It has been over 30 years since the seizure of the Achille Lauro by Palestinian Terrorists. Are cruise ships better protected? You would like to think so, and it is certainly possible steps have been taken that are not obvious, but there are doubts. CuiseLawNews discusses the question.
This in particular caught my eye.
“Just last month, the Miami-Dade County Police Department said: ‘We ended up concluding that now they’re targeting the cruise industry. We’re the cruise capital of the world. It’s the same possibility of having two planes crash into the World Trade Center.'”
From an earlier post that discussed the implications of various threats on the choice of homeports for major cutters, “Ruminating on Homeports While Playing the Red Cell,” the Top Cruise Ship Ports are:
- Miami, FL
- Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Port Canaveral, FL
- New York, NY
- San Juan, PR
- Galveston, TX
- Tampa, FL
- Seattle, WA
- Long Beach, CA
- New Orleans, LA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Baltimore, MD
- Cape Liberty, NJ
- Jacksonville, FL
- Charleston, SC
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
Cruise ships are a target. I have long believed that ferries and cruise ships were simple and easy access targets. Yet again are the host of other targets such as shopping malls.
The greatest difficulty for terrorist is getting explosives past the dogs. But no doubt eventually they will.