Trainwreck: Poop Cruise on Netflix is pretty much exactly as disgusting as you’d expect a documentary titled Poop Cruise to be. As promised, there is a lot of poop.
The latest 50-minute special in Netflix’s Trainwreck series—which began streaming today—tackles a 2013 cruise ship, the Carnival Triumph, that lost power and was left drifting, dead in the water, for four days. For the 4,000 passengers and crew on board, that meant no lights, no air-conditioning, and, most devastatingly, no working toilets.
Directed by James Ross, the documentary special first introduces viewers to some of the key players on the cruise, including Devin, a guy tagging along on his fiancé’s family vacation; Kalin, Ashley, and Jayme, three women on a bachelorette trip; Jen, the Carnival Triumph’s cruise director; and Abhi, a chef working in the ship’s kitchen. The cruise set off as a four-day round trip from Galveston, Texas to Cozumel, Mexico, and it wasn’t until the last day of the trip—after the passengers had spent a day in Mexico, and were headed home to Texas—that disaster struck.
In the middle of what was supposed to be the last night on the cruise, a fire broke out in the engine room. Soon after, the ship lost power. After the fire was extinguished, the ship’s crew realized that the electrical cables on board had been completely destroyed. There was no hope of getting the power back. Without an engine, the ship drifted off course, complicating the rescue mission. In the end, the cruise drifted, powerless, for four days, before it was towed to land into Mobile, Alabama. That’s four days and 4,000 people without working bathrooms.
If you don’t have the stomach to watch Trainwreck: Poop Cruise yourself, here are the most shocking, most disgusting highlights from the special.
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Passengers were asked to poop in little red bags.
With no electricity, none of the toilets in the cabins were able to flush. So how were the 4,000 people on board supposed to use the bathroom?
The official announcement to the passengers went like this: “Folks, when you do need to a do a number one, everybody, you can do it in the shower. And if you do need to do a number two, what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna deliver some red bags to all of the bathrooms on board. If you do need to do a number two, we ask that you do it in the red bag, and drop it off in the bins, in the corridors. Thank you folks.”
Many of the passengers resolved to simply hold it, rather than use the bag. “I immediately started taking Imodium,” one said. But that was before they knew they were still days away from rescue.
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Some used the overflowing toilets anyhow, filled with “layers” of excrement, “like a lasagna.”
By day three without power, some of the passengers and crew could no longer “hold it,” as it were. Chef Abhi opted to use one of the non-working toilets, rather than squatting over a little red bag.
“I really had to go number two,” Abhi explained in an interview for the documentary. “I found this public restroom, I go inside, and it was the nastiest thing I have ever seen in my life. People were covering the poop with toilet paper, and then again pooping on top of it. It was layer after layer after layer. It was like a lasagna.”
Thanks for that visual, Abhi!
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The tow boat rescue rocked the boat, and tipped those toilets over.
The euphoric relief passengers felt when the rescue boat finally arrived to tow the ship to land was quickly overshadowed by an overflowing sewage nightmare. Between the tug and some poorly-timed inclement weather, the boat started to rock. And all that backed-up sewage started to spill onto every part of the ship, from the hallways to the cafeteria. Some even claimed sewage was dripping down the walls.
As one passenger described it: “Imagine everything that goes in a toilet—it’s everywhere.”
As another put it, “You’d be walking down the hallway, and all of the sudden, squish squish squish. And you knew what you were standing in. We were in excrement.”
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Passengers created tent cities on the dock.
The toilet-related details are easily the worst part of Trainwreck, but there were a few non-poop related shockers, too. The suffocating, AC-less heat inside the ship drove passengers to the deck, where people created “tent cities” with blankets, sheets, chairs.
“There was a rush to get a deck chair,” explained one passenger. “People were tugging and fighting. ‘This is my area, these are my people. Don’t come messing with us.’ You saw that a lot.”
It’s a little ironic that passengers who paid for a luxury cruise experienced much of the same conditions endured daily by unhoused people, no?
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People waited hours in line for soggy lettuce sandwiches.
With no refrigeration available, the kitchen staff was forced to throw out all the perishable food and improvise with what was left to feed the thousands of hungry passengers on board.
Before the power went out, there was endless food available from buffets at all hours of the day. After, the passengers recalled waiting in line for over two hours to eat. “When got to see what you were waiting on, it was a like, a soggy bread, tomato-lettuce sandwich.”
But even with such meager options, those who could, stocked up.
“The hoarding on board was ridiculous,” said one of the crew members. “People were just grabbing everything and taking it to their little camps.”
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The cruise offered an open bar to raise moral… which led to fights, flying poop bags, and public sex.
At some point during the four days without power, the cruise’s management decided to offer unlimited free drinks, in an attempt to raise morale.
“I was definitely against the idea of the open bar,” said Jen the cruise director. “People will go nuts.”
But apparently, Jen was overruled, and her prediction came true. Things got messy, fast. The party disaster dissolved into drunken chaos. Passengers witnessed fights breaking out, people urinating overboard, and more.
“People were throwing their red bags on the lifeboats,” said Abhi. “Somebody threw the poop bag, and the wind blew it back onto somebody sitting on the open deck.”
Most egregious? One of the bachelorette girls witnessed a couple having sex on the deck, in broad daylight.
“The group next to us in tent city was a newlywed husband and wife, and they were having sex right in front of me, on the chair,” she recalled frankly in the documentary, while her friends giggle. “There was no—like, ‘You want a sheet to put over you?’ No, they were right there.”
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