As they frolic around Disney’s massive Dream cruise ship, the last thing 2,500 passengers are worried about is falling overboard.
Sturdy railings stand 42.5 inches (3.5ft) off the floor, protecting a gust of wind or rough seas from throwing anyone to almost certain death.
Families lounge on deck chairs or play shuffleboard just a couple of feet from the edge of the ship as joggers speed past on deck four’s running track.
Yet somehow, a five-year-old girl disappeared over the side on Sunday as the ship steamed back to Fort Lauderdale from the Bahamas.
The little girl plunged 45 to 50ft into the water, with her father, 37, heroically diving in seconds later to save her.
Hundreds of passengers watched as the pair were dramatically rescued by the ship’s crew after the brave dad kept his daughter afloat for 20 minutes.
Using video and photos taken on the ship by passengers, the Daily Mail has pinpointed the spot she fell, and where rescuers leaped into action.
The footage reveals what experts call a near-fatal flaw in the ship’s design that Disney fixed in later additions to its fleet – but didn’t retrofit on the Dream.
A five-year-old girl fell out a porthole just like this on the Disney Dream cruise ship on Sunday after climbing up and sitting on the railing. The shelf the boy in this photo is leaning on is a glaring weakness in the design as it allows a child to easily climb onto the railing
The hall on the port side of deck four of the Disney Dream where the portholes she fell out of are
Police confirmed she fell from the one spot on the whole ship a mischievous child could get into trouble – a series of portholes along deck four’s aft section.
Unlike railings elsewhere on the ship, which are lined with smooth plexiglass from top to bottom, the portholes have one glaring weakness.
Under the porthole, the steel wall forms a kind of shelf, about the height of a man’s thigh, that the rest of the railing is built on top of.
The design makes it easy for even a child to climb onto the shelf, and then on top of the much shorter railing above it that doesn’t have any plexiglass, sea safety expert Mario Vittone explained.
Another Disney cruise ship, the Fantasy, has a slightly different design where the railing is at the front of the shelf with plexiglass blocking it, making it much more difficult to climb on.
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony, whose office is investigating, explained the girl ‘lost her balance while sitting on a railing’ and fell backwards over the side.
‘After the girl’s mother alerted her husband, who didn’t see the incident, he jumped into the ocean to save his daughter,’ he said.
Sheriff Tony said the ship’s security camera caught the entire horrifying series of events on video.
Another Disney cruise ship, the Fantasy, has a slightly different design where the railing is at the front of the shelf with plexiglass blocking it, making it much more difficult to climb on – as pointed out by a passenger posting this photo to Reddit
The portholes are open to the sea, as shown here where a passenger stuck their phone out of one to record the outside of the ship and sunset
Vittone, a 28-year US Coast Guard veteran, said the near-fatal accident should ring alarm bells for Disney.
‘We had a saying in the USCG prevention division: “All safety regulations are written in blood”,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘We very often learn things are a problem when something we didn’t expect, happens.
‘This child, essentially, put her center of gravity over the rail and then tumbled. She climbed off the ship… unintentionally.’
Vittone said the Dream’s portholes were built to regulation, but he expected every ship in Disney’s fleet would quickly be updated to improve safety.
‘Where Disney will have a problem is in parsing the decision to make one ship “safer” for the (unpredictable, on their own unsafe) child passengers, but not make that same modification to the other ships in its fleet,’ he said.
‘Cruise ships routinely overboard railings beyond requirements to make leaving the ship all but impossible but for the most determined to leave.
‘They missed this feature on this particular ship. No doubt, they will now fix this on every ship like it.
‘Thankfully, this lesson wasn’t written in blood. That the father saw the incident and jumped is the only reason.’
Deck four includes a jogging track and is lined with railings that extend 42.5 inches from the floor with plexiglass in front of them
Mario Vittone, a 28-year US Coast Guard veteran and sea safety expert, said the near-fatal accident should ring alarm bells for Disney
Disney didn’t immediately respond when asked why the porthole design was changed for the Fantasy and if its older ships would be retrofitted.
What police didn’t explain was what the girl’s parents were doing while she climbed onto the porthole railing.
Monica Shannon, who was on holiday with her husband and young child, said a crew member told her they were engrossed in a game.
‘She said the parents were playing shuffleboard and the girl was climbing on the railings… and as she went to climb up again she flew off,’ she told the Daily Mail.
The South Florida native said she was in her room on a lower deck directly below the shuffleboard area and ‘saw something go by really fast’.
‘I didn’t think anything of it, I definitely didn’t think it was a person or a body that just fell off the ship,’ she said.
However, the footage shows the shuffleboard area on the port side is towards the front of the ship, a long way from the portholes at the back end of the jogging track.
The rescue boat used to bring the father and daughter back to the ship is visible on the right
The ship’s crew taking the father and daughter back to the Dream after plucking them from the ocean. The girl is sitting on ship’s doctor Alyssa Charles’ knee as she examines her
The father is said to have dived in within seconds of his daughter, and with the ship moving at 25mph he would have had even farther to swim if he jumped from near the shuffleboard.
These factors have called the shuffleboard account into question and make it more likely they were no longer playing when the girl fell.
Passengers and crew threw flotation rings and other buoyant items into the ocean for them to grab on to, which may have been what Shannon saw fall past her window.
Several passengers said the girl’s mother was hysterical after watching her daughter and husband go over the side.
‘The mom was yelling “she’s five and can’t swim”,’ passenger Shannon Lindholm said.
The shuffleboard area came into play later as the spot where the rescue craft was launched from and was pulled back onto the ship from is right next to it.
The father was hurt as he fought to save his daughter and was hospitalized after the ship returned to port, but police declined to specify the injury.
Some passengers said staff told them the girl fell overboard while her parents were playing shuffleboard on deck four and she climbed on the railing
However, the shuffleboard area on the port side is towards the front of the ship, a long way from the portholes at the back end of the jogging track, making the theory less likely
The shuffleboard area came into play later as the spot where the rescue craft was launched from and was pulled back onto the ship from is right next to it
The father was initially hailed as a hero for saving his daughter from almost certain death on her own in the ocean, without regard for his own life.
But the tide turned when rumors that he caused her to fall by lifting her onto the railings for a photo began to spread, and he was pilloried online by thousands of strangers who repeated the false accusations as if they were fact.
This was despite no one who saw the girl fall publicly saying what happened, and no evidence he did anything wrong.
Within seconds of the girl falling, the ship’s automatic man overboard alarm and the emergency code ‘Mr MOB’ blared over the intercom.
Within minutes the crew readied a yellow motorized rescue boat and went after the stricken pair as hundreds of passengers rushed to the railings.
The father looks up at the crowd of passengers cheering their safe return
A father and daughter were rescued from the ocean 20 minutes after the girl fell off the side of the Disney Dream cruise ship and her dad dived in to rescue her
Passengers described the massive 130,000 gross tonnage ship turning around as the rescue boat raced to find them before they drowned.
The dad, clearly exhausted and distraught, gave the crowd a thumbs up as the boat approached the ship, then wiped his face with his hand.
His daughter was sitting on ship’s doctor Alyssa Charles’ knee as she was checked out, appearing healthy despite her ordeal.
The physician has been praised online for stroking the girl’s hair to keep her calm.
The Disney Dream was built in 2010 and last refurbished in 2024, according to Cruise Mapper.
