Disney Cruise Line passengers who witnessed a man jump after his fallen daughter are speaking out about the harrowing incident.
On June 29, a father and his 5-year-old were rescued from the water after they went overboard the Disney Dream during the final leg of the ship’s four-day voyage, a Disney Cruise Line spokesperson confirmed to E! News.
According to Gar Frantz, a passenger on the fourth-floor deck, the girl was posing for photos while seated on a railing of the boat when she fell over to the other side.
“We watched it, you could see two little things,” Frantz told NBC News on June 30. “It was crazy, it was horrific.”
Brenda Tackett—another passenger onboard the ship, which was on its way back to Florida after a trip to the Bahamas—also recalled hearing the code “Mr. Mob, Mr. Mob, port side, port side” over loudspeakers before seeing crew members rush in that direction with life jackets and other floatation devices.
“The Disney Cruise Line staff were phenomenal, the crew, everybody was on it,” she told the outlet. “You could tell they’ve practiced this, hopefully have never used it before, but they were great.”
Her son James Tackett said he felt the ship make a sharp turn shortly after the father-daughter duo went overboard.
“When they did officially get the people, everyone cheered,” he remembered. “It was a good moment.”
Disney Cruise Line said the dad and the child were rescued “within minutes” of falling into the water.
“We commend our Crew Members for their exceptional skills and prompt actions,” the company’s spokesperson told E! News June 30. “We are committed to the safety and well-being of our guests, and this incident highlights the effectiveness of our safety protocols.”
In 2010, Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, which requires all passenger vessels operating in the U.S. to “integrate technology that can be used for capturing images of passengers or detecting passengers who have fallen overboard, to the extent that such technology is available.”
Disney Cruise Line confirmed to USA Today in 2023 that their vessels are equipped with the necessary technology.
For more boating accidents that have garnered national attention, read on.
(E! and NBC News are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
Lake Tahoe Boat Capsizing
In June 2025, a boat crash in Lake Tahoe took the lives of eight individuals, making it the deadliest sea tragedy in California since 2019. The victims included Doordash executive Josh Pickles, as well as his parents Terry Pickles and Paula Bozinovic, and his uncle Peter Bayes, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Division confirmed to ABC 7 San Francisco at the time.
The family had been celebrating the 71st birthday of Pickles’ mother, a rep for the family told the outlet. Timothy O’Leary, James Guck, Theresa Giullari, and Stephen Lindsay were also killed in the crash. There were only two survivors.
Red Sea Tourist Disaster
A tourist submarine carrying 45 people crashed off in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt in March 2025, killing six Russian tourists, the Egyptian governorate office confirmed to NBC News at the time. Of the 39 people who survived, local officials told the Associated Press that nine were injured, while the remaining 30 were returned to their hotels.
The vessel that crashed was owned by Sinbad Submarines, a tourist agency that offers recreational tours 25 meters below the sea surface for $70 per person. In a statement to Daily News Egypt following the crash, the company said of the six victims, “We sadly join the deceased families in mourning them with profound grief.”
Faster Pussycat Member Taime Downe’s Fiancée’s Fatal Cruise Ship Fall
Kimberly Burch, the fiancée of Faster Pussycatmember Taime Downe, fell from a Royal Carribean ‘80s-themed cruise ship off the coast of Miami in March 2025, her mother Carnell Burch confirmed to TMZ at the time.
In an interview two months later, Downe alleged that his fiancée’s death was “alcohol and prescription related.”
“It’s a rollercoaster,” Downe told SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk in May 2025 of his grieving process. “I’m hanging in there. I’m just taking it a day at a time.”
Sicily Superyacht Sinking
Amid a freak storm in August 2024, a superyacht off the coast of Sicily containing 10 crew members as well as 12 passengers sank. The six victims of the catastrophe included tech CEO Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah, New York-based attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, as well as Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy.
Officials later determined that the accident was caused by a “waterspout,” or a tornado that can occur at sea. Salvo Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, told NBC News at the time of the crash that the boat was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
One of the lone survivors of the tragedy Charlotte Golunski—whose young daughter and partner also survived—described the storm to La Repubblica as feeling like “the end of the world.”
Titan Submersible Implosion
In June 2023, the disappearance of OceanGate’s Titan submersible, a deep-sea vessel designed to take tourists to the crash site of the Titanic, dominated the news cycle. After a four-day search—during which a tally was kept of the sub’s 96-hour oxygen supply—it was determined that the seacraft had imploded on itself, killing all five of the passengers.
The perished vessel carried OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood as well as Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Less than a month after the implosion, OceanGate completely shut down its operations. In Implosion: Titanic Sub Disaster, a documentary released nearly two years after the tragedy, events that led to the crash, including a lack of attention to safety protocols by OceanGate, were examined. Additionally, footage from what the Coast Guard believes was the moment of the implosion was released.
In the clip, Rush’s wife Wendy Rush—a director for the submersible tourism company—who was monitoring the voyage from the OceanGate offices, noticed a loud crash as the submersible was set to hit 3,300 meters below sea level. Addressing her colleague Gary Foss, she said, “What was that bang?”
Naya Rivera’s Drowning
While on a boat trip on California’s Lake Piru with her young son Josey, the Glee star disappeared, launching a lengthy investigation after authorities found her son alone on the boat in the middle of the lake July 8, 2020.
After five days of searching Ventura County Sheriff’s department confirmed that Rivera’s body was found in the lake, floating at its surface. Rivera’s son—whom Rivera shared with ex Ryan Dorsey—shared amid the investigation that the pair had gone swimming in the lake that day and he remembered being helped back into the boat by his mom.
“There are a lot of currents on the lake that appear particularly in the afternoon,” Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub confirmed at a 2020 press conference. “We believe it was mid-afternoon when she disappeared, the idea perhaps being that the boat started drifting, it was unanchored, and that she mustered enough energy to get her son back onto the boat, but not enough to save herself.”
