Well yeah there were some passengers on that ship that would have you believe that they just endured the worst thing ever possible, but more than anything I think it was mostly the media hyping it and trying to make it look worse than it was (what else is new). I did love the one interview I saw though. Guy just gets off the ship and the interviewer somehow was trying to make a connection between the people who were left behind in New Orleans after Katrina and those stranded on the cruise ship and the guy basically just stopped the reporter and essentially said, Hang on a minute, Katrina was a horrible natural disaster, we were just hanging out on a cruise ship for a few days. Whereas I'm sure being on that ship was unpleasant there was certainly no cause for all that hype! As someone who enjoys cruising and will continue to do so here's how I look at it. First of all these people had already enjoyed 3 days of what was only supposed to be a four day cruise when the problem happened, so really they got most of what they paid for. But ok things went bad and from all reports the crew performed admirably, amazing considering they were the ones actually having to deal with the mess not just whine about it. Anyway to compensate people for their trouble Carnival refunds their entire fare and forgives them their bills for what they spent on board, gives them credit for another free cruise plus $500 on top of that. If that had been me I would've probably been booking my next cruise about as fast as I could've after getting off that ship! But hey I probably would've been one of the ones to have found a way to enjoy myself and treat it as an adventure while it was happening too. What the hell would be the point of being stuck in that situation and just choosing to be miserable the whole time, talk about just making a bad situation worse!