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Everyone knows the intricate steps taken when a child comes up missing at a Disney amusement park. Within 20 minutes of a child being reported missing a call goes out to ‘Lost Child’ to see if the child has been found – if not then the staff and exits are phoned and all employees in the area begin looking for the child. You can read reports online of parents amazed at the quick response time and dedication of the staff when it came to finding their lost son or daughter.
For Brent Csutoras, father and social media marketing consultant, that system failed to appear when his son went missing aboard a Disney Wonder cruise (while in the care of cruise staff) this January.
Brent and his wife placed their three year old son in the cruise line’s care/play center, the Oceaneer Club (ages 3 – 12) so they could enjoy an evening meal together. When they returned to pick up their son – he was nowhere to be found.
…you can imagine our fear, shock, outrage and panic when we came back after an evening with friends, to find our child missing from their child care facility.
You can read the entire, horrifying story HERE – and I highly recommend that you do. I can’t possibly begin to explain (or know) the fear that these parents went through and the insult afterwards. But I wanted to express my complete amazement – not at the fact that the child was able to hide from staff members in the first place. Not even that the ship’s state of the art tracking bracelet he wore failed to work. But, the cold, callus way staff and executive employees handled it during and afterwards.
- Csutoras had searched the center three times, frantically, for his child before care center staff even asked if he needed help.
- Staff went about their usual duties and physically turned their backs on his wife who was in tears.
- When Csutoras tried to search the care center bathroom – he was told he was not allowed to go inside TO FIND HIS CHILD.
- He searched for his son for 45 minutes and the ship never once made a public announcement about a missing child.
- The ship was in port – with people coming and going – and the cruise director refused to stop the traffic in case the child was being kidnapped and removed from the ship.
- The director claimed staff had been notified by on-ship cell phones but, when asked, none of the staff even knew the child was missing.
As I read this article I felt myself become more and more angry with every sentence. In my opinion, the cruise line was more concerned with not upsetting other passengers or allowing the news to spread that they had lost a child than they were with actually finding the child. This wasn’t a teen who could have wandered off with friends. This was a toddler who could have easily gone off the side of the boat, been kidnapped or a hundred other scenarios.
Once the child was found (you can read the details in the original article) – how did the ship apologize? Their grand gesture was a bottle of wine and a note. That makes sense “Sorry we couldn’t find your child – here, get drunk and forget about it”.
And the best part of all? The response from Rebecca, the Disney Communications executive, afterwards…
I was stunned by her response, as she attempted to analyze the exact number of cruise days that were ruined. She told me that since our son went missing on the third day of the trip, we had enjoyed the first two days and only the last two days were ruined.
This executive just treated a missing child like an internet outage or a clogged toilet. What kind of person prorates your level of fun prior to thinking your child might be dead?
Shame on you, “Rebecca” for treating this family like disgruntled customers who didn’t like their meal – and shame on you, Disney, for employing people who show such apathy when a child is in danger.
[source: http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2013/03/06/disney-cruise-lost-child-destroyed-vacation-lost-confidence/]
