https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCwGrEcCRkM
If cruise ships like the Carnival Legend have trouble, it’s usually from a storm or—too often—from nasty stomach viruses.
The Legend docked at its berth in Melbourne, Australia Saturday minus an entire family. They’d been booted in New South Wales because they were identified as the passengers who caused the amazing barroom-style fight in the video above.
The instigators, reports the Associated Press, were an extended family who allegedly targeted others for specific harassment. From the AP:
The “big Italian family” spent days attacking Australians aboard the ship, with people “getting strangled and punched up,” passenger Lisa Bolitho told reporters.
“Very violent, they were full-on attacks,” she said.
She also questioned the ship’s management, quoting the captain as saying, “‘What do you want me to do about it — throw them overboard?'”
You’re on an Australian ship so you target Australians? That seems like begging for trouble.
And as is obvious from the videos, there was a lot of trouble, mainly with white-clad security disrupting the harassment and in one case kicking a passenger in order to subdue him.
The supposed catalyst for all this craziness? The Aussies call them “thongs,” which Americans no doubt find confusing, since we call them “flip-flops.”
Speaking to an Australian radio station, one of the booted passengers only gave his first name—Zac—and said the shenanigans began when someone stepped on someone else’s “thong.”
“Not a foot,” he emphasized, “a thong being stepped on and being instantly apologized for. What happened there and then was apologized for.”
Zac claimed his nephew was threatened by other passengers and that security was dogging his family’s every step. He also blamed ship security for the fight, saying that they drew first blood, punching “not just my daughter and my sister-in-law, but my wife as well.”
Sounds intense. Carnival Cruise has offered to give passengers credit that amounts to a quarter of the cost of a future cruise. Most aren’t having it, one man telling the AP he would not “be travelling Carnival ever again so a 25 percent off a future cruise in my eyes is unacceptable.”
Maybe Carnival could invite the ejected family on a future cruise, arm them with swords, and call it a truly pirate-themed trip.
Probably not.
h/t AP, Sydney Morning Herald