I think cruising is one of the best ways to travel, but it may be a while before I set foot on another cruise ship after a nightmare that occurred during a recent trip on the Carnival Splendor.
Aside from some intense rocking that led to a day of being seasick in the cabin, there was smooth sailing on my trip on the Carnival Splendor that had departed from New York City on May 12 for an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas. That was, until the early morning hours of Monday, May 19 when the ship was heading back to New York.
I have been on several cruises, but I never once had an experience in which I feared for my life. At around 1 a.m. on May 19, I thought I was going to die. The ship had movies on the deck, so my sister and I were sitting by the pool and watching "The Vow." I was sitting comfortably on Deck 9, watching Channing Tatum trying to win the heart of his amnesia-stricken wife, Rachel McAdams, when something didn't feel right.
The boat was tipping to the right side. Not just slight tipping. The boat tipped so far, that the water in the pool started to pour out of the pool and onto the deck. Passengers got out of their deck chairs and ran in a panic, not knowing what to do. What was happening was not normal. The boat kept tipping further and further to the right and was not going back in the other direction. People were screaming bloody murder. Some ran to the left side of the boat, thinking their body weight might somehow balance out the ship. Plates were falling. Some passengers ran to the elevators and stairs.
Personally, I froze. I didn't know what to do as memories of the movie "Titanic" came to mind. I thought the ship was going to tip completely over. My heart was beating a million miles a minute as the boat continued to tip to the right for at least two to three minutes. After that time, the boat righted itself and was back to normal, but the sense of panic of those who had experienced what had just happened remained.
I began to have a panic attack. Tears streamed down my face as I hyperventilated and passengers came up to the deck wearing life vests. Was it going to happen again? Were we ok? Was the ship going to sink that night?
There were no answers. We waited for some sort of announcement to explain what had happened and if it was going to happen again, but it never came. The cleaning crews simply came to the deck and started to mop up the three inches of pool water covering the deck as if nothing had happened. The bartenders and cooks continued to serve passengers as if nothing had happened. Many passengers who came to the pool deck after the incident had no idea what had just occurred.
I couldn't calm down for half an hour after the incident happened. And no one said anything. There was no announcement over the speakers. No crew members on the deck said anything. Everything went on as it what had just happened was a normal occurrence. As I said before, I have been on several cruises and nothing like that has ever happened in my life.
I couldn't believe after the panic that occurred on Deck 9, not one person was there to say that it was going to be okay. We had to go down to the guest services desk for the worker at the desk to say that "a gust of wind" had caused the boat to tip to the right. A gust of wind? That had to be some wind to tilt a 113,000-ton ship.
I was shocked that no one had said anything earlier. After hearing about my panic attack, a crew member sat down with me and explained, once again, that it was the wind and that what happened was the equivalent of turbulence on an airplane. She said that an announcement wasn't made as to not put other passengers in a panic since it was so late at night, which is understandable, but I tried to explain to her that those on Deck 9 who witnessed exactly what happened, should have been given some sort of notification that everything was okay. The crew member apologized and offered me and some other guests some drink vouchers as an apology, but it didn't seem like enough.
The next morning, the ship's captain made an announcement and apologized for the incident.
I am very disappointed in the way Carnival handled, or rather, didn't handle the situation. While it was understandable that they didn't want to make a public announcement as to not worry other passengers, I felt that there should have been someone going around to let people know that everything was alright. Instead, the crew on Deck 9 kept working as if nothing had happened. I don't think Carnival handled this situation appropriately and I have to say, I won't consider Carnival the next time I book a cruise, if I ever go on a cruise again.
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