NEW DEVELOPMENT: Chris Elliott's blog has a featured entry: "Florida Attorney General announces sellout “settlement” with Royal Caribbean" (emphasis added) see: [ Florida AG Sellout ]

It gets better. According to an earlier Elliott blog, A 1997 settlement agreement provides that the cruise lines could no longer charge customers any fees in addition to the advertised initial ticket price, except those fees actually passed on by the company to a government agency. No wonder the cruise lines settled! Not clear if this applied to Regent or Oceania, although the announcement of the settlement with them at least implies it does.

A year ago, again according to Elliott, a Coral Gables attorney had sued a couple of the offending cruise lines, contending they not only violated the earlier settlement agreement, but were also engaged in a conspiracy and in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. If there was a conspiracy, and a crime was committed, is this a RICO matter as well? INTERESTING! See it here: [ Fuel Surcharge Lawsuit blog entry ]

I don't know how all of this turned out, but will look further. Meanwhile, has anyone received his or her fuel supplement checks from Regent or Oceania? We haven’t.