Carnival’s $300M sea change

CARNIVAL CRUISE Lines says it wants to make sure its customers get nothing but smooth sailing from now on.

Rocked by shipboard power failures and bad press, Carnival on Wednesday announced it would spend more than $300 million to make its ships more reliable.

The announcement comes two months after a fire on the Carnival Triumph knocked out its main en- gine in the Caribbean — leaving thousands of passengers and crew stranded at sea for days without working toilets and other services.

Carnival said work is already underway to add an additional emergency generator on each of the line’s 24 ships, as well as other improvements that would ensure services could continue in the event of a main power loss.

The money also covers new fire safety technology. A cruise industry consultant said the expenditure appeared to raise questions, since Carnival said it already met or exceeded all regulatory require-

ments even before the upgrades.

“I certainly hope it answers questions people have out there regarding the safety of Carnival ships,” Rod McLeod, co-founder of McLeod, Applebaum & Partners and a former Carnival Corp. executive, told the Daily News.

“I think they clearly had to do something. But I was surprised by the scope of it.”