I was on the ‘Poop Cruise' in the new Netflix doc — this is how bad it really was
A passenger on the notorious Carnival Triumph 'poop cruise' said the upcoming Netflix documentary fails to capture the true horror of four days at sea without food, power and sanitation – 'the scariest thing I've ever been through'.
The cruise from Texas to Mexico spiraled into chaos after an engine room fire triggered a massive electrical failure leaving over 4,000 passengers and crew wading through urine and feces, and camping on deck.
Advertisement
It's the focus of an upcoming Netflix documentary 'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise,' set to be released on June 24.
9 The cruise from Texas to Mexico spiraled into chaos after an engine room fire triggered a massive electrical failure.
But one of the passengers, Tay Redford, 24, has watched the trailer and is 'hurt'.
Now a bakery owner from Enid, Oklahoma, she was just 12 when the ship lost power, leaving passengers in darkness, surrounded by sewage, and struggling for basic necessities.
Advertisement
She recalls the fear and chaos vividly, saying Carnival didn't offer meaningful support after the ordeal.
Gripped by long-term trauma, Tay worries the documentary doesn't represent survivors' voices – and vows never to cruise again.
9 It's the focus of an upcoming Netflix documentary 'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise,' set to be released on June 24.
Courtesy of Netflix
'I've only seen the trailer, but from what I saw, it doesn't even scratch the surface,' she said.
Advertisement
'It's just Carnival workers telling the story.'
She added: 'It's really hard watching the documentary come out and seeing all these people making money from it.
'To me, it feels like they're profiting off something that deeply affected and traumatized me.'
9 But one of the passengers, Tay Redford, 24, has watched the trailer and is 'hurt'.
SWNS
Advertisement
On February 10, 2013, a fire ignited in the Carnival Triumph's aft engine room off the coast of Mexico after a flexible fuel oil return line failed, spraying fuel onto a hot surface and severely damaging the ship's generators.
This knocked out all main power and propulsion, leaving over 4,000 passengers and crew adrift in the Gulf of Mexico for four days.
Sewage flooded many cabins, and basic services collapsed as the ship was eventually towed to Mobile, Alabama over several days.
9 She recalls the fear and chaos vividly, saying Carnival didn't offer meaningful support after the ordeal.
SWNS
Tay was aboard the ship with her parents, older brother, and a group of family friends.
Intended as a family vacation, the trip quickly turned into a harrowing ordeal.
'It was the most fear I've ever felt in my life,' Tay recalled. 'I'm not that old yet, but that was hands down the scariest thing I've ever been through.'
The fire knocked out the ship's power, plunging the vessel into darkness and leaving passengers without basic services.
Advertisement
Tay's family was forced to abandon their cabin due to sewage and a lack of airflow.
9 'To me, it feels like they're profiting off something that deeply affected and traumatized me,' Tay said.
SWNS
'My first thought is we're sinking, we're going down. That was the only thing I thought. I was crying hysterically, trying to follow my parents around in the dark,' she said.
'When we went down to our room, we were up to our ankles in sewage and urine and feces, and there was no air flow. There were no lights.'
Advertisement
The situation was chaotic and frightening, forcing the family to camp on the top deck for nearly four days.
Access to food, water, and sanitation was severely limited.
9 Tay was aboard the ship with her parents, older brother, and a group of family friends.
SWNS
'They ran out of water to give us, so they said, 'Hey, we'll open up the bar and let people drink liquor,'' she recalled.
Advertisement
The decision reportedly backfired as frustrated, intoxicated passengers – angry over the lack of information and worsening conditions – began fighting.
According to Tay, some even resorted to 'throwing their bodily fluids over the ship' as tensions escalated.
9 The situation was chaotic and frightening, forcing the family to camp on the top deck for nearly four days.
SWNS
'They forced their housekeeping staff to stay in rooms infested with sewage, withheld proper meals, and made them eat out of the trash,' Tay recalled.
Advertisement
'Carnival called my nana and was like, 'We just wanted to let you know there was a fire onboard. There are no casualties, but your family's just on an extended vacation. Have a nice day.''
Amid the chaos, Tay's brother became a source of ingenuity.
9 'They ran out of water to give us, so they said, 'Hey, we'll open up the bar and let people drink liquor,'' Tay recalled.
Courtesy of Netflix
'My brother actually had this great idea,' Tay recalled.
'He said, I'm going to build a tent out of these sheets. And he cut the sheets up and invented Tent City where everybody followed him to make tents to keep us out of the sun.'
The disabled ship was slowly towed back to port in Mobile, Alabama, as passengers endured days of hardship before finally reaching land.
While Carnival eventually provided a small compensation – $500 and a refund for the trip home – Tay says the company never truly addressed the trauma experienced by those onboard.
9 The disabled ship was slowly towed back to port in Mobile, Alabama, as passengers endured days of hardship before finally reaching land.
SWNS
'Carnival never reached out – never,' she said.
'They gave us $500 and reimbursed my parents for the trip home, but that was it. After that, it was like nothing ever happened. No one was supposed to talk about it.'
The lack of communication and support from Carnival left Tay and her family feeling abandoned.
The experience left deep scars. Tay now suffers from long-term trauma and anxiety, particularly around the ocean and extreme weather.
As for her own future, Tay is resolute. 'I would absolutely never go on a cruise again.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Queer love scores big as Netflix and Pride take over San Francisco's new women's sports bar
What better place to watch a reality show that turns queer dating into a sporting event than at San Francisco's newest women's sports bar? In one of the most unique events at Frameline's 49th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Netflix took over Rikki's in the Castro District to the Season 2 premiere of 'The Ultimatum: Queer Love.' The sold-out event on Tuesday, June 24, drew 160 fans of the series. The dating show centers six lesbian and nonbinary couples who face an ultimatum: get married or break up. During the breakup period, they date others on the show. At Rikki's, there were free drinks and sliders, and the conversation flowed. 'We were big fans of Kyle and Bridget,' enthused Violet Daar, who was in a group of six who sat near the bar. 'Very hot!' Alex Ebrahimi, who was part of Daar's group, added that while she was happy with the show because 'It represents diverse voices,' she thought 'there could be more gender and body type diversity.' Meanwhile Kate Whitney, who sat at a table watching with three friends, observed, 'I hope that we get to see people really find themselves and find love.' Claire Markham, who sat in Whitney's group, added, 'If they're going on a reality show to solve their relationship issues, they're probably not going to end up together, but it's going to be entertaining.' The first seven of 10 episodes of the second season of 'The Ultimatum: Queer Love' began streaming on Netflix on Wednesday, June 25. The final three will drop Wednesday, July 2. To mark the occasion, Netflix flew in one of the stars of Season 1, Lexi Goldberg, to host the event. 'Hopefully, Season 2 steps it up and makes me look less messy than I did on Season 1,' Goldberg told the crowd to laughter. Afterward, Goldberg, who lives in Miami, told the Chronicle that she was surprised by the show's popularity, noting that she has been approached by fans from all walks of life. 'Something about our cast really resonated with audiences where, be it straight people, gay people and queer people in general, they were like, 'Holy sh—. The problems that they have and their relationship I relate to. And it doesn't matter whether they're lesbians or bisexual or nonbinary or whatever. It's like relationship problems are linear and they exist across whoever you're dating.' Savannah Schulze, who was in the group with Whitney and Markham, added that the setting made it especially memorable. 'There are very few queer shows in general, but even less for lesbians or for queer women,' Schulze said. 'So the fact that a women's bar is hosting this space in the Castro during Pride Month for queer women to watch and get their own visibility on a TV screen is not something that we get really ever.' Rikki's opened for business on June 11, and owners Sara Yergovich and Danielle Thoe said business has been exceeding expectations, especially during Golden State Valkyries WNBA games. But for the Frameline/Netflix event, they were more than happy to shut off sports for one night. 'There's a lot of really serious and important work that comes out through Frameline,' said Yergovich of the nonprofit that operates the festival. 'I think this is one of the more fun, whimsical kinds of things to go watch and laugh and have a good time. I think it's really important to have some fun during Pride, as well as kind of reflecting on the work that still needs to be done.' Among the attendees were Film SF Executive Director Manijeh Fata, film director Alice Wu and, of course, Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen, who said she has found the festival 'cathartic' after the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a Tennessee law that prohibits certain medical treatments for transgender minors, a 'gut punch,' as Madsen put it, that came down hours before the festival opened on Wednesday, June 18. '(Tonight) was a nice night to celebrate some of the positive things that are happening in San Francisco,' Madsen said. 'We have the (WNBA's) Valkyries now, we have a brand new lesbian sports bar, so let's all get together. … Having silly good times with one another, that's how you build community. Going through hard times, but also creating space for the good times.' Asked which couple on 'The Ultimatum' was her favorite, Madsen smiled. 'It's too early to tell, so if I have to do my fantasy league tonight, I'm not ready to put money anywhere, but talk to me next week and I might be able to fill you in.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Inside the revolting story of the infamous ‘poop cruise': ‘Complete media bloodbath'
Elevator pitches don't get much more captivating, and possibly revolting, than 'poop cruise' – a modern day Gilligan's Island tale that's almost too good to be true. For those who may have missed the headlines in 2013: a two-day transit from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico turned disastrous when an engine room fire struck the Carnival Triumph and stranded its 4,100-odd passengers and crew in the Gulf of Mexico. The fire devastated the Triumph's electrical nerve center and crippled the auxiliary systems aboard the ship, from the wifi to the toilets – which literally backed up into cabins and spilled into the hallways. After three days adrift, the Triumph was towed to Mobile, Alabama – but not before the limits of socially conditioned behavior approached a breaking point. Related: Poop Cruise review – a fascinating look at a toilet disaster that still haunts passengers 12 years later To widespread relief, however, the saga ended with passengers kissing the ground and laughing off the calamity as they disembarked – and the stricken Carnival cruise went from a potential Titanic epilogue unfolding in real time to the ultimate shaggy dog story. 'When you hear 'Poop Cruise', you think '… OK'', says Bafta-nominated director James Ross. 'But actually there's a lot more layers and twists and turns to the story.' His latest film, Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, follows recent documentaries in Netflix's Trainwreck series on the fall of Toronto mayor Rob Ford and the Astroworld festival tragedy. Poop Cruise doesn't just dive head-first into the graphic details; it deftly walks the line between the serious and the side-splitting while reconstructing the epic yarn in 360 degrees. Right away, we're introduced to a cross-section of Triumph cruise survivors: the bachelorette party looking to blow off steam, the nervous fiance traveling with his future father-in-law for the first time, the divorced dad who just wanted to have a nice vacation with his 13-year-old daughter. Their passive experience aboard the cruise – the bachelorette party ominously skipped the safety briefing upon boarding the ship and headed straight for the bar – is juxtaposed with perspectives from the cruise director, bartender and other non-Americans on the crew pulling 70-hour work weeks to keep the good times rolling. (Think Upstairs, Downstairs on the high seas, with bed-hopping above and below deck.) 'It's hedonism,' says Ross. 'There's this huge extreme of people on one end who are there just to really enjoy themselves and the crew who are there to facilitate that. But it was also important to show that this terrible scenario didn't just happen to the passengers; the crew were in it as well.' Poop Cruise cleverly puts viewers back onboard the Triumph, setting its expert witnesses inside kitschy dining halls, bars and other backdrops that suggest locations on the actual ship. At one point during the interview with the nervous bachelor, Devin Marble, the lights flicker out – a fortuitous and poetic echo of real life, as it happens. 'We were shooting in an arcade shop in a mall in Houston, and there was a power cut midway through,' says Ross. Poop Cruise also features one of the better applications of scene re-enactments in a documentary, especially when it comes to reconstructing anecdotes. (One memorable scene takes shape as one member of the bachelorette party recalls her disco-like endeavor to use a blacked-out cabin bathroom with a flashing beacon between her teeth.) Ross says he wanted the re-enactments to 'not feel too real' but also signal to viewers that 'you're in this kind of hyper real place, because the real footage is the star of the show'. Ross had his pick from hundreds of hours of passenger-generated footage, each adding to this mosaic of civilizational collapse in miniature. Passengers go from cannonballing into the pool and hoofing around the disco to creating tent cities on deck and contemplating how long they can hold off on going No 2 before they have to break down and defecate in a crew-issued hazmat bag. Finding the footage of those critical story beats, says Ross, was just a matter of tracking down insiders such as Marble (whose vlogs became a critical window into the crisis) and sorting through the trove of video and photo evidence that was submitted for the disaster investigation. Ultimately, the fire was blamed on a fuel leak – a preventable failure that Carnival knowingly sailed right past. Poop Cruise could have easily gone sideways again trying to shoehorn such a wide-ranging story into a tight 45 minutes. But it benefits from natural time constraints (five days) and legitimately earned twists that raise the stakes from scene to scene. A major inflection point sneaks up when the Triumph, which has drifted out of range for a Mexican rescue, crosses paths with a sister Carnival cruise liner – the Legend (which diverted its course to help). Triumph passengers go from thinking they're saved to realizing there's no way all 3,143 of them can be transferred over to the other ship safely. (The Triumph crew does manage to grab critical supplies from the Legend, and one passenger who required medical attention makes it across.) Worse, the passengers aboard the Legend shrug off the Triumph's plight, gawking at the destitute ship as if it were a breaching humpback before resuming the good time that Triumph passengers had themselves signed up for. But when Triumph passengers realize they can 'steal' the Legend's working wifi, they throng to the deck with phones in hand and reach out to their loved ones. Shockingly, it was through those mayday calls that the world learned that Triumph was in crisis. Up to that point, Carnival corporate's PR strategy was to relate as few details about the fire as possible – a scheme that kept the media uninterested at first. ('You give them what you believe they need,' says company spin doctor Buck Banks, 'and no more than that.') But once those Triumph distress calls started cropping up on Twitter and elsewhere online, Carnival was forced to reckon with a 'complete media bloodbath', says Banks. CNN was one notable outlet that struggled to justify covering the Triumph fire story over Barack Obama's State of the Union, Pope Benedict's abdication, saber rattling in Pyongyang and other pressing news. But once the fuller picture of the situation aboard the ship came into focus, the network – which had just been placed under the management of former NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker – went all-in on the story, and competitors swiftly followed their lead. Once the ship was under tow and within striking distance of shore, there was a mad scramble to intercept it in the air and go live with the first images of the deterioration. For many aboard the ship, that media onslaught was their first indication that their very own 'three-hour tour' from hell was in fact drawing to a close. Of course there will be some who might not have the stomach for Poop Cruise. Besides holding the potential for inducing claustrophobia, it traffics – by necessity – in the scatological. (One of the cooks aboard the ship likened the desperate scene he found inside a god-forsaken lavatory to a 'poop lasagna'.) But the thing most likely to turn off viewers is that Carnival didn't really face any serious repercussions from the poop cruise. (In general, cruise passengers give up their right to sue when they purchase a ticket.) After a $115m clean-up effort, the Triumph was relaunched under a new name: the Sunrise. Buyer beware. The average person would never think to book a cruise again after surviving such an ordeal. But Poop Cruise is more than a deep rewind on 12-year-old clickbait. It's a rollicking allegory for the precariousness of our modern world and the resiliency of the human spirit. 'People were saying this was the best cruise they'd ever been on, I think because the crew worked so hard,' says Ross, who seized on the opportunity to make a different sort of documentary. 'This was an opportunity not to tell a kind of dark sad story about a crime or whatever, but to do something where in the end nobody died. Yes, it was a terrible experience, and people learned from it. But it was also one of those 'holy fuck' stories.' Trainwreck: Poop Cruise is available now on Netflix
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Wellness Influencer ‘Liver King' Arrested After Posting A Series Of Videos Aimed At Joe Rogan
Wellness influencer Brian Johnson, 47, known to his millions of followers as the 'Liver King,' was arrested Tuesday and accused of making threats against popular podcaster and former MMA fighter Joe Rogan in a series of videos posted on his Instagram page. 'Joe Rogan, I'm calling you out, my name's Liver King. Man to man, I'm picking a fight with you,' Johnson said, holding two rifles in a video posted Monday. 'I have no training in jiujitsu; you're a black belt, you should dismantle me. But I'm picking a fight with you. Your rules, I'll come to you whenever you're ready.' Much of Johnson's Liver King content revolves around advising fitness enthusiasts to build a body like his through questionable practices like eating raw animal testicles or, as the name alludes to, raw liver. In 2022, leaked emails revealed that he had been spending approximately $11,000 a month injecting himself with steroids and human growth hormone. Johnson was highlighted in the Netflix documentary series 'Untold: The Liver King,' which came out this year. He made other concerning videos leading up to his arrest, many of which show him rambling. Austin police told HuffPost they were notified of Johnson's alleged threats Tuesday morning, and observed him traveling to Austin while continuing to challenge Rogan online. It's unclear why Johnson posted a series of videos challenging Rogan. He told the podcaster in a follow-up video, 'I actually have something to fight for' and 'We'll see you soon. Real tension I have with you. Real fucking beef.' Rogan has hosted well-known celebrities and figures on his podcast, 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' but has never had Johnson on his show. Austin police said Rogan told them that the two had never interacted, and that he considered the posts threatening. The podcaster had criticized Johnson's steroid use and his general demeanor in an episode released two years ago with fitness influencer Derek, known for the brand 'More Plates, More Dates.' 'The guy calls himself the Liver King, and he's this guy who walks around everywhere with no shirt on. I've seen him in Vegas with no shirt on, big bushy beard, super jacked, and he was telling people that the way he gets that way is by sunning his balls,' Rogan said. Austin police arrested Johnson on Tuesday at the Four Seasons Hotel and took him into custody without incident on a misdemeanor charge of terroristic threat. It's unclear if the wellness influencer has an attorney representing him. Video posted on Johnson's account shows him wearing a burgundy sweatsuit promoting a fight between him and Rogan as he paces around a hotel room rambling with his wife, Bozena 'Barbara' Johnson aka the 'Liver Queen.' He was later seen being patted down by officers while in handcuffs. 'Absolute Betrayal': Joe Rogan Regular Turns On Trump, Calls For Impeachment 'What The F**k...': Watch Joe Rogan And Trump's FBI Director React To Musk's Post Joe Rogan Mocks Katy Perry And All-Women Blue Origin Space Flight In Misogyny-Inflected Rant
