Pitch-black night with no lights, how do you reckon they'd see the sea?? Doesn't mean you can't attempt a perfectly reasonable ditching with a reasonable chance of pulling it off.
Given that the pax had time to put on their jackets AND get the rafts ready, I'd say DBTW's conspiracy theory, that they flopped into the water with no warning as the crew were doing descending orbits through holes in the clouds hoping to break visual, is a bit far-fetched.