Viral video captured the moment chairs and fists went flying during a wild brawl aboard a Carnival cruise ship, as security officers tried in vain to douse the melee.
The high-seas scuffle erupted aboard the Carnival Paradise on the last night of a five-day cruise to Central America in early June — adding turbulence to an otherwise idyllic voyage, said passenger Nick Richardson, who shot the footage after coming up on the scene.
“This is just what happens at 3 in the morning when you got a bunch of drunk girls from Tampa,” said Richardson, 43, who was on the cruise with his fiancee and three children.
“I’m like, ‘It’s definitely gonna go down.’ It’s why I got it on video,” he said. “Those girls were already set on what they were gonna do. It just got out of hand very, very quickly. And that’s how it happens. You’re just drinking too much.”
The six-and-a-half minute video that Richardson posted on YouTube and on TikTok, starts with a group of women jawing at each other inside one of the ship’s dining rooms — and quickly escalates.
One woman grabs a chair and tosses it at the other group and fists start flying — with a group of combatants hitting the ground while still slinging punches, the video shows.
“In my opinion, just a bunch of people on their last night, probably drank too much,” Richardson told The Post. “Obviously some kind of misunderstanding. They didn’t give a s–t who was watching.
“They didn’t care,” he added. “They just kept going.”
Richardson said he only walked into the dining room because he wanted to grab a slice of pizza for a late-night snack — not realizing he’d walk into a floating war zone.
He is heard saying throughout his video that he just wanted a slice of pizza — and even tries to calm down the battling women by offering, “Let’s all get some pizza.”
A spokesperson for the cruise line confirmed the incident and said in an email that the ship’s “security team intervened in an incident that took place on June 6.
“As is our policy, we will not tolerate such behavior and the guests involved were fined and will not sail on Carnival Cruise Line again,” the email said.
Richardson, meanwhile, said the fisticuffs didn’t mar the trip for him and his family one bit — and raved about the voyage to Honduras and Cozumel and the Carnival crew he called “amazing.”
“The entirety of the cruise everybody was friendly with each other, everybody was enjoying themselves,” he said Wednesday. “The Carnival made sure everyone was having a fantastic time.
“I don’t knock this fight as a reason why I wouldn’t go back on Carnival,” Richardson added. “I already booked another one for this spring with my family.”
