Cruise ships are just supposed to be places where a bunch of drunk strangers form a giant petri dish of potential ailments while trying to enjoy themselves.
But one recent South Pacific cruise was totally derailed by brawling passengers engaging in fights. The cruise line lays the blame at the feet at 23 members of one Italian family.
Warning: the video below, which shows just one of the brawls from aboard the cruise ship, may be disturbing due to its content.
At the beginning of this video — a recording of one of multiple brawls, only some of which were filmed — a quick-thinking cruise passenger on this Carnival Legends ship can at first only see the periphery of the fight.
And, of course, hear the screams.
Most of the passengers were apparently Australian. The man recording the video below certainly sounds like he was.
As the brawl moves closer, a number of people flee to avoid being drawn into it or injured by the participants.
You"d think that a fight on a boat would have a vibe like something out of a pirate movie, at least.
instead, this looks like an unarmed version of The Purge.
To add to the disturbing elements of this video, people who appear to be cruise ship employees are shown appearing to engage in two different unacceptable behaviors.
One person who appears to work security is shown repeatedly kicking a man who is laying on the ground. It appears that someone throws themselves over that man"s body to protect him.
Some reports claim that the man on the ground is a 17-year-old boy. Either way, that looks horrible.
Multiple employees appear to try to deter filming, which is not even acceptable when actual police do it.
Some reports claim that cruise ship employees stole people"s phones in order to delete incriminating videos.
The key culprits in the actual brawling and fighting, however, were reportedly members of a 23-member Italian family.
One cruise passenger described this "big Italian family" assailing other passengers, resulting in people "getting strangled and punched up."
"Very violent, they were full-on attacks."
At least one passenger called his father in Australia to plead for him to get the government to send help.
Though members of the crew eventually locked a number of passengers in their rooms after days of terror, there wasn"t really a place where they could lock up a couple dozen troublemakers.
Cruise ships don"t have the authority to make people walk the plank, folks.
Some passengers point to what they believe to be the real culprit.
One chose to blame alcohol, as many passengers have unlimited passes to the bar.
Which, she claimed, means that a lot of people are just super drunk by 6 or 7 in the evening.
The problem with that accusation is that this cruise ship, which was traveling from Melbourne to New Caledonia, had 2000 people on board.
Two thousand. Versus what, a couple dozen — let"s say a few dozen — troublemakers.
This wasn"t an alcohol problem, this was a terrible people being violent problem.
The frightening brawls sent a number of guests to lock themselves in their cabins for their own safety. Not exactly an ideal vacation.
Carnival Cruise Line says that they"ve sent people to provide comfort to passengers who were understandably upset.
Apparently they offered passengers 25% off on a future cruise, which is … well, that"s gotten a mixed reception.
Some passengers aren"t planning on ever going on another Carnival Cruise Line, as you may recall that some were just as horrified by the behavior of employees as they were by the brawlers.
So a 25% discount — or one of 100% doesn"t mean that much.
Watch this video, if you"re feeling up to it, and decide for yourself if that"s an experience that you"d want to risk repeating:
