Chaos d'anthologie: La croisière ne s'amuse plus

It is a fairly short documentary that is fun to watch. Well, fun if you like laughing at other people's misfortune.

What struck me is the incredible sense of entitlement of the passengers (at least those being interviewed). Oh, the HORROR of having to poop in a biohazard bag! Really, is it that bad, under the circumstances? They were reacting to the red bag suggestion as if they were told to perform surgery on each other without anesthesia.

Hannah, the crew member, could not have possibly grown up in the Soviet Union, just based on her age. Her knowledge about the country comes from the same sources as fairy tales about bears on the streets playing balalaikas. I did grow up in the SU, and I have never heard nor experienced disasters similar to that cruise ship, where people hoard food, fight each other for sleeping places, and generally everyone is out for themselves. On the contrary, this kind of experience would have been handled differently, the crew would have been rationing food (one sandwich per person), and the passengers would have been much more disciplined and would have banded together.

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.

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.

This documentary was alright and I enjoyed watching it with my parents for entertainment purposes. However, I was really bothered by the guests they decided to interview/keep in the documentary and how surface-level the documentary was. To be clear, I think the cruise ship crew did a good job, both in the interview and in trying to remedy the actual situation. Although some things could have been done better (giving everyone alcohol? Seriously?), I believe they tried their best.

The guests they decided to interview - with exception of the father and daughter, whose story I found very sweet and heartwarming, and was more what I would want from this documentary - were extremely entitled and seemed like they completely denied the reality of their situation. The stealing and hoarding of food, and the complaining about the food being provided, was very selfish and irritating.

But what bothered me more - because it was more largely covered in this documentary - was the guests thinking they were "above" pooping in bags and peeing in the shower. Particularly annoying was the woman taking Imodium, and ESPECIALLY annoying because of the screentime he got in the documentary was the idiotic guy in glasses who treated not having to poop in a bag as some "achievement." They were dramatic about all the wrong things and I was annoyed that the situation was handled so poorly.

I understand many humans are selfish, and that can be seen in the included cruise footage, but out of the ~4,000+ guests they could have interviewed, I can't believe these privileged morons are the best ones they got. I really would have preferred less dramatic guests who were less in denial and who handled the situation rationally, and who could turn this documentary into more of a perseverance story. But I guess that would have made for a less comedic documentary. As someone born and raised in the U. S. I hate seeing such generalized comments about how entitled and selfish Americans are, but this documentary does nothing to help that case.

Also very disappointing were the interviews with the CNN reporter and the CEO of Carnival. CNN treated the situation as a business decision and decided to ham it up for ratings, and the CEO only seemed concerned with saving face and the opinions of shareholders. While these things aren't the documentary's fault, the documentary could have done a better job going into it and criticizing CNN and the CEO for doing those things. I'm not saying the filmmakers HAVE to have that opinion, but it would have been SOMETHING more than "poop funny haha."

There are a few other things I'm probably forgetting but that about sums up my review. I learned nothing except some more info and footage of the situation and that humans today are extremely entitled and selfish, but I knew that already.