Trainwreck: Poop Cruise— When did it happen, what year was it, and how long did the nightmare last?

Netflix's recently released episode of Trainwreck: Poop Cruise recalls and documents the harrowing and nasty incident that took place aboard the Carnival Triumph in 2013.

On February 7, 2013, Triumph began its four-day luxury journey from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico, and back.

However, on February 10, 2013, the journey for 4,229 passengers and crew members aboard the Carnival Triumph turned into a dirty nightmare when a fire broke out in the engine room.

As detailed in Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, when Triumph was on its return journey, it was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for four days without power, food, air conditioning, and working toilets. They were finally rescued on February 14.

More on this in our story.

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Inside the Trainwreck: Poop Cruise of February 2013. What happened at the Carnival Triumph?

On that fateful day, a fire broke out in the engine room at 5:30 a.m., which woke people up (due to the emergency sirens). However, the cruise staff encouraged the people to go back to bed and said that everything was under their control.

However, the cruise staff soon realized the problem they had at hand, as cruise director Jen Baxter recalled in Trainwreck: Poop Cruise:

"Everything's out, from little things like making a cup of tea or a piece of toast, to the whole propulsion of the ship. Technically we are just floating dead in the water."

The passengers and the crew teamed up to survive without power, as the staff threw away all perishable food items and started making sandwiches to feed the people on board. The passengers flocked onto the deck with their mattresses to survive the scorching heat in their rooms, as the air conditioning was out.

However, the real nightmare began when somebody realized that the toilets were not working. Given the number of people on board and nature calls, this was a dire situation, and the cruise director came up with a plan, as recalled on Trainwreck: Poop Cruise:

"Half-jokingly I said we could do a No. 1 in the shower. So it was, 'Oh yeah, that sounds good...pee in the shower...for the No. 2, that was definitely a tricker problem than No. 1."

While the passengers peed in the shower, they were given red biohazard bags to defecate in, which they were then asked to drop off in dustbins. Naturally, the passengers and even some crew members did not have the best of reactions to this solution. The cruise ship chef recalled,

"I never thought in my weirdest dream I would see a day when I had to poop in a red bag."

"You want me to what?" Devin Marble, a passenger on the ship, said

While this solution seemed to have worked for some hours, it turned nastier. The pee was not draining through the shower drain anymore, and the poop situation was getting out of hand, as Chef Abhi recalled on Trainwreck: Poop Cruise:

"I found this public restroom and I go inside...It was the most nastiest thing I have ever seen in my life. People were covering the poop with the toilet paper and then again pooping on top of it. So it was layer after layer after layer, it was like a lasagna."

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Trainwreck: Poop Cruise—How were the passengers rescued?

As the situation was getting out of hand, measures were being taken to rescue passengers and crew from Triumph.

On February 11, Triumph was supposed to meet with a tugboat at Progreso, Mexico, which would tow it for the rest of the way to Texas. However, they were notified that they had drifted more than 100 nautical miles away and were not in Mexico anymore. Triumph was advised to head north to Mobile, Alabama.

The cruise was finally rescued on February 14, 2013, after two tugboats towed the ship to Mobile, Alabama.

The passengers were fully refunded and flown to their homes at no cost. As documented in Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, the ship spent $115 million to clean and repair. It was finally rechristened the Carnival Sunshine in 2019.

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