When the Carnival Triumph finally docks in Mobile, the entire cruise-ship industry should have a PR triage team in place to meet them.

The team should be armed with statistics, fact sheets, talking points, B-roll, available spokespeople at the highest levels of the industry, social media toolkits and a video crew to document the whole thing. 

Overkill? Hardly. The entire industry is at considerable risk from Carnival’s repeated snafus and it only takes a few nasty incidents such as this one to sour prospective customers on the whole idea of cruising.

I won’t go into nauseating details, but reports from the ship (coming from a lot of women sailing without their spouses, BTW), indicate that Carnival’s fun boats are in jeopardy of being re-christened, “The Sh!t Ships.”

Adding insult to injury, Carnival is trying to spin the Triumph snafu, saying that some toilet facilities are operation and people have access to food. There are even reports of crew members giving out free alcohol, raising concern among some passengers about what happens when aggrieved travelers get a snootful and start to riot.

Full disclosure: I have never been on a cruise, just as I have never been to Mexico (where the Triumph was headed), and you will never find me in either place.  Especially on a cruise. The crowds, the germs, the buffets, the unsavory people, the possibility of disappearing overboard after someone has copped your wallet, etc. Ugh!

These ships are just too big and too likely to fail, given their relentless schedules and apparent lack of oversight and attention to maintenance and hygiene issues. Think of more than 3,000 paying customers (not to mention 1,000 crew) in a confined space all trying to use limited toilet facilities, or lining up for food. Think of a basketball venue operating under those conditions for four or five days.

Meanwhile, if you’re contemplating a spring cruise and you are considering a Carnival ship, here are some things you should bring along:

* Portable toilet, for additional comfort/convenience
* Sleeping bag or mattress pad for camping out on deck
* MREs (Meals ready to eat) from the Army Surplus store
* Flashlight and batteries
* Lots of sunscreen, hand sanitizer, 100 percent rubbing alcohol
* Bottled water
* Extra medications for the longer trip (but not Viagra, because you won’t feel like it anyway)