If you can't get to it...
It isn't a "resource" if it isn't available, is it? As in, no time to use the cabin crew in any way except to tell them to brace for impact. I am sure the flight crew would have done more if they had more time available but what they did obviously sufficed.
This second-guessing seems to be function of time. Right after the ditching in the river everyone was just amazed and full of admiration. Now, with plenty of time some folks have come up with such good ideas! Of course I would love to have seen them come up with something right then and there, when most people in the general population would have reacted with simple, stunned disbelief if they even noticed that there was some sort of problem at all while there was still time to sort out a solution.
Even many pilots would probably not have come up with such a happy outcome, I bet, first figuring out a ditching and then doing one so well.
If the cabin crew had not been informed it was a ditching, well, looking out the windows probably told them that anyway so that they, too, performed very well.
Really, what is there in this to carp about?
By the way, that Pan Am ditching was prefaced with plenty of time to prepare where this crew had almost no time at all. I don't think you can compare the two except that they were both successful ditchings.
Here's a New York joke for you:
A Jewish mother is at the beach on Coney Island with her five year-old all togged out in his sailor suit. The little boy is playing at the water's edge. Suddenly a huge wave washes the tyke out into deep water, when the desperate mother utters a frantic prayer to God to save her poor child.
In the very next second another huge wave deposits the bedraggled child back on the beach somewhat the worse for wear but alive!
The mother rushes to pick up her child but then stops, looks up and says, "He had a HAT!"
Has anyone asked Captain Sully about their lost luggage yet? If not then they will, they will...