hi all...I will be cruising with Carnival later this month. I understand that there are safes in the cabins on Carnival ships. How safe are they? I recently saw an expose on television about cruise ships and they came across as being not very safe. Is there really a lot of theft on board? Are the safes really safe?

The media never misses a chance to make a non-event into a huge crisis. The safes are steel boxes bolted into a closet or cabinet. They either use a card reader where you use a personal credit card and swipe it to open/close the safe (no charge, the reader just needs a magnetic strip with a unique encoding), or they have a keypad where you enter a series of numbers as your personal combination.

The facts are that there is no widespread theft aboard cruise ships. I have never encountered a problem and have never heard of anyone on one of my cruises getting robbed or having their cabin burglarized.

I feel quite safe leaving things in my cabin safe and venturing out. Don't worry about it and enjoy your cruise!

I to have used the safes on board they are very secure, also I may add that we have left cups of change in our room from casino and for the laundry room as we do wash laundry sometimes on board, my daughter even left her diamond and gold necklace on the vanity once or twice, and it was left right where she left it, she had forgotten to put it away, so I guess we were very lucky to have a honest steward, besides they are not going jepordize there jobs for theft, they work tax free and recieve cash for thier pay and thier tips so they most likely will not steal from you>

I normally keep $500 or so "mad money" in the safe and have never had a problem. Since my camera stuff will not fit in the safe I have no choice but to leave it out. Again, no problems.

As Larry said I too leave my Mini Cam corder out in the open, as do my camera, my cell phone. And never had any problems. I was surprised on the last cruise where I received a note one morning stating that there would be balcony maintenance and they asked that we lock our door. And when we returned nothing had happened. Many people leave items on chairs to hold them and by golly they stay there all day untouched.

Its like in any place you go. If you leave something of value out where 1000 people could take it someone might. But seeing that the only people that should be in your cabin are yourselves and the cabin stewards. It would be pretty silly to steal something from your cabin.

My two cents