aground to a lack of air conditioning and hot meals have luxury cruise passengers worried as the season rolls into high gear.

With a record five million people expected to take cruises this year, the question of safety looms large for many.

Last Friday, the Star Princess of Princess Cruises struck a rock off Alaska, gashing its underbelly and curtailing the journey for 2,226 passengers and crew.

The liner began taking on water, but the flooding was contained and no one was injured.

She was en route from Skagway to Alaska's capital city.

After passengers and crew were evacuated, the vessel was escorted into nearby Auke Bay where it dropped anchor.

The same week 1,760 passengers on Carnival Cruise Lines' Celebration were evacuated after a fire disabled the ship and left them without air conditioning, hot meals and other comforts for two days.

The Celebration ran into a Cuban cement carrier in 1989, killing three people on the Cuban ship.

And earlier this month, Majesty Cruise Line's Royal Majesty ran aground off Massachusetts, on a cruise to Bermuda.

The 1,500 passengers waited a day before higher tides permitted towing of the ship.

They were offloaded at sea by ferry.

The ship missed two calls in Bermuda while it was dry-docked to repair damage to her under-plates.

In another embarrassing incident in June, the American Queen paddleboat -- full of travel writers seeking to chronicle the joys of riverboat cruising -- got stuck in mud on its maiden voyage on the Ohio river.

Last July, Celebrity Cruise Line's Horizon , while cruising from New York to Bermuda, was hit with an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, traced to its jacuzzi hot tubs. Dozens of mostly elderly passengers became ill with the pneumonia-like illness and there was one death.

And last December, the world's most famous ocean liner, the Queen Elizabeth 2 , newly refitted, suffered a much-publicised Atlantic crossing of brown running water, exploding toilets and garbage spilling into the hallways.

The QE2 also hit uncharted rocks two years earlier off Martha's Vineyard, forcing evacuation of the 1,824 passengers and repairs costing $13.2 million.

Then there was the issue of refunds.

"Passenger ships are relatively safe, but there are continuing, nagging problems,'' said Barry Sweedler, director of the Safety Recommendations Office at the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington. "We've seen some pretty close calls.'' In a 1989 report, the NTSB faulted cruise operators for safety shortcomings and called for better fire and emergency safety procedures. Many rules have changed since then but changes are slow to be implemented, Sweedler said.

"It's not that safety was improved just by the snap of a finger,'' he said.

"It's going to take another 15 years before everything is covered, both new vessels and existing vessels.'' Cruise industry and US Coast Guard officials interviewed this week say the three June incidents, which caused no injuries, show the effectiveness of existing international safety regulations and quarterly Coast Guard inspections.

"All three of these incidents, from the standpoint of the passengers and their safety, ended very, very well,'' said Cynthia Colenda, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, an industry group in Washington.

"It's just a bad spate of incidents,'' she said.

"Our industry still has the best safety record of any other mode of transportation.'' Henry Przelomski, former executive officer of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Miami, said accidents will always occur because ships are skippered by ordinary mortals.

"You try to come up with some fail-safe type system, but you're always going to have human error,'' he said.

Despite concern about recent mishaps, passengers are still coming aboard in record numbers -- 4.6 million North Americans in 1994, up steadily from 1.4 million in 1980, according to the Cruise Lines International Association in New York.

The group projects a record five million passengers this year and eight million by 2000, encouraged by prices averaging $175-$225 a day, making cruises more affordable to the middle class than ever before.

QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 -- Brown running water and exploding toilets made for a nightmare voyage last December.

ROYAL MAJESTY -- Ran aground off US East Coast.