For many people, searching for one’s next dream vacation consists of a few things: convenient travel, cost-effective comfort and ensuring their own safety. When people hop on their computers to plan this trip, cruise line advertisements cover their screens with colorful photos of families having fun, young couples enjoying nightclubs and people living it up. The reality is, however, cruise lines care far more about filling all their staterooms and maximizing profits, than they do about ensuring the safety of their passengers. For young persons and families, the inordinately high rate of sexual assaults is never addressed with passengers, and no one is told of the often questionable credentials of their medical staff.

In fact, there is support for the notion that the cruise lines not only fail to reasonably educate (and warn) their customers regarding the dangers onboard their vessels, but that these corporations actually aim to conceal negative data from the public. For instance, years ago, four families that lost loved ones onboard cruise ships banded together to address the cruise industry in Washington, D.C. When the cruise lines largely ignored these families’ concerns, Congress joined the fight and eventually the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010 (CVSSA) was passed.