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- “Trainwreck: Poop Cruise” recounts the 2013 engine room fire on the Carnival Triumph that left it stranded with thousands of passengers.
- The Netflix documentary features passenger footage and recreations of events, highlighting the unsanitary conditions and challenges faced by both passengers and crew.
- Carnival Cruise Line has since invested in safety upgrades and called the incident a “teachable moment.”
About halfway through “Trainwreck: Poop Cruise,” a new undefined on Netflix, Devin Marble wanders around dark hallways on a Carnival Cruise Line ship searching for a working bathroom.
The then 28-year-old was a passenger onboard the Carnival Triumph, which lost power following an engine room fire in 2013 – including to flush most onboard toilets. “But every time I walked into a bathroom, you open up the door, ‘Nope, that one doesn’t work,’” he said in the show. “Go into the next one, ‘Nope, that one’s disgusting. That one doesn’t work.’”
The ship was stranded near Mexico with more than 3,000 guests, including Marble and his soon-to-be wife and in-laws. Marble eventually found a bathroom, and more than a decade later, his camera footage makes up part of the latest installment of the “Trainwreck” anthology series, which debuted Tuesday.
“You know, it’s funny. Looking back on it, I keep thinking to myself it wasn’t as bad as I thought at the time,” Marble, now 40, told USA TODAY ahead of the episode’s premiere. “And maybe time helps heal all wounds.”
What is ‘Trainwreck: Poop Cruise’ about?
The episode traces a February 2013 cruise aboard Carnival Triumph from Galveston, Texas to Mexico. The trip went smoothly until its return journey, when the fire left the ship dead in the water with insufficient backup power.
Passengers were stuck onboard for around four days without working toilets, air conditioning or lighting in many parts of the ship before it was finally towed to Mobile, Alabama.
Guests who had been sunbathing on the open decks were soon dragging mattresses out of their cabins to escape stifling heat. Plentiful buffet selections were replaced by what was leftover after many perishables were discarded. And crew members tried to keep guests comfortable and safe – even as sewage began flooding parts of the ship.
One employee can be seen in the documentary standing in brown water in his cabin.
“You start off with two worlds, which are the passengers and the crew, and really they never mix,” director James Ross told USA TODAY. “But actually, once this disaster happens, everybody’s in the same boat, literally. So what’s happening to the passengers, that’s also happening to the crew as well, they’re having to deal with this situation. So, a lot of the walls that are kind of necessarily built for people to have the holiday vacation of a lifetime, those walls start to crumble down – and then you get this really interesting mix of, we’re all just human beings stuck on board a boat with no toilets.”
The episode incorporates footage from the ship, such as the clips Marble captured, which he initially began filming to memorialize his vacation. An archive team also assisted with gathering others. They recreated scenes that were less likely to be filmed in the moment, such as operations on the bridge.
“Those were things that we had to get creative and reconstruct,” said Ross. “You know, there’s never really a moment as a director when you’re trying to work out how you’re going to film someone going for a wee in a shower.”
Carnival told USA TODAY the incident was a “teachable moment for the entire cruise industry.”
“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,” the cruise line said in an emailed statement. “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.”
The ship still sails under the name Carnival Sunrise.
How long is ‘Trainwreck: Poop Cruise’?
The episode runs about 55 minutes long.
How do I watch ‘Trainwreck: Poop Cruise’?
The episode is now available to stream on Netflix.
Marble credited the crew members as “superheroes” and said the ordeal became a bonding experience for him and his new extended family. He learned, for example, that he and his now-wife’s father both traveled with extra batteries and flashlights just in case, even before the events unfolded.
“Crisis shows people’s true colors,” he said.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
