"In the event of an emergency, it is the entertainers who are in charge of the lifeboats. Because the rest of the crew has actual nautical duties, the kids from Fiesta Caliente are trained to man the lifeboats. If you ever have to get on a lifeboat, the person in charge of your safety will likely be a nineteen-year-old dancer from Tampa who just had a fight with his boyfriend about the new Rihanna video. James also told me that each lifeboat has a gun on it and that once a lifeboat is in the water, the performer–lifeboat captain is trained to shoot anyone who is disruptive. This is apparently legal in accordance with maritime law."

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/surv/gilist.htm

It is important to distinguish among cruise outcomes - I'd rather experience a 24-36 hour power outage than a fire that resulted in passengers at sea in lifeboats, but there appear to be some narratives that conflate "our honeymoon was not what I had dreamed of" with "captured, burned, sunk, and destroyed" without any points on a scale in between.

Third party advice I'd heard on cruising:

avoid the very cheapest lines

choose an operator with a generally nordic background (not flag/registration, more company origin).

That means

-no showers

- no toilets flushing.

- No internet

- no hot meals

or if you're of a different age:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic