A passenger has opened up about the horrifying ordeal on the Icon of the Seas cruise ship, where a slide shattered and "sliced open" a passenger.
The incident happened on August 7 aboard Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, which boasts the record-breaking Thrill Island waterpark.
Witnesses say the mishap occurred on the Frightening Bolt, the tallest drop slide at sea — a 46-foot plunge with a trapdoor launch and 360° loop.
Erica Hunt, who was standing beneath the slide with her husband and 18-year-old son, described the moment to TODAY.com: “We thought something had hit the ship. It was a really loud pop.”
Looking up, they saw a section of the slide’s acrylic glass had burst apart. Water poured through the jagged hole, splashing onto the deck below as crew members rushed to clear the area. “Workers started to run frantically to clear people out,” Hunt recalled.
Her panic escalated when she realized her 12-year-old son Elijah was in line for the ride. “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,’” she said. Hunt’s husband, Jose Maldonado, feared Elijah might “slip through the hole.”
She found her son partway up the stairs — confused, but unharmed. Elijah later revealed he was fourth in line and had seen the injured rider, described as a man in his 40s, being met at the bottom and taken away in a wheelchair.
According to witnesses cited by The Sun: “His leg and back were cut open pretty bad.”
Royal Caribbean confirmed to ABC News: “Our team provided medical care to an adult guest when acrylic glass broke off a water slide as the guest passed through the slide. The guest is being treated for his injuries. The water slide is closed for the remainder of the sailing pending an investigation.”
Deck 15’s slide area was shut down, and safety crews inspected the fiberglass-reinforced structure built by Wiegand Waterrides. Photos from the scene show the gaping hole where the panel had given way.
Hunt, who had already been on the slide multiple times earlier in the trip, says her children now refuse to go on any water rides for the rest of the cruise. She was also frustrated that Royal Caribbean “never reached out or made any announcements about the slide or the injured person” afterward.
Not all passengers agreed with her assessment. Fellow cruiser Marianne Karlsen told TODAY.com that staff “stayed friendly in turning people away and gave the information they could at the time,” adding: “They handled it very well.”
This voyage — which left Miami on Aug. 2 and is set to return Aug. 9 — was Hunt’s first Royal Caribbean trip after years of sailing with Disney.
She booked it in part because of the ship’s reputation: at 1,198 feet long and 20 decks tall, the Icon of the Seas carries up to 7,600 passengers.
The Frightening Bolt mishap is only the latest in a string of unsettling incidents on the ship.
Two weeks earlier, a 35-year-old crew member allegedly stabbed a colleague before jumping overboard to his death, and days later, a passenger fell from an infinity pool deck while reaching for his sunglasses — miraculously walking away without injury.
As for Hunt’s 90-year-old grandmother, who’s onboard for her birthday and was in the casino when the slide shattered, her reaction was blunt: “All of these slides don’t belong on a boat. When I migrated from Italy we had a boat with no seats and had to sit on the floor.”
Royal Caribbean has not confirmed when — or if — the Frightening Bolt will reopen.