An email from a former Disney Wonder crew member, posted with her permission, relating to this story i wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/11/rebecca-coriam-lost-at-sea

Hi Jon,

I’m not really sure where to start with all of this. It was a massive reality check reading your article, just reading the description of the boat made me shiver. There so many things that are wrong with the way the staff are treated on the boat which is why i left so quickly. I am an extremely hard worker and love my job so i was very excited to climb on board. Having spent lots of time traveling i was fully prepared and couldn’t wait to start working and getting to see some amazing places. But after the first week everything was starting to turn strange.

The most striking thing about this whole story to me is that i know exactly why you got the response from the current staff you spoke to. "Disney is the best place to work in the world, one big happy family! Its unfortunate she jumped". We were fed the response from day one on board. We’re not staff. We are actually all cast members, all a part of the show, and above deck we all have to put on a "show". Part of my induction onto the ship was hours of safety training but more relevant to the whole story was the "Disney way" training. If you are asked by any of the passengers if you like working for Disney the standard response you have to say, as part of your job, is "Yes i have the best job in the world". Everything is about keeping up appearances and making their experience magical! So much so that during one training session myself and some of the new cast members were told that if you are caught saying anything bad about working for Disney you could be liable to receive a disciplinary and get into trouble.

Anyway, my point is Disney had thought about what to tell the passengers and we were all told that we were not allowed to speak about it, as it didn’t reflect the Disney way, and to avoid any conversation of it. I even spoke to one young officer who told me that he was handing in his notice because he felt that he was going against his morals and covering up for Disney. When I asked him about what did happen he said he wasn’t sure but there was no way Rebecca would jump and that all of the staff had been sworn to secrecy and any conversation about what happened is banned below and above deck.

Another aspect of the training was about sexual assault. So on a Disney boat with hundreds of kids everywhere, Disney said that they watch everyone!!! We were told of cameras that are all around the boat so Disney could see if anyone even so much as looked at a child in the wrong way! They had zero tolerance for it and the boat is almost like Big Brother so we should feel at ease as staff and parents have no worry if their kids wander away for a few moments. Yet there is no footage of Rebecca?

And Deck 5 - where Rebecca apparently fell from - I often had a quiet moment before work. Not on any of these occasions did I ever see the control room un-manned. You could always see one or two people sat on the bench looking out from the huge panel windows and most of the time they even waved at you when you looked up to see who was watching. So to say that there was no one there is very hard for me to believe.

Even though i arrived on the boat after Rebecca had left there was a strange vibe below deck where the staff lived and many of the staff members i spoke to kept saying it isn’t the same as it was in Mexico, the fun had been sucked out of everyone. (We were sailing around Alaska at this point). But the worst part of all of this for me was the way officers leered at all of the younger girls and made it very obvious that we were seen as pieces of meat.

Which leads me on to the night where i had to get off the boat. After only two glasses of wine i headed from the crew bar to my room where an officer who had been trying to talk to me all evening had followed me back to my cabin and tried to force his way into the room. After trying to grab my breasts i screamed and he went off. But returned later on to try the exact same thing on with my cabin mate when she came back to the cabin. This incident was brushed under the carpet by our manager of our department and the HR manager as well the following day. Following this incident i wanted to get off the boat.

Everything you see above the waterline is a million miles away from the staff quarters below deck. It is not all smiles and it is not the happiest place on earth. From the whispers and the managing something doesn’t add up.

I feel so much for Rebecca's family.

Many Thanks

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