On February 10, 2013, a fire incapacitated the power cables of the Carnival Triumph, leaving 4,000 passengers stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for nearly a week with non-flushing toilets and sewage leaking from walls.
Netflix explores these unfortunate events in Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, a 55-minute documentary releasing June 24, as part of the streamer’s series on .
The film features crew members, a Carnival spokesperson from that period, and passengers who endured the ordeal, including women on a bachelorette party and a man traveling with his future fiancé’s family.
Here’s an examination of the most astonishing details about what it was like to be a passenger on the “poop cruise.”
When the ordeal began
Passengers had booked a four-day roundtrip journey from to Cozumel, . The initial leg of the trip from to was successful, with guests enjoying deck parties and all-you-can-eat buffets.
However, on Day 4, as the ship was returning to the U.S. from , passengers were roused in the middle of the night by an alarm summoning an “alpha team” due to a fire.
As the sun rose, the cruise director announced over the intercom that the situation was under control, and then abruptly, all power ceased.
Staff quickly had to devise a makeshift solution for sanitation as toilets could no longer flush without electricity. Some passengers removed the beacons from their life vests and poured water on them to activate the light, providing visibility in the dark bathrooms. Crew members instructed everyone to urinate in the showers and distributed red biohazard bags for . Passengers would place these red bags in the hallways once waste bins became full, leading to a rapid spread of foul odors throughout the cruise ship.
Not everyone complied with the directives to defecate in the red bags. Devin, the passenger vacationing with his fiancé’s parents, extensively filmed the chaos with his phone, and this footage is utilized throughout the documentary. “You walked down a hallway and all of a sudden, squish-squish-squish-squish…we were in [waste],” he states in the film. The cafeteria floors were soiled with urine and feces, and one crew member in the documentary, Abhi, recounts seeing what he termed a poop “lasagna” in a bathroom—piles of excrement layered with toilet paper and more.
There were additional complications. One of the chefs onboard discusses the struggle to prepare meals like lettuce sandwiches without functioning refrigerators. Without air-conditioning, the cabins became too hot for sleeping, so passengers relocated their mattresses to the deck and slept outdoors. According to the documentary, some passengers even engaged in sexual acts in public.
Carnival Triumph passengers initially had no cell service when they became stranded. “As a 12-year-old, it’s very scary not to be able to talk to my mom,” Rebekah, a passenger on vacation with her father, says in the documentary. When another cruise ship happened to pass by, Carnival Triumph passengers gained some of its cell service, enabling them to make brief calls to family members and share images and videos. This was one way news of the disaster began to spread to the press.
The Rescue and Its Aftermath
After the initial fire, the plan was for a tugboat crew to tow the ship back to a Mexican port. However, the ship had drifted significantly closer to the U.S., resulting in the tugboat guiding the vessel to Mobile, Alabama. After approximately four days adrift, passengers are shown kissing the ground upon disembarking.
“We were shocked and relieved that so many of them credited the Carnival crew members with superhuman effort,” Buck Banks, a spokesperson for Carnival at that time, states in the documentary.
Maritime lawyer Frank Spagnoletti asserts in the documentary that the Carnival Triumph should never have embarked in the first place, citing documents that indicated the ship’s susceptibility to fires. All of his cases were settled.
Carnival invested $115 million in refurbishing the vessel—which now sails under the name Carnival Sunrise—and conducted fleet-wide enhancements to its engine rooms. Carnival Triumph passengers received a refund, $500, transportation reimbursements, and a voucher for a complimentary cruise.
Rebekah’s father, Larry, mentions in the documentary that he still holds positive memories of being on the cruise with his daughter before the incident and emerged from the experience with a deeper appreciation for “how we can get through things together, good or bad.” They continue to go on cruises to this day.