise lines banned these passengers forever. Could it happen to you?
“I’m not proud of it. I’m deeply regretful, but the guy called me *** and ***,” Ernie explained. “He’s actually lucky the crew intervened. But I would just like closure from NCL.”
I explained to Ernie that NCL, like every other cruise line, has a strict one-strike and you’re out rule concerning disruptive passenger behavior. I’ve never seen the cruise line reverse a banishment after such a serious incident. I hoped that would provide the closure Ernie hoped to get. He told me he’s been enjoying other cruise lines now, but still has fond memories of NCL. Unfortunately, for Ernie, the feelings aren’t mutual and he will not be boarding another NCL cruise ship.
Review your cruise line’s guest conduct rules
Before boarding a cruise ship, you should always review your cruise line’s guest conduct rules.
Of course, we all know that assaulting others is really bad behavior that will have long-term consequences. However, the guest conduct rules detail other, lesser-known actions that cruise passengers must avoid. It also explains what you can do instead of confronting a fellow passenger who may be violating one or more of those rules.
Related: Did NCL ban this passenger for complaining about his cruise itinerary changes?
Keep in mind that there will be thousands of other people cruising with you. Those are people you don’t know and who may not have a pleasant disposition if confronted about chair hogging or anything else.
If you see someone has blocked off a bunch of lounge chairs, report it to crew members. They’ll be able to handle the situation so that it doesn’t involve you at all. This is true of any rule violation you might observe on board the ship. That includes bad behavior like smoking on balconies (a common complaint) or jumping in an elevator, among other things.
Always remember that cruise lines train their crew to handle these situations. Don’t put yourself in danger; allow the crew to take care of the problem.
Unsupervised and misbehaving children
Recently, an article I wrote last year has been getting a lot of media attention. It involves a mom who let her nine-year old child roam around alone on Carnival’s Celebration.
She had been unable to fill her son’s ADHD medication before boarding the ship. Then, mom made an additional mistake and lost track of him on the first night of the cruise. That happened after the kids’ club had ejected him earlier in the day.
Her son wreaked mayhem during his freedom — fighting with another boy and breaking an arcade machine. However, she didn’t discover any of this until Carnival security reviewed the video cameras and knocked on her cabin door at 2 a.m. At the end of the cruise, the captain of the ship gave the little boy his marching papers — banning him forever from Carnival Cruise Line.
That story led to thousands of passengers offering praise for Carnival’s stance and reporting similar tales of unsupervised, poorly behaved children disrupting the enjoyment of their cruise vacation. Additionally, commenters found the mother’s poor judgment outrageous and suggested the cruise line ban her, too.
If you are a parent preparing to cruise with a minor (anyone under 18 years old), please be aware that neither the crew nor fellow passengers want to be bothered by your child. You should never allow your children to roam free on a giant cruise ship. It’s not safe and it’s not allowed.
Children should always be supervised, either by you or by enrolling them in an onboard activity for their age group. No parents should view their family cruise as a chance to take a parenting break – the results could be disastrous for not only other passengers but for your child as well. Just scroll through recent news reports and you’ll see quite a few incidents that will prove this true.
Just last month, two Royal Caribbean cruise passengers were arrested for molesting a young teenager alone in the sauna room of the Independence of the Seas. And there have been other disturbing news reports in the past several months that would make any parent shudder.
Don’t abdicate your role as a parent just because you’ve boarded a cruise ship. It’s dangerous for your child and annoying to other passengers on the ship who don’t enjoy your free-range child’s antics.
Aggressive potentially dangerous passengers
Sometimes you may be minding your own business, enjoying your cruise, when someone threatening appears. Unfortunately, free-flowing alcohol can lead cruise passengers to bad behavior they might not otherwise exhibit if they weren’t under the influence.
Related: How these four passengers got banned for life — and how you can avoid their fate
In the case of the recent Royal Caribbean couple, they had no inkling that a simple request to settle down would lead the teenagers in the elevator to viciously attack. But that is exactly what happened; instantly ruining the couple’s cruise in an awful way no one could have predicted.
Cruise ship passengers must always be aware that there are potentially dangerous people on the ship. You’re in a floating city with thousands of strangers with unknown backgrounds and histories. It’s not wise to confront or challenge strangers in enclosed spaces like an elevator. Don’t make yourself a target.
If a fellow passenger challenges or confronts you, it is best to disengage. Everything on a cruise ship is recorded on video. If you feel threatened, casually extricate yourself and then go to customer service and make a report. Again, leave the problem for trained crew members to handle.
The bottom line
Although the steady stream of news reports of cruise passengers gone wild gets plenty of attention. The reality is that millions of passengers successfully cruise each month without incident. If you follow the rules, don’t confront potentially hostile strangers, and report problems to crew members trained to handle them, you will surely be one of those happy cruisers, too. 🚢😃 (Michelle Couch-Friedman, Consumer advocate and founder of Consumer Rescue)
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