Travel agents weigh in on Carnival Cruise Line issues

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - For the second time in a week, a Carnival Cruise ship has had embarrassing malfunctions out on the water and customer's vacations have been cut short.  Over the past month, that cruise line has been in constant damage control. So, will this have a lasting impact on the industry?

Despite several malfunctions with Carnival Cruise Line's giant floating playgrounds, Covington Travel said people in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio are still booking cruises without any worries.

"They might joke about it or something, but I wouldn't say that it has effected people's opinion of cruises," Covington Travel travel agent Karma Muter said.

Karma Muter has been a travel agent for 25 years.  She said she has never seen a cruise line have continuous issues with ships.

"They (Carnival Cruise Lines) are going to give every single Carnival ship a thorough investigation."

The president of Travel Leaders, Ann Waters, said yesterday they learned one of their customers was impacted by issues with the Carnival ship.

"We looked through our records and we noticed we did have one client who was scheduled to be on the Dream leaving actually Saturday.  So, the agent quickly got on the phone and let the client know that we had already started to look for ways that we could save their vacation," President of Travel Leaders Ann Waters said.

Some travel agents in the Fort Wayne area said you shouldn't rule out a cruise for a vacation idea quite yet.  Waters said it's projected that 21 million people will take a cruise this year.  That's a five percent increase from last year.

"We feel very strongly that cruising is still a very safe vacation choice."

Results from our poll on wane.com reveal 69 percent of the people who took the poll may reconsider taking a cruise based on all of the malfunctions with Carnival's ships.