After Amy Bradley put us off cruise ships, summer 2025 has been pure chaos on board them

If you’ve watched Amy Bradley Is Missing on Netflix recently, you’re probably already side-eyeing cruise holidays.

The series looks at the 1998 disappearance of 23-year-old Amy Bradley, who vanished from a Caribbean cruise ship and was never seen again. It’s a case that’s left people asking: how does someone just disappear from a floating hotel?

Well, fast forward to this summer, and it feels like cruise ships are back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, because the chaos hasn’t stopped.

Credit: Unsplash/Georgy Trofimov

A passenger died in a cruise ship’s pool in Naples

Just yesterday, tragedy struck when an 83-year-old Scottish man was found lifeless in the swimming pool of the Marella Voyager while the ship was moored in Naples. Holidaymakers and staff tried desperately to save him, but he was sadly pronounced dead.

A crew member went overboard on a cruise to Istanbul

Meanwhile, over on a Princess Cruises ship on its way to Istanbul, a crew member reportedly went overboard and has not been found, despite search efforts. Passengers had their stop in Mykonos cancelled because of the ongoing emergency. As one traveller told GoLocal: “I’ve been on so many cruises and I’ve never experienced a man-overboard situation.”

Two Carnival passengers drowned in separate incidents

And the misfortune doesn’t stop there. Just last week, two Carnival Cruise passengers died in separate drowning incidents at Celebration Key, a brand-new luxury resort in the Bahamas. The victims, a 79-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman, were both found unresponsive in the water in different locations – but on the same day – freaky.

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There was a stabbing onboard the Icon of the Seas

If that wasn’t disturbing enough, at the end of July, a Royal Caribbean crew member stabbed a colleague multiple times onboard the Icon of the Seas before jumping overboard to his death near San Salvador Island. The woman who was attacked is thankfully in a stable condition, but it’s a reminder that cruise ships aren’t always the floating utopias they’re advertised to be.

The viral broken slide incident… happened

Oh, and because 2025 apparently wasn’t cursed enough, there’s also that viral video of a Royal Caribbean passenger getting injured after a slide on the Icon of the Seas literally broke underneath him. His lawyer says the man’s skin was “sliced through” by the shattered glass, and yes, he plans to sue.

Icon of the Seas. Water slide breaks #iconoftheseas pic.twitter.com/AfCDSbjQlg

— Jim Muldoon (@jimmuldoon) August 7, 2025

From suspicious disappearances to sudden deaths, onboard violence, and now broken slides, it feels like cruises have gone from all-inclusive dream holiday to real-life Final Destination spin-off.

While yes, thousands of people sail every year without issue, the string of grim headlines has definitely left many of us wondering if cruise ships actually cursed.

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Featured image credit: Alsono Reyes/Unsplash and Netflix