FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Royal Caribbean has banned a group of men from Vancouver, British Columbia from ever traveling with the cruise line again after one of them jumped off a ship’s deck and posted a video of the stunt on social media.
Nick Naydev posted the video on Instagram Friday showing him straddling on the balcony of the Symphony of the Seas and then jumping off into the waters in the Bahamas where the ship was docked. The video has more than 80,000 views and more than 1,000 comments. One of his friends could be heard laughing in the background. Yahoo Lifestyle identified the friend recording the video as Konstantin Kryachun.
“He’s jumped from those kind of heights before, and we didn’t really care about the consequences with the cruise company,” Kryachun told the website. “We just wanted to get a video of it and make it go viral.”
In the comments section, Naydev estimated that he jumped from the 11th story deck or about “110-120 feet” high.
“I was still drunk from the previous night. When I woke up I just decided to jump,” he responded to a user on Instagram. “My feet were actually fine. It was my neck and tailbone that hurt.”
Naydev, a former gym coach, did not immediately respond to messages for comment about the jump but said on social media that he “never felt more alive.”
Users on social media were quick to call out Naydev’s stunt with some condemning it while others praising it.
One wrote, “This guy thinks this stunt is going to bring him some sort of legendary status on the internet…WRONG! It does prove what a complete moron you are.”
Said another user, “Congratulations, you made the news and Royal Caribbean banned you for life…Brave stuff glad you survived.”
It’s not clear what happened after Naydev landed in the water but he responded to a user that he was picked up by a small boat.
He also said “my whole group got kicked off and I got banned for life from any cruise” and he had to catch a flight back to Miami. In another post which shows him standing on Nassau beach with his friend, Naydev wrote, “I could barely walk for 3 days because my ass hurt so bad. The flight home was a nightmare but I’m fine now.”
Owen Torres, a spokesman for Royal Caribbean, called the incident stupid.
“This was stupid and reckless behavior and he and his companions have been banned from ever sailing with us again,” Torres said in an email to the Sun Sentinel. “We are exploring legal action.”
The incident comes just after news about a 16-year-old South Pacific boy who fell to his death while trying to climb inside the balcony of another Royal Caribbean ship the Harmony of the Seas. That incident took place Jan. 11 when Laurent Mercer tried to access his room’s balcony from an adjacent one while the ship was docked at Labadee, Haiti.
