Carnival's Crazy Week: Record Revenue, Netflix ‘Poop Cruise,' Loyalty Meltdown

Forbes

5 hours ago

The Carnival Triumph was the site of the infamous "poop cruise," now the topic of a Netflix ... More documentary.
This week, Carnival Corporation managed to achieve a corporate hat trick. They posted record-breaking financial results. They got featured in a Netflix documentary (not as good for the brand as it sounds). And, they enraged their most loyal customers.
The Good: Record-Breaking Numbers
Let's start with the good news. Carnival just announced second-quarter revenues of $6.3 billion. The company exceeded their 2026 financial targets a full 18 months early, with net yields (cruise industry speak for "how much money we make per passenger") hitting record highs.
Customer deposits reached an all-time high of $8.5 billion, meaning people are literally throwing money at Carnival for future cruises. By any financial metric, Carnival is absolutely crushing it. The company's "Sea Change" transformation plan is working exactly as designed, with margins and returns reaching levels not seen in nearly two decades.
For a company that was on life support during the pandemic, this represents one of the more remarkable comebacks in corporate America.
The Bad: Netflix Brings Back the 'Poop Cruise'
Then there's the timing issue. Just as Carnival is celebrating these stellar results, Netflix decided this was the perfect moment to release Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, a documentary about the infamous 2013 Carnival Triumph disaster.
For those who missed this particular chapter in cruise history, the Triumph suffered an engine room fire that knocked out power to the entire ship, including the toilets. What followed was five days of what can only be described as a floating nightmare. 4,100 passengers and crew had to deal with with non-functioning bathrooms, no air conditioning, and limited food service while being towed to Mobile, Alabama.
Passengers reported human waste backing up into cabins and hallways. One cook on the ship likened the scene in the bathrooms to 'poop lasagna.' That phrase probably won't make it into any Carnival marketing materials.
The documentary goes beyond rehashing the gross details. It shows how Carnival's corporate response was initially to downplay the crisis. Ultimately, passenger social media posts from a neighboring ship's wifi forced their hand. As Carnival spokesperson Buck Banks puts it in the film, it became a 'complete media bloodbath.'
I'm sure Carnival execs who thought the Triumph mess was fading into history aren't excited that Netflix is shining a bright spotlight on it a dozen years later.
The Ugly: Rewards Program Revolt
The most damaging story this week isn't about past disasters, it's about the ongoing revolt among Carnival's most loyal customers.
The cruise line recently announced it's scrapping its lifetime loyalty program, moving instead to a system where customers must spend approximately $33,000 every two years to maintain elite "Diamond" status. For customers who spent decades accumulating what they thought was permanent status, this feels like a betrayal of epic proportions.
The reaction on social media has been swift and brutal. Comments like "37 years, 31 cruises gone down the drain" and "I want to thank you for making my decision for me" are all over YouTube and Facebook. One particularly frustrated customer noted they'd been loyal through everything, including "covid, the triumph" – a reference to the very disaster Netflix is now immortalizing.
The psychology here is particularly painful. These customers did more than just buy cruises. They actively participated in building their status over years, or even decades. They tracked their progress, planned trips around qualification requirements, and wore their elite status as a badge of honor. They had an emotional connection to the brand. Now Carnival is essentially telling them that none of that history matters. (I did offer some suggestions for how Carnival can still reduce the damage.)
The Perfect Storm
What makes this week so unusual is how these Carnival storylines interact with each other.
Carnival's financial success is real and impressive. But it's happening at precisely the moment when Netflix is vividly reminding everyone of the company's capacity for operational disasters, while internal decisions are actively alienating the customers who helped create that financial success.
The Netflix documentary reinforces a narrative that Carnival prioritizes marketing and profit over passenger experience. That's exactly the same criticism leveled by furious loyalty program members. The passengers on the Triumph felt unseen before they created a ruckus on social media. Today's Diamond members are feeling unseen, too.
Meanwhile, those record revenues make the timing loyalty program changes feel even more tone-deaf. It's hard to argue you "need" to extract more money from loyal customers when you're reporting blowout financial results. To be fair, Carnival is facing a looming overload of elite loyalty members. But, the optics and the timing aren't great.
A Cautionary Tale for CMOs
One thing is certain: in an age where every corporate decision becomes social media content and every past mistake can be resurrected as streaming entertainment, managing a brand has never been more complex. Carnival's crazy week proves that sometimes winning financially and winning with customers can feel like two completely different games. Sometimes, you can't win both at the same time.