As the coronial inquiry into the death of a passenger continues, P&O says it will stop describing its tours as “fantasy cruises”, opting instead to promote them as “unique date rape and borderline murder adventures”.
“We think the new description will resonate more with our customers,” said P&O Media Relations Manager Kim Holding, “especially to the eight that the police are describing as ‘persons of interest’.”
Ms Holding said she was appalled by evidence before the coronial inquiry that the dead passenger overdosed on the party drug “fantasy”. “We don’t condone passengers getting wasted on drugs,” she said, “That’s what all the alcohol on board is for. In our experience that’s more than enough to impair our customers’ judgement and lead them to do stupid, embarrassing things they regret for years. Like play quoits.”
P&O acknowledged the slogan “Fantasy cruise of a lifetime” was no longer appropriate. “We can pretty much guarantee there’ll be fantasy, but we certainly can’t promise anything about your lifetime,” she said.
“We don’t want people to think of our cruises as sordid meat markets for the socially retarded where you run an unusually high risk of personal harm,” Ms Holding said. “We want to assure all the social retards our there that they can come to our sordid, floating meat markets without fear of injury.”
The bad publicity surrounding the drug death has been compounded by a second coronial inquiry into the death of another passenger in 2002 from meningococcal disease. But P&O says the risk of being murdered or dying of disease on its cruises is relatively low, at least compared to the risk of falling overboard, drowning and alien abduction.
