Disney Cruise Line Quietly Shares Voluntary Crime Allegation Disclosure Reports

Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing titled, Cruise Industry Oversight: Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection. During the hearing, the topic of under reporting of crimes was discussed and referenced the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) which only requires the US Coast Guard to disclose allegations of crimes where an investigation is closed.  This may not seem like much, but the industry report prepared by senate staff showed 959 alleged crimes were reported to the FBI by cruise lines since 2011 with only 31 publicly disclosed by the US Coat Guard per the CVSSA guidelines.

Committee Chair Senator Jay Rockefeller ‘s newly proposed Cruise Passenger Protection Act of 2013 includes language to improve onboard crime reporting and make it publicly available.  TravelWeekly.com has a good summary of the proposed bill.  In response to committee’s legislation to require additional crime reporting, Royal Caribbean president Adam Goldstein testified that his cruise line along with Norwegian and Carnival would be publishing the claims of alleged incidents on their respective websites beginning August 1st with the reports backdating to the passing of the CVSSA in 2010.

I watched listened to the replay of the Cruise Industry Oversight Hearing late last week and from what I could tell, Disney Cruise Line was not part of this hearing, nor mentioned by Goldstien.  However, just before 4 o’clock on August 1, 2013, Disney quietly opted to voluntarily disclose claims on DisneyCruise.Disney.go.com.  The reports provided by Disney Cruise Line are published by quarter dating back to the forth quarter of 2010.

Disney Cruise Line states the following at the beginning of each quarterly report:

Disney Cruise Line has opted to voluntarily disclose to the public all claims of alleged incidents that were communicated to Disney Cruise Line and fall under categories outlined in the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010 (CVSSA), even if such allegations are unfounded (i.e., false or baseless). The CVSSA does not cover all cruises or all passengers and crew members, however for the sake of transparency we have included information relating to all of our cruises worldwide and all of our passengers and crew members.

I compiled the data provided in the 11 reports in the following summary table for your review.

Disney Cruise Line Voluntary Reporting Data August 2013

According to the voluntary reports published by Disney Cruise Line, to the best of Disney Cruise Line’s knowledge, no charges have been filed in any of these alleged incidents.

What are your thoughts on the voluntary reporting by Disney and the other cruise lines? Do the reports make you feel better (or worse) about cruising?

3 Replies to “Disney Cruise Line Quietly Shares Voluntary Crime Allegation Disclosure Reports”

  1. Hayden Pronto-Hussey (@streamlines)

    At a purely numerical level of analysis, it would appear that the risk of being involved is less than 1 in 100,000 passengers, which for me would feel like an acceptable level of risk. But my more worrying statistic is the lack of any charges brought from these 14 claims, which is either a lot of fake claims or lack of any real investigation.

    Reply

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