Well as far as I'm concerned, the longer it takes for "proof" to come out, the less likely I am to believe they're real.
As I've mentioned before, there are a number of points which make me suspicious. One huge one is the fact that there are pictures at all-- it's not like someone was standing on a ladder, taking these pictures. There are shots from all sorts of angles and are from an elevated position, so they would most likely have had to have come from a helicopter. I know a previous poster claimed they were taken by a rescue helicopter-- however, aside from being in rough seas, was the ship in distress? I highly doubt they would send a rescue helicopter out INTO A HURRICANE unless there was an actual RESCUE needed-- why put the pilot's and the flight crew's lives at risk unnecessarily? I KNOW they wouldn't send a helicopter out to "watch over" every ship riding out some rough seas; that makes absolutely no sense. And besides, even if they did, wouldn't the crew be a bit too busy to be snapping pictures?!
Second point of contention, the "rough seas" issue. I could go either way on this one, but I've been on cruise ships and I've been on deep-sea fishing boats-- and to my (admittedly novice) eye, the cruise ship looks like it's getting tossed around like a little fishing boat, not a massive cruise ship. Look at the waves in most of the pictures-- do they really look that big? Choppy, yes--some whitecaps, yes-- but come on, we're not talking "A Perfect Storm" waves here. To me, the water just does not look to be "rockin' and rollin'" enough to be moving this MASSIVE ship around like that. Like I said, I'm no maritime expert, so this is nothing more than logical speculation on my part... it just seems hard to believe.
Third, and I'm standing strong by this one, I've not found any sort of corroborating evidence of these pictures being attached to this scenario out there in cyberspace ANYWHERE. Yes, there was an article saying that the ships rode out the storm in the Gulf... but no story attached to photos.
Credit the photos to a name of a person who actually took them, and that will resolve this entire debate. That doesn't seem too much to ask, does it?