Netflix’s 'Poop Cruise' doc hasn't dented bookings, and Disney is betting big
Carnival posted record revenue the same week Trainwreck: Poop Cruise hit Netflix. The documentaries are moving the conversation, not the reservations. Disney’s five new ships are the thing that could actually test that.
Netflix has now made three cruise-ship disaster documentaries in 13 months, and The Hollywood Reporter asked the obvious question this week: is the streamer trying to sink the cruise business?
The answer is no, and it isn’t close.
Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea dropped Friday and pulled 9 million views in two days, covering the Costa Concordia rolling over off Giglio Island in 2012 and killing 32 people. Before it came Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, about the 2013 Carnival Triumph engine fire that stranded 4,000 passengers for five days with no working toilets. Before that, Amy Bradley Is Missing, about the woman who vanished off a Royal Caribbean ship in 1998.
Three docs. Two companies. Both of those companies just had the best year in their history.
Carnival set a revenue record the same week Poop Cruise hit Netflix
The timing on this one is almost rude.
Poop Cruise landed on Netflix June 24, 2025, and went to number one. That same week, Carnival reported record second-quarter revenue of $6.3 billion and a record $8.5 billion sitting in customer deposits, meaning money already handed over for cruises not yet taken.
Carnival was having a bad month otherwise. Its most loyal passengers were in open revolt over a rewards program that tied status to spending. So the company took a viral documentary about its own worst day and a customer rebellion in the same news cycle, and still printed the best quarter it had ever had.
The full year came in at $26.6 billion, another record. Royal Caribbean did $17.9 billion, also a record. A record 37.2 million people took an ocean cruise, per the Cruise Lines International Association, which expects 42.1 million by 2029.
Cruise journalist Ashley Kosciolek was asked by THR whether Netflix could hurt the industry. “Not at all,” she said. Cruises are more popular than they have ever been, she told the outlet, fares are at all-time highs because the demand is there, and ships are booking out further ahead than they used to.
The docs are confirming people who already hated cruises
Watch what people actually posted about Poop Cruise and a pattern shows up.
The reactions weren’t cruisers canceling. They were non-cruisers celebrating. Viewers called the doc validating, said it confirmed what they’d always suspected, described ships as floating disease factories. One said it turned him off cruising for life, then clarified that it wasn’t the sewage, it was the passengers.
Nobody in that pile was booked on anything. The documentary didn’t change their minds. It handed them a citation for a position they already held.
That’s why the bookings never moved. Netflix isn’t converting cruisers into non-cruisers. It’s arming the people who were never going anyway.
Disney’s exposure isn’t the docs, it’s the arithmetic
Which brings us to the one company with a reason to care, and it’s the company that isn’t in any of the documentaries.
Disney Cruise Line runs eight ships right now and has committed to 13 by 2031. Disney Adventure started sailing out of Singapore in March. Disney Believe arrives late 2027 out of Miami. Three more follow at the end of the decade. That’s the largest expansion in the line’s history, and every one of those berths has to get filled.
Disney’s existing faithful can only fill so many. Growth on that scale means selling cruises to families who have never cruised, and the family that has never cruised is precisely the audience Netflix has spent 13 months showing sewage and shipwrecks.
Carnival doesn’t have that problem. Carnival has millions of repeat customers who already know what a cruise is and have already decided they like it. A documentary about 2013 bounces off them. Disney is the one that needs the undecided.
Then again, Disney’s whole pitch is the answer to the objection. Premium price, Plexiglas on the railings, and a rescue record that turned its own overboard scare in June 2025 into a feel-good story instead of a fourth Netflix title.
Nobody has data showing a documentary moved a single reservation in either direction, and Carnival’s balance sheet is decent evidence that no such effect exists. But Disney is the one making a five-ship bet on a market Netflix keeps filming at its worst. If the numbers ever do wobble, that’s where it’ll show up first.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
The Hollywood Reporter (July 14, 2026), Tony Maglio’s piece, the three-doc pattern, Shipwrecked viewership, the Kosciolek interview, and the CLIA and full-year revenue figures
TheStreet (June 27, 2025), Carnival’s record Q2 revenue and deposits landing the same week as Poop Cruise, and the Carnival Rewards revolt
ComicBook (June 29, 2025), viewer reaction to Poop Cruise topping Netflix
CBS News Miami (July 1, 2025), the Disney Dream overboard rescue
Wikipedia (retrieved July 15, 2026), Disney Cruise Line fleet history and newbuild schedule
Undercover Tourist (May 14, 2026), the 13-ship plan and Disney Adventure’s Singapore debut