Latest news with #poopcruise
Fox News
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Poop cruise' documentary exposes 2013 ship nightmare featuring chaos, gross conditions
A newly released documentary on Netflix has continued to draw attention from viewers about how a vacation turned into a nightmare. The film covers the Carnival Triumph ship — which departed from Galveston, Texas, and set sail to Cozumel, Mexico for a four-night stay in Feb. 2013. The documentary, "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise," explores the incident in which an engine fire left 4,000 passengers stranded at sea without power and dubbed the incident the "poop cruise," according to Netflix's website. Passengers were stranded for about five days until finally making it to Mobile, Alabama. A Carnival spokesperson told Fox News Digital the incident from over 12 years ago was a teachable moment for the entire cruise industry. "A thorough investigation following the incident revealed a design vulnerability," the statement said, "which was corrected and led Carnival Cruise Line to invest more than $500 million across our entire fleet in comprehensive fire prevention and suppression, improved redundancy and enhanced management systems, all in support of our commitment to robust safety standards." The company's statement continued, "We are proud of the fact that since 2013 over 53 million guests have enjoyed safe and memorable vacations with us, and we will continue to operate to these high standards." The documentary features interviews with passengers, who shared their accounts of defecating in biohazard bags, seeing fights break out, having no power and revealing the chaos that unfolded aboard. Stewart Chiron, a Miami-based cruise industry expert known as "The Cruise Guy," told Fox News Digital the Carnival Triumph disaster was an unfortunate situation. A Carnival spokesperson said the incident became a teachable moment for the entire cruise industry. Chiron said the incident "highlighted the significant safety measures available at that moment in time and lessons learned, as it has never happened again." "The ship did exactly what it was supposed to do and preserved lives," he added. "While the passengers and crew were uncomfortable, they were safe. Food and supplies were replenished by other ships sailing in the area as it was towed to Mobile, Alabama." Viewers have taken to social media to share comments about the outrageous incident. "Not me, watching the Netflix documentary about the 2013 carnival cruise that turned into a poop cruise," said one woman on X. Another X user posted, "OK, listen, hear me out. Other than the crew, who all seemed GREAT, these people seemed unbearable and really dramatic." Said another person, "My favorite part of the 'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise' situation was the part when all the toilets stopped working and they had no power, so they thought, 'We should open the bars and give everyone free booze.'" One X user wrote, "'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise' on Netflix is a perfect documentary to show how Americans would not be surviving a war on their soil for a single week." The same user called out "the audacity, incapability to handle inconvenience and the absolute lack of community and empathy for others in a crisis." An X user posted, "Oh, the entitled cruise passengers are the worst!" "So, you've never been camping, done a missions trip, been hospitalized for any period of time, walked your dog, gone to a music festival? Just poop in the bag! You made the sewage problem so much worse," the same user added.
Washington Post
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The ‘poop cruise' was a floating nightmare. Now there's a documentary.
It was the ship that launched a thousand headlines. A dozen years ago, the country was riveted — and, let's face it, entertained — by the plight of more than 4,200 people adrift in the Gulf of Mexico on the Carnival Triumph after an engine room fire. A new Netflix documentary, 'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise,' recounts the sordid tale, from the initial party atmosphere to the postapocalyptic scenes of passengers sleeping on pool decks, hoarding food and collecting biohazard bags to relieve themselves. By the end of the ordeal, news choppers were following the ship's slow journey back to shore days after the voyage was meant to end.
News.com.au
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘Poop Cruise' passenger exposes filthy truth in viral Netflix documentary
A passenger on the notorious Carnival Triumph 'poop cruise' said the upcoming Netflix documentary fails to capture the true horror of four days at sea without food, power and sanitation – 'the scariest thing I've ever been through'. The cruise from Texas to Mexico spiralled into chaos after an engine room fire triggered a massive electrical failure leaving over 4,000 passengers and crew wading through urine and faeces, and camping on deck. It's the focus of an upcoming Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, set to be released on June 24. But one of the passengers, Tay Redford, 24, has watched the trailer and is 'hurt'. Now a bakery owner from Enid, Oklahoma, she was just 12 when the ship lost power, leaving passengers in darkness, surrounded by sewage, and struggling for basic necessities. She recalls the fear and chaos vividly, saying Carnival didn't offer meaningful support after the ordeal. Gripped by long-term trauma, Tay worries the documentary doesn't represent survivors' voices – and vows never to cruise again. 'I've only seen the trailer, but from what I saw, it doesn't even scratch the surface,' she said. 'It's just Carnival workers telling the story.' She added: 'It's really hard watching the documentary come out and seeing all these people making money from it. 'To me, it feels like they're profiting off something that deeply affected and traumatised me.' On February 10, 2013, a fire ignited in the Carnival Triumph's aft engine room off the coast of Mexico after a flexible fuel oil return line failed, spraying fuel onto a hot surface and severely damaging the ship's generators. This knocked out all main power and propulsion, leaving over 4,000 passengers and crew adrift in The Gulf of Mexico for four days. Sewage flooded many cabins, and basic services collapsed as the ship was eventually towed to Mobile, Alabama over several days. Tay was aboard the ship with her parents, older brother, and a group of family friends. Intended as a family vacation, the trip quickly turned into a harrowing ordeal. 'It was the most fear I've ever felt in my life,' Tay recalled. 'I'm not that old yet, but that was hands down the scariest thing I've ever been through.' The fire knocked out the ship's power, plunging the vessel into darkness and leaving passengers without basic services. Tay's family was forced to abandon their cabin due to sewage and a lack of airflow. 'My first thought is we're sinking, we're going down. That was the only thing I thought. I was crying hysterically, trying to follow my parents around in the dark,' she said. 'When we went down to our room, we were up to our ankles in sewage and urine and faeces, and there was no air flow. There were no lights.' The situation was chaotic and frightening, forcing the family to camp on the top deck for nearly four days. Access to food, water, and sanitation was severely limited. 'They ran out of water to give us, so they said, 'Hey, we'll open up the bar and let people drink liquor,'' she recalled. The decision reportedly backfired as frustrated, intoxicated passengers – angry over the lack of information and worsening conditions – began fighting. According to Tay, some even resorted to 'throwing their bodily fluids over the ship' as tensions escalated. 'They forced their housekeeping staff to stay in rooms infested with sewage, withheld proper meals, and made them eat out of the trash,' Tay recalled. 'Carnival called my nana and was like, 'We just wanted to let you know there was a fire on-board. There are no casualties, but your family's just on an extended vacation. Have a nice day.'' Amid the chaos, Tay's brother became a source of ingenuity. 'My brother actually had this great idea,' Tay recalled. 'He said, I'm going to build a tent out of these sheets. And he cut the sheets up and invented Tent City where everybody followed him to make tents to keep us out of the sun.' The disabled ship was slowly towed back to port in Mobile, Alabama, as passengers endured days of hardship before finally reaching land. While Carnival eventually provided a small compensation – $500 and a refund for the trip home – Tay says the company never truly addressed the trauma experienced by those on-board. 'Carnival never reached out – never,' she said. 'They gave us $500 and reimbursed my parents for the trip home, but that was it. After that, it was like nothing ever happened. No one was supposed to talk about it.' The lack of communication and support from Carnival left Tay and her family feeling abandoned. The experience left deep scars. Tay now suffers from long-term trauma and anxiety, particularly around the ocean and extreme weather. As for her own future, Tay is resolute. 'I would absolutely never go on a cruise again.'
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Carnival's Crazy Week: Record Revenue, Netflix ‘Poop Cruise,' Loyalty Meltdown
The Carnival Triumph was the site of the infamous "poop cruise," now the topic of a Netflix ... More documentary. This week, Carnival Corporation managed to achieve a corporate hat trick. They posted record-breaking financial results. They got featured in a Netflix documentary (not as good for the brand as it sounds). And, they enraged their most loyal customers. The Good: Record-Breaking Numbers Let's start with the good news. Carnival just announced second-quarter revenues of $6.3 billion. The company exceeded their 2026 financial targets a full 18 months early, with net yields (cruise industry speak for "how much money we make per passenger") hitting record highs. Customer deposits reached an all-time high of $8.5 billion, meaning people are literally throwing money at Carnival for future cruises. By any financial metric, Carnival is absolutely crushing it. The company's "Sea Change" transformation plan is working exactly as designed, with margins and returns reaching levels not seen in nearly two decades. For a company that was on life support during the pandemic, this represents one of the more remarkable comebacks in corporate America. The Bad: Netflix Brings Back the 'Poop Cruise' Then there's the timing issue. Just as Carnival is celebrating these stellar results, Netflix decided this was the perfect moment to release Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, a documentary about the infamous 2013 Carnival Triumph disaster. For those who missed this particular chapter in cruise history, the Triumph suffered an engine room fire that knocked out power to the entire ship, including the toilets. What followed was five days of what can only be described as a floating nightmare. 4,100 passengers and crew had to deal with with non-functioning bathrooms, no air conditioning, and limited food service while being towed to Mobile, Alabama. Passengers reported human waste backing up into cabins and hallways. One cook on the ship likened the scene in the bathrooms to 'poop lasagna.' That phrase probably won't make it into any Carnival marketing materials. The documentary goes beyond rehashing the gross details. It shows how Carnival's corporate response was initially to downplay the crisis. Ultimately, passenger social media posts from a neighboring ship's wifi forced their hand. As Carnival spokesperson Buck Banks puts it in the film, it became a 'complete media bloodbath.' I'm sure Carnival execs who thought the Triumph mess was fading into history aren't excited that Netflix is shining a bright spotlight on it a dozen years later. The Ugly: Rewards Program Revolt The most damaging story this week isn't about past disasters, it's about the ongoing revolt among Carnival's most loyal customers. The cruise line recently announced it's scrapping its lifetime loyalty program, moving instead to a system where customers must spend approximately $33,000 every two years to maintain elite "Diamond" status. For customers who spent decades accumulating what they thought was permanent status, this feels like a betrayal of epic proportions. The reaction on social media has been swift and brutal. Comments like "37 years, 31 cruises gone down the drain" and "I want to thank you for making my decision for me" are all over YouTube and Facebook. One particularly frustrated customer noted they'd been loyal through everything, including "covid, the triumph" – a reference to the very disaster Netflix is now immortalizing. The psychology here is particularly painful. These customers did more than just buy cruises. They actively participated in building their status over years, or even decades. They tracked their progress, planned trips around qualification requirements, and wore their elite status as a badge of honor. They had an emotional connection to the brand. Now Carnival is essentially telling them that none of that history matters. (I did offer some suggestions for how Carnival can still reduce the damage.) The Perfect Storm What makes this week so unusual is how these Carnival storylines interact with each other. Carnival's financial success is real and impressive. But it's happening at precisely the moment when Netflix is vividly reminding everyone of the company's capacity for operational disasters, while internal decisions are actively alienating the customers who helped create that financial success. The Netflix documentary reinforces a narrative that Carnival prioritizes marketing and profit over passenger experience. That's exactly the same criticism leveled by furious loyalty program members. The passengers on the Triumph felt unseen before they created a ruckus on social media. Today's Diamond members are feeling unseen, too. Meanwhile, those record revenues make the timing loyalty program changes feel even more tone-deaf. It's hard to argue you "need" to extract more money from loyal customers when you're reporting blowout financial results. To be fair, Carnival is facing a looming overload of elite loyalty members. But, the optics and the timing aren't great. A Cautionary Tale for CMOs One thing is certain: in an age where every corporate decision becomes social media content and every past mistake can be resurrected as streaming entertainment, managing a brand has never been more complex. Carnival's crazy week proves that sometimes winning financially and winning with customers can feel like two completely different games. Sometimes, you can't win both at the same time.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise': Netflix documentary looks back at the Carnival Triumph #CruiseShipFromHell
The Trainwreck documentary anthology on Netflix continues with the infamous "poop cruise" of 2013. More than 4,000 passengers were stuck on the Carnival Triumph as raw sewage water started flowing through and flooding the ship, following a fire in the engine room that resulted in a power outage. Trainwreck: Poop Cruise retells the story using interviews with crew members and guests who booked the roundtrip cruise from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico. Ultimately they were stranded at sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, for almost a week. Everything started going wrong on Day 4 of the cruise, where everyone was woken up by alarms and an "alpha team" call due to the fire. While the crew initially told passengers everything was OK, when all the power went out on the ship, the problems really started, including the fact that the toilets wouldn't flush. As cruise director Jen recalls, dubbed "Vacation Barbie" by guests, the crew came up with the idea for everyone to pee in the showers. But for poop, red biohazard bags were distributed for use, that would be disposed of. But it didn't take long for the hallways to be filled with those red bags. As one woman, Ashley, who was on her bachelorette trip, recalled, she instantly started taking Imodium to prevent herself from having to use the red bags. Like Ashley, many people didn't want to poop in a bag, but when you have to go, you have to go. As chef Abhi described, when he tried to find a washroom to use what he saw was a "lasagna" of layered poop and toilet paper clogging all the toilets. An absolutely revolting visual. As it got hotter on the ship, guests were taking their mattress and bringing them up to the deck to sleep outside. As food became scarce, guests were getting more selfish and started hoarding as much as they could. But in a particularly odd move, the decision was made to open the bar and give guests free alcohol. That resulted in chaos with people flinging their red poop bags, having sex in public right next to other guests, getting into fights and just total mayhem, as the guests and crew recall in Trainwreck: Poop Cruise. When another cruise ship got close to the Triumph, guests were able to get a signal for their mobile devices, sharing what was happening with their loved ones at home. And that information quickly got out to the press. As Brooke Baldwin, former CNN news anchor explains in the documentary, people started contacting that outlet with information about the cruise and CNN went all in, with "wall-to-wall coverage." And eventually #CruiseShipFromHell started trending online. While a tugboat was supposed to save everyone on the Triumph in Progreso, Mexico, the ship shifted over 100 nautical miles, now no where near Mexico. So everyone had to wait a few more days to get to Mobile, Alabama. When everyone finally got off the boat on Day 8, some kissing the ground, the guests praised how the crew took care of them. But maritime lawyer, Frank Spagnoletti, was quick to get to work to argue that the ship should have never been on the water, after previous fire incidents. Carnival spent US$115 million cleaning, repairing and refitting the Triumph, which now sails under a new name, Carnival Sunrise. The passengers were given a full refund, transportation expenses, a US$500 payment and offered a free cruise. If you're thinking, who would get on another cruise after this experience? Cruise travellers are incredibly loyal and there were guests that continued to cruise after the disaster. Father-daughter duo Larry and Rebekah still go on cruises together to this day. Just not with Carnival. Carnival Cruise Line provided a statement to Yahoo Canada about the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Poop Cruise. "The Carnival Triumph incident over 12 years ago was a teachable moment for the entire cruise industry," the statement reads. "A thorough investigation following the incident revealed a design vulnerability which was corrected and led Carnival Cruise Line to invest more than $500 million across our entire fleet in comprehensive fire prevention and suppression, improved redundancy, and enhanced management systems, all in support of our commitment to robust safety standards." "This is in addition to our vigorous Health, Environmental, Safety and Security (HESS) protocols that guide the entire Carnival Corporation fleet as we maintain our commitment to industry leadership in this area. We are proud of the fact that since 2013 over 53 million guests have enjoyed safe and memorable vacations with us, and we will continue to operate to these high standards."
