This four-day cruise promised luxury. Then passengers found themselves on a ship of horrors.

Picture this: you've booked what should be the perfect getaway — a four-day luxury cruise from Galveston, Texas, to the sun-soaked shores of Cozumel, Mexico.

You're imagining poolside cocktails, gourmet dining, and endless ocean views. Instead, you find yourself trapped in a floating nightmare, doing your business in red biohazard bags whilst raw sewage seeps through the corridors.

Welcome to the infamous 'Poop Cruise' of 2013 — a disaster so spectacularly awful that has just gotten the full Netflix documentary treatment.

Watch the trailer for Netflix's Trainwreck: Poop Cruise. Article continues after video.

On 10th February 2013, a cruise ship set sail with over 4,000 passengers and crew aboard, all expecting a standard luxury cruise experience. What they got instead was a masterclass in how quickly things can go catastrophically wrong at sea.

Midway through the journey, disaster struck. A fire erupted in the aft engine room, destroying the electrical cables that supplied power to the entire ship. In an instant, the ship was transformed from a floating resort into a powerless vessel drifting aimlessly in the Gulf of Mexico.

Without electricity, everything that makes a cruise bearable — air conditioning, refrigeration, lighting, and most critically, flushing toilets — simply stopped working.

What happened next reads like something from a dystopian novel. With the toilets out of order, passengers were handed red biohazard bags and told to "poop in a red bag" and "do a number one in the shower."

"People were pooping on top of toilet paper, then pooping on top of that. It was layer after layer after layer. It was like a lasagna," Abhi, a chef on the cruise recalled.

Image: Netflix.

The ship's corridors soon became rivers of raw sewage. Food supplies dwindled rapidly without refrigeration. The stench became unbearable. Passengers, initially trying to maintain some semblance of holiday spirit, began to revolt as conditions deteriorated by the hour.

"I never expected having to poop in a red bag," one passenger remembered, capturing the surreal horror of the situation.

For four agonising days, the ship drifted powerless whilst those aboard endured some pretty horrible conditions. The media dubbed it the "Poop Cruise," and the name stuck — a darkly comic moniker for what was genuinely traumatic for those who lived through it.

In one particularly disturbing incident — following some sudden weather changes — the cruise flooded… but not with water.

Devin Marble, a passenger on the cruise, recalled how "the angle of the ship had adjusted, everything tilted to the side."

Another passenger, Larry Poret, who was travelling with his daughter Rebekah, described the horrific scene.

"Everything overflowed to the floor and kept overflowing," he said.

"You know what you're standing in," Devin added. "We were in excrement."

Another group of passengers celebrating a bachelorette party found themselves trapped aboard the nightmare cruise.

"I'll never take a private bathroom for granted again," said Kalin, one of the bridesmaids.

In a darkly humorous twist, Ashley, the bride-to-be, later gave her bridesmaids their gifts in red biohazard bags — a fitting memento of their unforgettable ordeal.

As news of the disaster spread, the Poop Cruise became a global media sensation. News helicopters circled the stranded vessel like vultures, capturing footage of the floating catastrophe for audiences worldwide. Saturday Night Live even dedicated a six-minute cold open to the ordeal, turning the passengers' misery into comedy gold.

The incident became the 21st-century equivalent of the Titanic — except instead of an iceberg, it was defeated by faulty wiring and overflowing toilets.

Now, more than a decade later, Netflix is revisiting this nautical nightmare with Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, which premiered on June 24. The documentary is part of Netflix's eight-part anthology series that examines the most bizarre media spectacles of the 21st century.

Director James Ross has interviewed passengers who were aboard the ship, and their accounts promise to be both horrifying and fascinating. The trailer alone suggests viewers are in for a wild ride — or should we say, a wild drift.

"Suddenly, everyone is out for themselves," explained one passenger, hinting at how quickly civilised behaviour broke down when faced with such extraordinary circumstances.

Image: Netflix.

There's something darkly compelling about the Poop Cruise story. Perhaps it's the way it strips away all pretence of luxury and sophistication, revealing how quickly our modern comforts can disappear. Or maybe it's the absurdity of the situation — the fact that a holiday meant to be the height of indulgence became a fecal nightmare.

The documentary promises to explore not just what happened, but how the cruise company scrambled to control the fallout whilst passengers dealt with increasingly desperate conditions. It's a story about corporate crisis management, human resilience, and the strange way disasters can become entertainment for those watching from afar.

Just maybe don't watch it whilst eating dinner.

You can watch Trainwreck: Poop Cruise on Netflix now.

Feature Image: Netflix.