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Broadcasting from the Tripinsurance.com studios in Jacksonville, Florida.

This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, how's it going?

My name is Doug Parker.

Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Cruise Radio. Very happy to have you here, my friend. On today's show, a review of MSC's latest ship, the MSC World America from Claire. Also, staff writer Richard Sims on deck with Cruise News jumping to him now. Hey, Richard.

Hey, Doug. We kick things off with the least surprising news

ever. The Bahamas wants more money. I feel as if we've been reporting different versions of this

story for years now. For a while, it was the Bahamian government saying that cruise ship passengers

weren't spending enough money in Nassau, so they wanted a higher per-person tax.

And to Nassau's credit, they did in that case take sort of responsibility and say, you know, our port has kind of gone to hell over the last few years, and they did that beautiful new refurbishment.

I mean, the port is beautiful now. This time around, they're looking not at the ships, but at the private islands built by cruise lines.

Obviously, these are very profitable, and to put it simply, the Bahamian government wants what it believes to be their fair share.

So they're holding what they're calling, quote, tax compliance talks with the cruise lines in order to figure out a more equitable solution.

It's more complicated than that, but that's what it boils down to. The prime minister says they're

seeing a huge increase in the number of ships and visitors to the Bahamas over the past 80 years,

past 80 years, over the past few years, but the money being generated isn't making its way into

the government coffers. And of course, we're seeing new private islands pop up all the time. You know,

...