A Florida woman drowned this past Wednesday during a cave tubing tour in Belize. She and her husband were aboard Carnival Glory. According to reports, most tour operators cancelled for the day because of poor conditions in the water. However one tour - one provided by the ship - went on and resulted in this tragedy. Carnival has suspended this tour and arranged for counseling for passengers who witnessed this horrible event. Read more here.
Cruise-Chat offers it's condolences to the family of this lady.
How awful; you always expect the tour operators that contract with the cruise lines to be the most careful. In this case it appears they are the only one that didn't use good judgment.
My sympathies to the family, and especially to the husband, who must have been a witness to his wife's death.
It is a valuable reminder to us all that we are in a foreign country with somewhat differing standards of safety than we perhaps enjoy in the US (not that people don't accidently die all over the world). The secondary tragedy of this is the confidence we place in the cruise line to offer only the safest and most secure activities. The most dangerous shore tour we have done was through RCCL. It was a snorkeling adventure in Cabo in an area criss-crossed by boats where the mexican guides warned to look up before you surface or (slicing motion with hand across throat--no translation was needed).
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My heart felt sympathy goes out to the family and friends of this lady. I heard about this last week and have delayed booking my outside excursion, if I even do now.
Wow, we live in Melbourne & take the Glory out of Port Canaveral all the time. We had a blast on the Belize cave tubing tour.
It is an awful tragedy that this happened. As one user said, safety is lax with some groups in a 3rd world country.
When we went, they did give everyone life-jackets but did not require that anyone put them on. Most people were using them as pillows for those gigantic truck tire tubes they give you.
I was in the cave on the Branch River when the accident happened. My tour was with cave-tubing.com. The woman who died, Linda Linan, was booked through Carnival. Yes, the water was high and swift, but the tour guides did not take care of those people and I am an eye witness.
My group was 32 tourists with four guides. We were together in a "human chain," and our guides were in the water with us every minute. Our guides had large spotlights to illuminate the interior of the caves. The group from Carnival was alone in the water. They were in small groups or solo, with only the small lights on their heads to light the way. Our guides rescued four people from the currents during our tour, and one guide gave a spare tube to a guy whose tube went flat. It was a mess. People were getting pushed into the walls and into whirlpools all over the place.
Our group didn't know a member of the other tour died until we got out of the second cave. We were just stunned! It was so sad, and to make it worse we were talking about what a good time we had.
Carnival should be ashamed of themselves for using a company who takes shoddy or no care of their guests. I was told that there were over 40 people with the group who booked through the ship. A man on the Glory told me the next day that he thought he and his wife would drown.
I felt very safe because I was tied to the other people in the group, and a guide was always within eyesight or right beside me. Then I realized what could have happed had we gone with the ship's tour. It just ruined our trip, and I don't ever want to book an adventure tour through a ship again, you just don't know what you are getting into. My heart breaks for that family!
we were on the Legend and arrived in Belize the day after the lady died. We chose to do nothing in Belize but go to the shopping area and then return to the ship.
I did notice on the legend that they posted a sign and I am sure it is on all ships that if a person cancels an excursion that is booked thru the ship there is a 25 dollar cancellation fee. I wonder if that was on the Glory and for the cave tubing excursion. I wonder if the group of tubers even knew how rough the waters were, or maybe they thought its gonna cost me if I dont take the tour...seems to me it was all about money... A very very sad preventable death.
My heart goes out to the family
Thanks for the link, Dave. I have to admit to liking the way "Newsbelize" gives headlines. Their reporting is very concise and to the point. In an American article, it would have to have given many useless tidbits of information as well as meaningless background of the setting and other possible factors.
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