Royal Caribbean passenger shares warning about a major scam
A few months ago a number of people reported paying for cruises, then showing up at the port to find that they were not booked at all.
They had tickets and everything seemed in order, but they had sent their money to a scammer, who had not actually booked them. The tickets the prospective cruisers had were fake.Cruisers also have received calls from scammers who were pretending to be from their cruise lines, saying they had a bill outstanding. Instead of hanging up and checking via the company's website, people panicked and turned over their credit card information to the callers, who were pulling off a scam.
Prospective cruisers are especially vulnerable to scams because they're using systems with which most people are unfamiliar.
Important tip: Be extra cautious when it comes to everything related to your cruise.
The safest choice is to use a travel agent. An agent will deal with the cruise line for you and ensure everything gets paid as it's due.
These scams, however, are not the only ones that have affected cruisers. Cruise News Today's Doug Parker has all the details on a new scam and how you can avoid it.This is Cruise News Today with Doug Parker.
Good morning. Here's your cruise news for Monday, February 10.
A cruise passenger is warning others about a potential scam at Port Canaveral after nearly being overcharged for an unofficial ride.
[The] guests debarked Utopia of the Seas and accepted a ride [to Orlando from a man] who claimed to be an Uber driver. [But later they] discovered Uber was not involved at all.
Now, once they arrived to Universal Studios, the driver demanded $345 for the trip, but after a pushback, the guests managed to walk away paying just $100.
A good rule is to always confirm that your ride is part of an official rideshare network by verifying the vehicle type and the driver and confirming fares before entering a nonrideshare vehicle.And Port Miami set a new record on Saturday, hosting 10 cruise ships in a single day. These ships from seven different cruise lines saw nearly 68,000 embarking and debarking guests on itineraries ranging from short cruises to 27 nights.
Cruise lines included Oceana, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, MSC, Virgin, and Holland America Line. The Miami-Dade County mayor called the milestone a testament to Port Miami's status as a global hub for cruise travel.
(The Arena Group will earn a commission if you book a cruise.)
Have questions about booking a cruise?, or call or text Amy Post at 386-383-2472.
And Celebrity Cruises has canceled two upcoming sailings on Celebrity Solstice for next January.
This is for an extended dry dock. The ship is said to require additional repairs, prompting more time in the yard.
Guests can pick alternate ships with a partial refund if at a lower price, a different itinerary on Solstice, or just receive a full refund.
The cruise line has not disclosed specific details about the repairs.
If you have a lead on a story, let us know. Tips@cruiseradio.net.
I leave you with some footage from the Blake Shelton concert over in Las Vegas over the weekend.
I'm Doug Parker with Cruise News Today. Have yourself a great Monday.
Are you taking a cruise or thinking about taking one?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
Agentic AI in three moves: Connect, co-operate, concierge
A spring storm wipes out the last Thursday flight from Dallas. One in-app request later, an invisible digital assistant secures a nearby hotel, drops a meal voucher into your wallet, reroutes your suitcase, updates tomorrow's Teams meeting, and (because it senses weariness in your voice) orders an Uber Black. The experience feels less like self-service and more like having a well-briefed assistant orchestrating every detail. The result is not merely a rescued itinerary, but a deeper affinity with the very airline that just disrupted your plans. That feeling is the promise of agentic AI: software that breaks a goal into tasks, taps outside systems, remembers context across channels, and hands control back to a person whenever judgment matters. The timing is right. IBM research shows 76% of executives are piloting autonomous agents and 86% expect them to reshape workflows by 2027. Customers are more impatient than ever; 17% quit after one bad interaction, 59% after a few, and 70% expect the next employee or interface to know their context without being told. Agentic AI can meet that bar, but only if we build in the right order. Think of it as a three-stage path that begins with connecting, moves into the cooperate stage, and ends with the promise land of concierge. Here's how it can work: 1. CONNECT: GIVE EVERY CHANNEL THE SAME MEMORY First comes plumbing. Funnel every click, order, chat, and loyalty swipe into a lightweight feature store, a living memory capsule any touchpoint can open. This capsule powers an AI copilot beside frontline staff. The copilot drafts answers, suggests next moves, and flags land mines such as a refund that would void a bundle discount before a rep hits send. Customer Benefit: Instant, consistent replies in one brand voice, regardless of whether the message arrives by SMS, email, or IVR. Business Benefit: Average handle time drops an estimated 25% and brittle integrations surface early, long before full autonomy. Design work changes focus. Instead of polishing pixels, teams choreograph conversations: tone curves, escalation triggers, and data contracts replace static mock-ups. Brand language is encoded once, then reused everywhere. 2. CO-OPERATE: LET A SUPERVISED AGENT OWN HIGH-VOLUME TASKS With the pipes proven, elevate one high-volume journey—where is my order, a password reset, an in-store return—to a supervised agent that still knows when to wave in a human. Because it reads from the same memory capsule, the agent can finish a sizing chat that began on TikTok and push a shipping update straight to Apple Wallet without losing context. If confidence drops, the full thread with rationale lands on an agent's screen. Customer Benefit: Friction disappears. When a shoe size is gone online, the system checks nearby stores and offers same-day pickup. At the airport, kiosks spot a risky connection and print a later boarding pass before panic sets in. Business Benefit: Problems are solved on first contact and revenue pops fast; one fashion pilot lifted buy-online-pick-up-in-store conversions by 22% when agents brokered inventory in real time. Designers double down on micro interactions, surfacing one-tap options and keeping language tight. Strategy teams track completion and sentiment, not cost alone, to keep the experience human. 3. CONCIERGE: ORCHESTRATE SPECIALISTS EVERYWHERE The final move adds an orchestrator that spawns specialist sub-agents for billing, loyalty, inventory, payments, and more, all sharing state. Open-source stacks such as LangGraph give engineers fine-grained control without vendor lock-in. In ecommerce, the effect is dramatic: A shopping companion can search, compare, and check out inside the brand app, while new payment rails let AI complete a purchase securely on any site. Customer Benefit: The brand seems to anticipate needs. Wish lists refresh when sizes restock, pantry staples reorder themselves within a spending cap, and a smart mirror recalls everything tried at home. An edit log and a one-tap undo keep the human in charge. Business Benefit: Service savings persist, but growth becomes the headline. Cart abandonment falls as agents juggle price, stock, and rewards in milliseconds. Every interaction pushes live insight back into product, pricing, and media models. Design, tech, and strategy converge around explainability and seamless human hand-offs; a live expert can join the chat without forcing the shopper to start over. GUARDRAILS THAT MAKE IT SAFE AND CREDIBLE Autonomy delights only when it is accountable. Validate with pre-launch testing of generated copy against brand-voice guidelines. Keep a visible skills registry so compliance teams know which agent touches which data. Run security and privacy drills at least quarterly. These checkpoints matter as much to experience quality as typography or color. THE PAYOFF: LESS FRICTION, MORE GROWTH Execute connect, co-operate, and concierge in sequence, and customers notice what is missing: repeated forms, channel seams, surprise fees, awkward transfers. A purchase becomes a sentence such as, 'Find me a vegan gift under fifty dollars, deliver Tuesday, use points first,' and service stays invisible until empathy is needed, at which point a person appears fully briefed. For the organization, efficiency shows up first, growth second. Support costs drop, conversion climbs, and the feature store becomes a feedback loop that sharpens product road maps and media buys. Strategists rank journeys by value and complexity, technologists instrument every agent step, and designers craft feelings of continuity, anticipation, and control. Brands that master connect, co-operate, concierge will own both the moments that suit automation and the critical times when a human must lead. Those that wait may find their next customer already served instantly by someone else's digital assistant.
Chicago Tribune
5 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Micky Horstman: Before getting more taxpayer money, Chicago transit needs more fixes
As I and 100,000 other people headed home from Lollapalooza, I saw a 'Save Transit Now' flyer plastered on the Red Line's Jefferson station. It warned riders that without a $1.5 billion increase in funding, the transit agencies will fail or cut service to 1 in 5 Chicagoans. I tapped into the station at 10:13 p.m. to discover trains were indefinitely delayed because of police activity at the 95th Street station, where an 18-year-old was in critical condition after being shot by a man trying to rob him. No trains had come by 10:45, and with the platform overcrowded, I took a $60 Uber home. Lollapalooza should've been an opportunity to showcase Chicagoland's transit capabilities. Instead, it highlighted all the problems riders have with the Chicago Transit Authority: Crime is elevated and trains don't run on time. Before Illinois leaders consider a massive transit bailout that puts new tax hikes on the backs of non-riders and continues the broken financial and logistical status quo, the Regional Transit Authority must implement serious internal reforms. At one point, the state considered a $770 million bailout bill that relied on a sales tax on services; another version introduced a statewide, $1.50 tax on deliveries such as Amazon and DoorDash. A new proposal would tax real estate sales in the Chicago suburbs, which could hurt housing affordability in a market already strained by high prices, record property taxes and low inventory. But throwing more taxpayer money at Chicago-area mass transit isn't going to help anyone waiting for a train at 10 p.m. The transit agencies have many issues to fix first. Here is where the repairs should start. Commit to fiscal responsibility: Fully aware of the upcoming fiscal cliff, CTA leadership still advanced the Red Line's $5.75 billion, 5-mile extension. Despite the ballooning costs they chose to saddle the system with decades of future debt. This is emblematic of transit leaders' lack of fiscal prudence. Previous RTA fiscal blunders include spending $40,000 on a DJ, hundreds of thousands of dollars on overtime, over $1 million on employees who don't work, $200,000 on AI gun security, and over $112 million on other contracts for non-enforcement security officers. Frivolous spending with no accountability like this erodes public trust and has failed to improve safety or service. The agencies should start by eliminating reckless line items before they ask for more money and threaten service cuts. To address safety, money could've been spent hiring active Chicago Police Department officers to apprehend fare evaders, and prevent smoking and violent, anti-social behavior. The Illinois Policy Institute estimates it would cost $20 million annually to do that. Instead, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to add social workers to the trains. Pursue meaningful consolidation: The proposed bill would have eliminated the RTA and replaced it with the Northern Illinois Transit Authority. Lawmakers touted consolidation, but in reality it looked more like reallocation. That's a missed opportunity. A better bill would cut down on board members and would meaningfully condense administrative and non-service-related departments under the RTA or new agency's authority. Board members across Metra, CTA, RTA and Pace meet as little as once a month and cost Illinoisans around $910,000 a year. These positions are often filled by former mayors and politicos who rarely have transportation expertise. The CTA's growing personnel costs take up more than two-thirds of its budget. Nearly half of their employees don't work in transit, but rather in administration and management. These positions should be trimmed before service cuts are considered. Just look at what other systems are doing: For the same cost as the Red Line extension, transit leaders in Washington, D.C., are hoping to automate their entire system. That will improve service, safety and reduce long-term operating costs — all things the CTA struggles with. Redesign the fare program: Fixing the mess means fixing funding mechanisms. Nationally, fares covered an average of roughly 34% of most transit systems' costs pre-pandemic. Today, system-generated revenue is just 20% of the CTA's total revenue for operations. Public funding and federal pandemic relief, which is running out, covers the rest of the operating costs. Metra raised fares in 2024 to try to get ahead of its deficit, but the CTA hasn't raised fares since 2018 and offers an unlimited day pass for just $5. The RTA plans on raising prices in 2026, but will a day pass cost more than a simple round-trip ticket? As an avid CTA rider, I know fare hikes are not ideal, but I'd rather contribute more to the service I use than saddle family members far outside the city with random taxes. Worse would be to cut service and abandon Chicagoans when we should be looking to grow the system and improve reliability. Chicago's public transit is critical for connecting communities and supporting economic mobility. But Springfield shouldn't bail out a system that lacks accountability. Illinoisans deserve better than 'more of the same.' By committing to these reforms first, Chicago can transform and restore its transit system without making taxpayers suffer more for years of poor judgment and mismanagement.
NBC News
18 hours ago
- NBC News
Anna Sorokin says she received hundreds of death threats over bunnies abandoned in Brooklyn park
Anna "Delvey" Sorokin says she's received hundreds of death threats in the days since was was accused of dumping pet rabbits she posed with for a photoshoot in a Brooklyn park. The fake German heiress who stole tens of thousands of dollars from banks posed alongside three bunnies on the streets of Manhattan's posh Tribeca neighborhood last week. The bunnies were recognized and discovered in Brooklyn's Prospect Park days later, prompting fierce online backlash. But the headline-making New York City socialite — who vehemently denied responsibility for the discarded bunnies — said in an interview with NBC News that she's particularly shocked by the strong reaction over the incident. 'It just seems to me like everything I do is just wrong," Sorokin, 34, said in a phone call with NBC News. "I can never do right by these people.' Sorokin shared screenshots of dozens of hateful messages she's received within the last few days to her Instagram — which she called "unusable" — with NBC News. Some of them suggest that she she should be killed or take her own life, including one that advises Sorokin to get someone to "make a carpet out of your skin." 'It seems like a lot of these people, just because they're engaged in animal rescue, they feel like they're entitled to insult you or talk to you or say anything because they're hiding behind this thing that they're doing,' she said. The 34-year-old, whose life was depicted in Netflix's hit 2022 series "Inventing Anna," took the photoshoot with the bunnies on August 3 to create content for her Instagram account, which has more than 1.1 million followers. Shortly before the shoot, she posted on Instagram story asking if any of her followers in the New York City metropolitan area had a pet rabbit she could borrow for the shoot, Sorokin said. Christian Batty, a 19-year-old hair stylist Sorokin met briefly last year, reached out to her and offered what he described as a friend's rabbits, she said. Sorokin added that she paid Batty to provide the rabbits and for his Uber to return the rabbits to their owner in Yonkers — or so she thought. A screenshot of the Uber receipt Sorokin shared with NBC News show the ride's drop off location was just south of Prospect Park, where the rabbits were later spotted. Days later, she said she started receiving messages on social media about the rabbits being spotted in Prospect Park. A Facebook user posted images of the domesticated bunnies in the park to a public Facebook group dedicated to rabbits, House Rabbit Society, and other users connected them to Sorokin's photos. Sorokin initially thought the posts were fake, but the flood of messages did not stop. At first, Batty denied dumping the rabbits in the park, according to screenshots of text messages between Sorokin, Batty and photographer Jasper Soloff that Sorokin posted on her Instagram story and shared with NBC News. "Jasper had no knowledge or input as to how the bunnies were obtained or what happened to them after the photo shoot," Soloff's attorney, Gary Adelman, said in a statement. Batty did not immediately return a request for comment. Hours later, Batty confessed that he did dump the rabbits and absolved Sorokin of any involvement, according to a statement he posted to his Instagram account, which has since been taken down. "When I realized the rabbits were being surrendered to me, I panicked," Batty said in the statement, screenshots of which were provided by Sorokin. "At 19, with no experience caring for animals, no pet-friendly housing, and no knowledge of available resources, I felt overwhelmed and made the worst possible choice." "Believing, mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option," he added. Sorokin pushed back on the notion that Batty's age was an issue. "He's old enough to move to New York and live on his own, he should have enough common sense to handle rabbits," Sorokin said. "We're not like asking him to do anything that requires high IQ from him. I just don't know what to say." Sorokin said that she was concerned about how the incident might affect her pending immigration case. Sorokin was convicted by a Manhattan jury in April 2019 on four counts of theft services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny after being accused of defrauding banks and friends of tens of thousands of dollars. Prosecutors said that Sorokin convinced friends and businesses to loan her money to afford a lavish lifestyle under the guise that she was the daughter of a oil baron or diplomat, worth tens of millions of dollars. In 2021, Sorokin was released on parole while she fights deportation. She has been forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor and cannot leave a 75-mile house arrest radius based in New York. "This time, I've done nothing wrong," she said. "And I had the best intentions and it's really frustrating." The New York Times reported that the rabbits were rescued by blogger Terry Chao, who spotted the rabbits in the park. Chao could not immediately be reached for comment. Sorokin said she donated $1,000 to the group All About Rabbits Rescue in the aftermath of the scandal. She also denied harming the rabbits by putting them in leashes, as some have suggested online. "I don't know, I'm not a bunny professional. I didn't know the leashes were such a big deal," she said. "We would put them down for, I don't know, a minute or two, take a picture and pick them up. We were not walking them by any means. And they seemed to be happy."
