Carnival Cruises Planning Sitcom: Get Real!

Carnival Cruise Lines is in early talks with "a major TV producer" about doing a TV sitcom, which would likely feature a cruise director in a central role, according to John Heald, [left] senior cruise director and author of an "unofficial" Carnival Blog that reportedly gets millions of hits.

Heald hosted a special "bloggers cruise" in January, leading some 700 hard-core fans on a seven-day cruise through the western Caribbean on the Carnival Freedom. And visitors to his blog are invited to make suggestions for the 2009 bloggers cruise.

Carnival needs a little levity, after deaths and illnesses aboard its cruises. But a search of Heald's blog turns up no news about passengers who were sick or any other incidents. It's a god news blog. The problem is, there's an elephant in the room.

What makes a corporate blog effective is to include the bad news with the good, explain how problems are being handled, and respond to readers' concerns in an open and honest way. It's high time for Carnival to get real.

Said one of my Twitter buds, John-Paul Micek "Carnival shuld have series on A&E called 'Flip This Petri Dish' w # of peeps who get sick on their ships."

Dell became very familiar with the need to get real very fast when they first started blogging and ignored negative news.

While Heald is charming, funny, and a good writer, his blog clearly is a Carnival blog and the disclaimer is just corporate crap:

Disclaimer
This is a personal weblog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own (and those of some of the commentators that I have included) and not those of Carnival Corporation

Pardon my age, but wasn't that already done...?
Gale Storm!

No one's picked up that "creative" theme, somebbe there's a reason we don't have Love Boat to kick around any more.

Ta!

Let's hope we're not cursed with another version of LoveBoat. It was bad enough the first time around. :))