Erica Hunt was standing with her husband and 18-year-old son on Aug. 7 beneath the Frightening Bolt waterslide on Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas when they heard a popping sound.
“We thought something had hit the ship. It was a really loud pop,” Hunt, who is from New Jersey, said in a written statement to TODAY.com.
They looked up and saw a shocking sight: an acrylic glass panel on the waterslide had shattered.
“Water started to flood the deck and workers started to run frantically to clear people out,” she continued. Videos shared on TikTok capture the moment.
Royal Caribbean confirmed in a statement to NBC News that a passenger was injured in the process, and that the ride is closed for the rest of the cruise.
Hunt said she and her husband, Jose Maldonado, immediately panicked. Their other son, 12, was in line to go down the Frightening Bolt and they knew, based on how long he had been waiting, he had to be close to the entrance.
“I immediately ran up the steps of that ride to find my son. We were all screaming, ‘Don’t let anyone else down the ride, stop the ride, stop the ride,'” Hunt said.
Maldonado later said he was afraid their son, Elijah, would be next to come down and “maybe slip through the hole,” a fear Hunt shared.
Hunt reunited with Elijah halfway up the stairs to the waterslide, and was “so relieved.” Elijah, meanwhile, was confused. “He was like, ‘Mom, what happened? Why are you yelling?’ I was like, ‘Just get down the steps and I’ll tell you,'” she said.
When they got down the stairs, Elijah saw the leak. That’s when he revealed he had been fourth in line and had seen the injured person— a man he estimated to be in his 40s — go down.
Royal Caribbean has not identified the injured passenger. Hunt said she saw him met at the bottom of the slide and taken away in a wheelchair.
Standing at 46 feet, Frightening Bolt is the tallest drop at sea, per Royal Caribbean’s press materials. Hunt said she and her sons had gone on the slide multiple times before it broke on the afternoon of Aug. 7. One of six water slides in the ship’s large waterpark, the ride opens through a trap door, sending riders into free fall.
After seeing what happened, Elijah was “super scared” and shaken.
“My kids refuse to go on any water rides on the ship now,” she said.
Hunt said Royal Caribbean “never reached out or made any announcements about the slide or the injured person” after the accident, which was her “biggest issue” with what happened.
Marianne Karlsen, also aboard the cruise, said in a statement to TODAY.com that Royal Caribbean staff “stayed friendly in turning people away and gave the information they could at the time,” and that “they handled it very well.”
Normally loyal to Disney’s cruise line, Hunt says this was her family’s first Royal Caribbean cruise. She said they wanted to experience Icon of the Seas, which made its maiden voyage in 2024 and, at 1,198 feet and 20 decks, is the world’s largest cruise ship.
“We saw it was the newest and biggest ship in the world right now so we said, ‘Hey let’s give it a try, it’s new, it’s big,'” she said. “Must be nice!”
This particular voyage left Miami on Aug. 2 and has scheduled stops in the Netherland Antilles, U.S. Virgin Islands and Bahamas, according to CruiseMapper. It will return to Miami on Aug. 9.
Hunt is currently on the Icon of the Seas with six other family members, including her grandmother, who is celebrating her 90th birthday.
Her grandmother was at the casino at the time and didn’t hear the noise. But she had a spirited reaction to learning what had happened.
“She said, ‘All of these slides don’t belong on a boat,'” and added, “When I migrated from Italy we had a boat with no seats and had to sit on the floor.'”