Trainwreck: Poop Cruise

I didn't follow the story when it first happened, so this documentary was a wild, bizarre, and completely captivating surprise for me. I was hooked from start to finish.

But there's a great guilty pleasure in watching this when hearing the American women on a bachelorette cruise share their dramatic version of events, complaining about missing out on margaritas and beach time, while a crew member calmly explains that this kind of thing happens all the time in her country and doesn't shock anyone. It's both brilliant and embarrassing! 😂

I think this is the reason for the 1-star reviews, but it's a fascinating commentary on culture pulled from a story about poop flooding a ship. I say, well done!

Also, credit to the producers for keeping it under an hour. That was the perfect length.

I watched Trainwreck: Poop Cruise as someone who lives on a boat and has also spent plenty of time off-grid, camping, living simply. So my reaction to the events on the Carnival Triumph was not what the filmmakers may have intended. Yes, the fire was serious. Yes, the loss of power was frightening. But what truly shocked me was not the mechanical failure - it was the passengers.

The documentary reveals something deeply unsettling about modern entitlement: a total inability to adapt when modern comforts disappear. When toilets failed, the crew handed out sanitary disposal bags - a practical, biosecure solution. Most passengers refused. The result? Unsanitary conditions, plumbing backups, and worsening chaos. This wasn't just a systems failure; it was a human failure.

What astonishes me is the genuine horror expressed at the idea of peeing in a shower or using a bag - things our species has done, in one form or another, for tens of thousands of years. Watching people recoil from such basic realities while drifting in the middle of the ocean was, frankly, more apocalyptic than the fire itself.

The film is well-paced and tightly edited, and Carnival deserves scrutiny for its disaster preparedness. But if there's a deeper message here, it's this: modern humans may not be ready to survive without flush toilets and air conditioning - and that should worry us far more than an engine room fire.

Stuff happens. Systems break. But survival requires mindset, not just amenities. If these people are representing the species, then we are doomed.

Trainwreck: Poop Cruise (2025) starts off with a weirdly intriguing premise; enough to make you press play out of morbid curiosity. But it doesn't take long to realize there's not much beneath the surface. The documentary feels like typical Netflix filler: shallow, rushed, and you could say, somewhat intellectually insulting.

The incident itself is so anticlimactic, many might've been better off never hearing about it.

The documentary is just short enough to keep you watching, only to leave you wondering why you bothered.

Hopefully this is just throwaway content, and Netflix has something better cooking.

They say it's not nice to laugh at other people's misfortunes, but sorry, I couldn't help but laugh.

In February 2013, everything was going fine on the Carnival Triumph luxury cruise ship until day four, when a fire knocked out the ship's electricity. This, in turn, disabled the toilets, leaving passengers with the option to do number ones in the shower and number twos in a red poop bag.

Most of the food had to be thrown away, thanks to no refrigeration, leaving passengers with crappy, unappealing sandwiches and not much else. A plan to give passengers free drinks didn't go well, as it seems drunk passengers on a broken cruise ship stuck in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico was a recipe for yet more disaster.

This is just day one; it gets worse, much worse. I felt bad for laughing, but I couldn't help it.

Eventually, the media got a whiff of the story, which is much better for them than the whiff of pee and poop being endured by the poor passengers and crew of the Carnival Triumph.

It turns out there were plenty of warning signs that this could happen. There had been several fires on Carnival's ships, and this fire was caused by a leak in a diesel engine's flexible fuel oil return line that spilt onto a hot surface and ignited. This was not the fault of the crew, who came across as guardian angels, thus saving Carnival Cruise Line a little bit of face, but not much.

This is the third of the Netflix Trainwreck series I've seen, and probably the best so far. Thankfully, nobody died in this disaster, but anyone watching will surely be glad they were not on that boat.

4,000 passengers set off on board a luxury carnival cruise ship, but on the return journey, the power fails after a fire in an engine room, and chaos ensues.

I can understand why they decided to focus on the 'poop' angle; it's pure clickbait. I get that it's a grim part of the story, but come on, it's a little juvenile. I can imagine twelve-year-olds giggling about it.

The interesting side of it isn't the whole poop angle, but the human nature aspect-seeing people splinter off into factions, with primal instincts coming through. Why on Earth did the people in charge think that opening the free bar would be a good idea? Who could possibly have thought that giving stressed-out, bunged-up people free booze was the right thing to do?

Credit to the staff on board that ship; they seemed to come away from this with a bit of dignity. Carnival's disclaimer was something special; can you imagine? Human nature is always interesting to witness, so from that point of view, it's watchable.

6/10.