A Disney cruise passenger described the harrowing sound made when a young girl fell off the ship and smacked into the ocean before her father bravely dove in and saved her.
The passenger, named Chandler, recalled the frightening screams and the moment the girl hit the water, which she said sounded “nothing like if you jump into a pool.”
“There was some kind of commotion,” Chandler told People magazine.
“Then this awful scream from what I assume is the mother and then this massive splash,” she continued.
“It sounded like hitting pavement, nothing like if you jump into a pool, it was so loud.”
The girl fell from the fourth deck of the Disney Dream ship on Sunday as the liner traveled between Nassau and Grand Bahama Island — prompting a loud alert of “Mr MOB … port side!” meaning “man overboard,” according to the Disney Dream Cruise Ship Facebook Group.
It’s not exactly clear how the child fell, however one witness recounted the “horrific” scene to NBC News, saying the child fell from a railing.
“She was sitting on the rail, and he wanted to take a picture, and she fell off,” Gar Frantz told the outlet. “We were just on that deck. And then you saw them throwing, like, life jackets over the sides and stuff.”
A man identified as her father immediately jumped in after her and treaded water for 20 minutes until one of the cruise ship’s rescue boats arrived, witnesses said.
Video posted to TIkTok by Chandler shows the dramatic moment a group of four crew members pulled the pair to safety.
“The Crew aboard the Disney Dream swiftly rescued two guests from the water,” a Disney Cruise Line spokesperson said in a statement.
“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.”
Chandler told People she thought the father and daughter were both goners as she anxiously watched the rescue efforts underway with her own child.
“I had to tell my own 9-year-old daughter Harper they were probably gone [because] they usually can’t find people who fall,” says Chandler, who was relieved to be wrong in this case.
It is rare to survive falling off a cruise ship.
Between 2009 and 2019, there were a total of 212 incidents of passengers going overboard, according to a 2022 report from the Cruise Lines International Association.
Of those just 48 — or 28.2 percent — were successfully rescued.
Disney cruise liners are each equipped with an overboard detection system that alerts the ship’s crew to people tumbling from the vessel into the sea in real time.
The technology has been implemented to cut down the critical response times once a person is in the water, including some systems that use thermal cameras and radar, USA Today reported.
Under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010, cruise liners operating in the US must “integrate technology that can be used for capturing images of passengers or detecting passengers who have fallen overboard, to the extent that such technology is available.”
While Disney’s entire fleet is fitted with the rescue tech, other cruise lines have not previously disclosed that information, according to USA Today.
