One would hope that a trip to the Bahamas on a giant cruise ship would be a relaxing experience. Apparently, a recent jaunt on the Carnival Conquest wasn’t relaxing enough for 16 travelers who have reportedly been banned from the cruise line for brawling.
A video of the alleged incident was posted by the Instagram account Only in Dade this Tuesday. It said the footage was of a fight breaking out at the Port of Miami customs area following the arrival of the Carnival Conquest, a ship that can accommodate 2,980 guests.
According to the Daily Mail, the “dramatic footage” was from around 8 a.m. Monday. A spokesperson for Carnival told the outlet that 16 people involved in the “massive fight” have been put on Carnival’s ‘Do Not Sail” list.
Per the Daily Mail’s play-by-play of the tussle, it started when a woman in a black strapless dress “ducked under a line divider and started swinging at a woman in polka dot pajamas.” From there, a woman in a yellow and white maxi-dress joined the fray, grabbing another person’s hair.
Soon there was hair pulling and bare feet braced on the floor. Then, several more people – men and women – joined the fight and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers tried to break it up as suitcases and belongings were flung around the facility.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson who spoke to the outlet said officers responded to a “physical altercation between passengers during the debarkation process from the Carnival Conquest,” Monday. One agent sustained a minor injury.
“At one point, a man was seen holding a stanchion over his head as people screamed,” said the Daily Mail. Within a few minutes the fight was broken up, but it has lasting consequences for those banned from Carnival trips.
Now that the dust has settled, the Daily Mail said it is still unclear why the brawl started in the first place, though the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office (MDSO) told the outlet that it was related to a disagreement between two families. There were no arrests related to the incident and none of the involved parties decided to press charges.
“Bystanders who witnessed the fight were heard in a video claiming that a kid was involved in the brawl, but that has not been confirmed,” the Daily Mail said.
It said this incident comes just months after two women got into a fight on another Carnival cruise ship as it returned to Mobile, Alabama, from Nassau, Bahamas in March. Carnival isn’t the only cruise line that’s dealt with passengers coming to blows. Audacy reported on a Royal Caribbean cruise that turned around after leaving PortMiami due to a fight between patrons near the ship’s kiddie pool last year.
Sean Joseph of Fox News’ The Outkick compared cruise vacations to “a trip to Walmart, but on steroids and with excursions,” when writing about this week’s Carnival brawl. That seems even more apt in light of an Audacy report from earlier this year about a cop who allegedly body-slammed a man in a Georgia Walmart.
