Are cruise passengers too rude? Popular Carnival ambassador has had enough 

• A popular online cruise figure had to log off from his usual Q&A after barrages of negative comments.
• This comes at a time when the behaviour of cruise passengers has been called into question.
• Does the cruise community need a shift in attitude?

John Heald, a hugely popular brand ambassador for Carnival Cruise Line has had to log off after receiving a barrage of aggressive comments from readers.

Heald runs a Facebook page which has 600,000 followers, and responds to hundreds of queries from readers.

The light-hearted and easygoing Heald had to call it a day on his work after an overload of unseemly comments became too much for him.

Heald wrote: “Hello everyone, I have to close the page a little early today. I’m not going to pretend that I have something to do, but I’ve answered hundreds of questions and some of them have been extremely aggressive to me and full of name-calling, and I just need to clear my head.”

He assured he would be back the next day and acknowledged that he knows it’s only a small percentage of people who are writing these things.

“But fear thou not. I shall be back early tomorrow morning to help you all I can, along with my colleague, Jacinta.

“Thank you for your company today, and it’s important that I remind everybody that 99.99% of people who cruise with us are having the best of times, loads of fun, and I can’t wait for it to be your turn.”

The attitude of cruisers 

Many headlines have been circulating lately, questioning the behaviour of cruise passengers. Recently, the debate around poor parenting of children was raised again, after a child was banned from a line. And just last week, a group of people were banned from Carnival after sparking violence onboard.

But the problem is that the aggressive behaviour has continued off the ship and into the digital sphere.

Cruising is known to have large online communities across various forums and social media platforms. And cruisers are keen to discuss their favourite holiday, go over the latest news and rumour mill. 

As Heald mentioned, it’s unfortunate when a vocal minority can sour these communities, especially to the extent that it negatively affects valued members of the online cruise community, such as Heald himself. 

Similarly, while the majority of cruisers will behave without any issues onboard, even a small number of people bringing a bad attitude can turn a cruise experience sour. 

Since that day, Heald has returned to his chirpy daily posting and answering of questions, however, the incident serves to underscore that both on and off the ship, the cruise community should be looking to address complaints in a positive manner and move away from online insults on onboard misbehaviour.