Chaos aboard a cruise ship, the Carnival Freedom Catching Fire
for the second time in two years.
Now the cruise line has canceled their next two trips
out of Cape Canaveral.
Tonight I spoke with two different groups who were supposed
to set sail just 12 hours from now.
Scary moments caught on camera,
A passenger aboard the Carnival Freedom cruise ship sending us
this video.
Flames and smoke coming from the ship's port side exhaust
funnel Saturday.
The ship was 20 miles off the coast of the
Bahamas at the time.
Now the ship's next two cruises cancelled,
leaving thousands stranded. Where do you go?
Because it is spring break in Florida.
Lisa Moss and her crew just flew
1700 miles from Indiana. They're crashing with friends in Satellite
Beach while they come up with Plan
B 2800. And some people have flown in or driven
in or whatever,
and we're all displaced.
What to do? And I'm dumbfounded.
Jayden Flewellen, one of ten kids on a youth trip
now stuck in Central Florida.
It's kind of like devastating and really fine blown because
like,
we look forward to doing this and having memories.
Look back. On Chaperone, Selena Hill says they drove 10
hours from Tennessee right now,
the group of 14 at an Airbnb in Coco.
We only had the one night,
so we're we're still unsure what we're going to be
able to do for the rest of the week.
The nonprofit organization called Hope fundraised a year for this
cruise,
says founder Stella Robinette. Most of these kids,
I say 95% of them,
are low income youth that don't have this opportunity and
for this to be snatched away from them,
that's hard. Carnival assuring all customers a full refund and
a
100% future cruise credit, but those refunds could take up
to three weeks.
All of the money that they have raised has basically
went to Carnival,
so there's not much money for them to do anything
right now.
When we looked at tickets at different places here,
we can't afford to pay for 14 people.
Robinette and Hall tell me they are now fundraising yet
again to try to stay in Central Florida for the
week so the kids can still enjoy their spring break.
We've got a link to the HOPE website at
FOX35 orlando.com. As for Carnival,
they released a statement. It reads in part,
quote. Regrettably, the damage is more than we first thought
and will require an immediate repair to stabilize the funnel,
resulting in the cancellation of the March 25th and
29 cruises from Port Canaveral.
The funnel has been stabilized for the ship S return
to Port Canaveral overnight to disembark guests and then it
will go to Freeport Shipyard on Monday afternoon to begin
the required repairs.