Review of "How Luxury Cruise Turned Into Nightmare for Passengers" on The Infographics Show

By: Shane Lambert
The original time of writing: January 25th, 2025 at 8:17am 

The Infographics Show is my favorite YouTube channel. Recently, I watched their 20-minute episode called "How Luxury Cruise Turned Into Nightmare for Passengers." It tells the story of a 2013 Carnival cruise that became known as the "Poop Cruise" after a chainlink reaction of mechanical failures led to the passengers basically having to live amid their own waste material during the cruise.

YouTube channel: The Infographics Show
Episode: How Luxury Cruise Turned Into Nightmare for Passengers
Uploaded: January 24th, 2025

A big part of the story of this cruise is establishing the contrast between what the customers were paying for and what they ultimately got. There is a reference to the Titanic in the show, arguably, one that is undeserved. But tear the show's start, the narrator explains how the ship was "once hailed as a floating palace of luxury" but became "a prison of filth and despair."

One thing I did not like about this episode was there was a segment of the show that felt like an advertisement -- for none other than Carnival. They show a smiling customer service agent and describe Carnival in favorable terms, mainly for offering affordable cruise line vacations. It really did feel like a commercial for Carnival -- if only for 15 seconds. Maybe they were scared of some blowback for airing the episode and wanted to balance things with a bit of a plug (see the screenshot below).

A screenshot from the episode.

But, like they always do, The Infographics Show gives you a pretty good understanding of what happened for the topic that they covered. In this case, the ship had underlying mechanical problems that never got the attention that they warranted. I won't ruin too much of the show but for a cruise that was renamed "The Poop Cruise," I think that you get the picture that this didn't end up being a holiday for anyone.

If you are looking for a happy ending, then you won't find it with this episode. The passengers on board the ship didn't actually get favorable settlements.

The first reference I found to "poop cruise," about the Carnival cruise, in newspapers came in the March 15th, 2013 edition of The Miami Herald. That doesn't mean there are no earlier references but among the databases I searched that was the first.

However, there was a lot of media covering this ill-fated cruise online. It seems that "poop cruise" had a quality to it that made it a magnet for traffic.

Don't Wait To Be Rescued: Help Yourself

One thing that really came through with this episode, is just that no one was there to rescue the passengers on "The Poop Cruise." 

This event did not happen in 1913 - it happened in 2013. When it comes to modern events involving human suffering, I think the phrase "where there's a will there's a way" applies. The passengers on the cruise could have been rescued quickly. Instead of laying blame, let's just say that if we wanted to save the people on "The Poop Cruise" from an extended ordeal, then we could have.

Instead, the food that they had to eat started to spoil on the ship as their ordeal carried on and on. Of course, diarrhea resulted and they had to live amid this as the ship's sanitation system failed.

What I really took away from this is just how these people were left to suffer -- I suspect because the cost of their rescue was measured against their legal leverage for litigation. 

Concerning the latter, they ended up having very little due to the maze of legalities involved with cruise ships, which negotiate international waters and can bear the flags of third-world countries, countries that have no choice but to bend to corporate pressure.

While "The Poop Cruise" is a bit of a comedic title, let's not ignore just how sad this story really was. I think it's about how human suffering has a price tag associated with it.

There is a lesson for everyone to learn here. If you are in a position where you need to be rescued, don't idly wait for someone to improve your condition. Take a look in the mirror and do what you can with what you have because help might be a long way away. I do remember some victims of Hurricane Katrina early in this century saying such things as well.

Daniel Kaiser-Küblböck -- Missing at Sea Since September 2018

Author: Shane Lambert

Original Time of Writing: January 12th, 2021

Tue, Sep 11, 2018 – A12 · The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com

All articles are subject to editing after the original posting.

Missing person: Daniel Kaiser-Küblböck

Last-seen date: September 9th, 2018 at about 5AM in the morning
Last-seen location: Off the coast of Canada while on a cruise ship

Ethnicity/Race: Caucasian, a German national
Sex: Male
Age at time of disappearance: 33 years old
Hair: Brown
Eye color: Brown

Daniel Kaiser-Küblböck went missing after jumping overboard from a cruise ship early in the morning of September 9th, 2018. This happened at sea with the closest country being Canada. 

The Canadian authorities executed a search for the German pop singer, however, they were not able to locate him. It's unlikely that he would have survived very long in the water, even if he was intact enough to swim after jumping from the cruise ship into the sea. The search focused on a nautical area about 200 kilometers north of St. John's. It was ended on September 11th, 2018.

Ocean currents are very difficult for experts to predict. Those that try will usually work with averages.  If you took two identical objects and placed them side-by-side in a sea or ocean then they would drift apart immediately and, if they went to shore, then they could still be very far apart. There is simply no telling where any of the missing person's remains might have ended up. Like a lot of missing person's cases that involve being lost at sea, this isn't one that Websleuths or amateurs should be devoting much attention to.

In fact, there are missing person's cases where the people went into the water due to a wave that encroached the shoreline. In one case, two people who are missing for nearly 20 years were 'lost at sea' when they were at a well-known beach. If people who get lost at sea from a beachside last-known location can't be traced, then it's super-futile to try and trace someone who is lost to the ocean hundreds of kilometers from civilization. It will take incredibly luck for this person's remains to be found, not investigating skill.