Originally Posted by piper28

Heh, well, except for the meat grinder part, yeah, this is true. Obviously it's going to be somewhat correlated to the ship size, but these days with any fair sized ship, my understanding is that it's actually fairly normal to have a passenger die on any given sailing. A lot of people eating a lot of rich food they're not used to and getting a lot more exercise than they're used to. Makes for a bad combination.

I know one recent cruise I was on we had ambulances meet us at every port. I haven't been on a cruise that required an airlift off, although I know my parents have. I have been on a cruise that returned to port after leaving because of a medical emergency. But cruise ship captains must be miracle workers, because according to them, every time they update you on the evacuated passenger's status, they're always doing much better .