A crew of Disney Cruise Line workers rode out the most powerful hurricane to hit the Northwest Bahamas on a private island the company calls Castaway Cay.
The company, responding to social media questions raised by the sister of one staffer, insisted that its employees were safe in a strong hurricane shelter as the eye of the 185 mile per hour hurricane passed just to the north.
“My sister is stuck in the middle of a Cat 5 hurricane. We were told they would evacuate and they didn’t. Left them behind!! Why??,” Meg Green posted on Twitter. In another tweet, she wrote: “Remember that time [Disney Cruises] left 97 employees on a tiny island in a Catagory 5 hurricane? I do.”
Castaway Cay, a private island used by Disney as a stop for cruise passengers, is located near Great Abaco Island. The eye of Dorian passed directly over the town of Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco Sunday afternoon. Castaway Cay, originally known as Gorda Cay, is just off the southern end of the island.
Earlier in the week, several cruise lines told media outlets that they would close similar private islands also located nearby in the Bahamas. It was unclear if staffers at those sites were evacuated.
A spokesperson for Disney confirmed the company closed down the island for guests but said that there was no need to send away its staffers because there was a hurricane shelter on the property built to withstand Category 4 conditions and that the storm was forecast to pass well to the north, sparing the island of Dorian’s strongest winds.