A South Florida couple who embarked on a seven day Mediterranean cruise arrived
back in the U.S. Monday night after escaping this weekend's Italian cruise ship disaster.

Local 6 news partner WPLG-TV Miami reports Pembroke Pines resident Connie Barron and her boyfriend, Jesus Garcia, returned to Miami International Airport after the two survived the Costa Concordia disaster. 

It has claimed at least six lives. Italian coast guard officials said Monday that 29 people are still missing.

Emotional family members greeted Barron and Garcia after they arrived on their Airitalia flight just three days after escaping the ship unharmed. 

"It was really chaotic, crazy. It was late at night. It was cold," Garcia said.

"It was awful. They were playing with life -- 4,500 lives," Barron said.

Barron and Garcia, along with about 4,000 other passengers, including two other couples from South Florida, plus the crew, scrambled for their lives.

"We were getting contradicting orders: 'Stay in your room.' 'Go to the fourth floor,' where the boats were. 'Go back to the room.' It was too contradicting," Garcia said.

Barron and Garcia were asleep in their cabin Friday aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship when things suddenly went wrong.

"She felt the impact, the electricity went off," said Arlene Sanchez, Connie's daughter told WPLG-TV in Miami. "The boat tilted so dramatically that her room was a chaos."

Connie quickly grabbed her life vest and a cell phone to call her daughter in Weston to tell her the bad news.

"What I got was, 'Please listen to me-- listen to me quickly. There's an accident, the boat is sinking and they're trying to get us on a lifeboat. I'll call you when I can,'" said Sanchez.

The phone call didn't last long, but Sanchez would later find out that her mother and her mother's fiancé would make it off the ship safely.

Only half of the lifeboats were usable because the ship listed heavily to one side. The captain was nowhere in sight. Cooks and entertainment staff struggled to figure out how to operate the lifeboats and evacuate the 4,200 people who were onboard the sinking ship.

"She felt there was no control of the situation", said Sanchez.

The ship was slowly sinking because it slammed into a rock or reef that left a gaping hole in the vessel's hull.

"They started gathering them on the 5th level, 5th floor and that floor started filling up with water," said Sanchez.

As Barron and Garcia sailed away on lifeboats, they saw the jaw-dropping sight of the ship on its side submerged in water.

The couple stayed in a church near Rome for the first night for shelter before the cruise operator put them up in a hotel.