Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas lost power and drifted in the Gulf of Mexico late on May 16, just hours after the same ship had turned back to Cozumel to handle a medical emergency on board.
The blackout hit around 10:00 p.m. local time, with engines stopping and lighting cutting out across the 90,090-gross-ton ship as it sailed toward Tampa on a four-night Western Caribbean cruise. Power was restored, lost a second time, and then fully recovered before the ship continued on to its scheduled May 18 arrival.
Royal Caribbean has not publicly explained what caused the outage. Here’s what passengers reported, what we know about the night’s sequence of events, and what’s worth watching from here.
What Happened On The Night Of May 16
The first disruption came before the power did. After a 12-hour call in Cozumel, Mexico, Radiance of the Seas departed the port on schedule at 5:00 p.m. local time on May 16. Roughly an hour into the return leg toward Tampa, passengers noticed the ship turning around.
According to guests posting from on board, an elderly woman needed urgent medical attention and the ship was heading back to Cozumel so she and her husband could be put ashore. Royal Caribbean has not officially confirmed the nature of the medical situation or the identities involved, which is standard for any incident touching on guest health and privacy.
Photo by Diego F. Parra on Pexels
With the medical situation handled, Radiance of the Seas left Cozumel for the second time that day and pointed back toward Tampa. The captain and crew presumably believed the worst of the night was behind them.
How The Power Outage Played Out
About five hours after the second departure from Cozumel, the lights went out. At roughly 10:00 p.m., passengers reported that the ship went dark. Interior lighting in public areas dropped, engines fell silent, and the vessel began drifting in open water with up to 2,143 guests on board.
One passenger posted to Facebook in real time as the situation unfolded: “Power went off about 15 minutes ago, engines at a full stop.” Others used maritime tracking apps to watch the ship’s speed drop to nothing on screen while they sat in the dark in person.
What followed was a stop-start recovery. Power came back briefly, dropped a second time, and then finally returned for good. The captain eventually addressed guests over the public-address system to confirm propulsion had been restored.
In one of those moments that tends to stick in cruise lore long after the technical details fade, a group of passengers in one of the ship’s lounges turned the blackout into an impromptu acoustic dance party, using flashlights and phone screens to light the space. By the early hours of May 17, another guest posted that everything seemed to be fine and the night had passed without further drama.
Tracking data later showed Radiance of the Seas moving through the Gulf of Mexico at around 17 knots, on course for her scheduled 7:00 a.m. Tampa arrival on May 18.
The Ship’s Propulsion History
Power and propulsion incidents aren’t new territory for Radiance of the Seas. CruiseMapper’s logged incident history for the ship lists propulsion or power-loss events in 2002, 2006, 2011, 2018, 2023, and 2024. The 2023 episode was the most consequential. A propulsion failure at Seward, Alaska forced Royal Caribbean to cancel a 7-day Southbound Alaska and Hubbard Glacier cruise outright. The 2024 incident, during a California-to-Alaska repositioning, reportedly involved one of the ship’s two Azipod propulsion units and resulted in reduced speeds and cancelled port calls.
Radiance of the Seas entered service in 2001 as the first ship in the Radiance class, alongside sister ships Jewel, Serenade, and Brilliance of the Seas. At 25 years old, she’s one of the older vessels in a Royal Caribbean fleet now headlined by Icon-class ships barely a year or two off the dock.
Photo by Safak Batura on Pexels
Age alone doesn’t cause a power loss, and Royal Caribbean has invested in keeping its Radiance-class ships modernized through the line’s Royal Amplified refurbishment program. But a ship with a documented propulsion track record going back two decades will inevitably draw scrutiny when something like this happens again. That’s the same kind of context recent Royal Caribbean incident coverage, like the Independence of the Seas buffet-fall lawsuit, tends to play into.
What This Means For Cruisers
For the 2,000-plus guests on that sailing, the situation resolved without injuries and without the voyage being cut short. Tampa arrived on time. The next sailing, a five-night cruise to Costa Maya and Cozumel scheduled to depart at 4:00 p.m. on May 18, was set to proceed as planned.
If I were booked on Radiance of the Seas in the near future, I wouldn’t cancel over this. Modern cruise ships have redundant electrical and propulsion systems precisely so that an outage like this is recoverable rather than dangerous, and emergency lighting kicks in even when the main grid drops. But I’d be paying close attention to whether Royal Caribbean issues any kind of formal acknowledgment for the passengers who lived through the blackout. As of publication, the line hasn’t said anything publicly about the incident or about compensation for the affected sailing.
That silence is the part of this story that may matter most to anyone weighing a future booking. If you’re sailing a Western Caribbean itinerary from Tampa anytime soon and want a broader picture of what to expect, our guide on what to know before a 2026 Caribbean cruise covers the practical side. The behavior cruisers actually remember from a line, though, tends to be how it handles the bad nights rather than the good ones.
What To Watch Next
A few threads are worth tracking from here. First, whether Royal Caribbean issues a formal statement explaining what caused the power loss, whether it was an engine fault, an electrical fault, or something else entirely. Second, whether any goodwill gesture, like onboard credit, a partial refund, or future cruise credit, shows up for the May 14 to 18 sailing’s guests. Third, whether the ship’s upcoming Tampa-based sailings run on schedule and without further incident.
For now, Radiance of the Seas is back on her itinerary, the passengers from that sailing have gone home with one heck of a story, and the dance-party-in-the-dark detail is doing exactly what those details do: turning a stressful night into something that, in hindsight, becomes the part of the trip everyone tells their friends about.
If you were on board Radiance of the Seas the night of May 16, what was your experience? And if you’ve sailed her before, did you ever run into something similar?