A trip aboard a Disney Dream cruise nearly turned into a nightmare this weekend after a child reportedly fell overboard and her dad jumped in after her.
Both the child, reportedly age five, and her father were saved, according to multiple media reports and other passengers aboard the four-day cruise on a Disney Dream ship.
Shannon Lindholm, a passenger on the ship, says she didn’t see the fall, but she did watch the rescue happen. The ship was at sea, on its way from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when the girl fell in on Sunday, Lindholm told CBC News.
“We heard the M.O.B. call on the intercom,” Lindholm said, referring to code for “man overboard.”
“Then, we watched the rescue from the fourth floor. Disney did a wonderful job. It was fast and amazing,” said Lindholm, 38, from Houston.
Lindholm shared a photo of the rescue boat going into the water. She told CBC that within five minutes, the child and her dad were back on the cruise ship.
“The man rescued was giving a thumbs-up sign as their small boat was approaching the cruise ship, and everyone cheered on the ship as they boarded back on,” she said.
“Miracle, for sure.”
CBC News has reached out to Disney Cruise Lines for confirmation, but they have yet to respond. In a statement to USA Today, a Disney spokesperson said the crew “swiftly rescued two guests from the water.”
“We commend our Crew Members for their exceptional skills and prompt actions, which ensured the safe return of both guests to the ship within minutes. We are committed to the safety and well-being of our guests, and this incident highlights the effectiveness of our safety protocols,” the statement continued.
Passengers describe swift rescue
Janice Martin-Asque, another passenger on the ship, says she was on the third deck when she heard the announcement over the intercom around 11:30 a.m. Sunday. But she didn’t know what “M.O.B.” meant, she said, so she and her family went up to Deck 11 to grab some snacks.
“That’s when we saw a bunch of people crowded up over the railings,” Martin-Asque, 42, of Kissimmee, Fla., told CBC News.
“My daughter asked someone what had happened, and someone said a kid had fallen overboard and that the dad jumped in after her.”
Martin-Asque filmed the rescue, which she describes as “intense,” “terrifying,” and, “a miracle.”
The footage shows a yellow rescue boat drifting toward a figure barely above water, holding a child and bobbing in the choppy sea. When the boat reaches them, the rescuers lift the child into the boat, followed by the man. People can be heard cheering, clapping, yelling “Hip hip hooray!” and muttering, “Oh, my god.”
A company from the U.K. was in Dartmouth, N.S., on Wednesday showing its new technology that uses artificial intelligence to speed up search and rescue operations at sea. The company has had success with the cruise ship industry in the U.S. Preston Mulligan reports.
In the “Disney Dream Cruise Ship Group” on Facebook, other passengers described the accident as occurring from the fourth deck of the ship. According to the Disney Dream’s floorplan available on the Disney Cruise website, the fourth deck has a walking track that wraps around the ship.
“A girl fell overboard from the fourth deck and her dad went in after her,” wrote a passenger Sunday.
“Thankfully the DCL rescue team was on it immediately and both were saved,” he added.
It’s unclear how the child fell overboard. There are plexiglass barriers on the decks, according to multiple passenger posts and Disney cruise forums.
On the Facebook page, some passengers described the terrified mother yelling from the deck, “She’s five and she can’t swim!”
“It was incredible,” Lindholm said of the rescue.
Rare to fall overboard
It’s rare for passengers to fall overboard. According to a report by trade body Cruise Lines International Association, 212 people (both passengers and crew) fell overboard between 2009 and 2019, which they say represents just 0.00004 per cent of passengers and crew.
Nearly half, or 48 per cent, were rescued, according to the report. And in every case where the cause could be determined “following a careful investigation, it was found to be the result of an intentional or reckless act.”
In 2019, an Indiana toddler fell to her death from the 11th storey of a cruise ship docked in Puerto Rico. The girl was travelling with her parents, two siblings and two sets of grandparents aboard the Freedom of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean Cruise.
Her grandfather was eventually charged in her death. He was holding Chloe Wiegand when she slipped from his grasp and fell about 150 feet to her death from an open window.
He said he didn’t know the window was open when he lifted Chloe up to it.
