Any time you are on a boat, there should be a safety orientation and something equivalent to a life boat drill. If one is going on a vacation cruise, there is something fundamentally dissonant about drilling with life boats and preparing for disasters; after all, as Martin points out, they are rather rare. So I am not surprised that such procedures would not have been emphasized on this cruise ship. But consider, when was the last time you took a commercial flight and the crew skipped the bit about the seat belts and the oxygen tube and exit procedures....

Most of my work on the water has been on National Park Service vessels, working boats which are definitely not cruise liners. There has always been a safety orientation, pointing out where the PFDs are available and where the life rafts are located. After all, the boat is small and the ocean is big.