Crippled Carnival Cruise: Passenger Videos Tell the Tale

Nov. 12, 2010 — -- The images were meant to capture the special moments between family and friends on a dream vacation, but as the nearly 3,300 passengers of Carnival's ill-fated Splendor cruise wake up on dry land for the first time today since they were stranded at sea four days ago, the pictures and video they took aboard the ship tell quite a different story.

From shots of pitch-black cabins to buckets catching dripping water and a "watermelon line" to pass food to hard-to-reach customers, footage shot by passengers aboard the crippled ship shows the challenges that arose after a fire in the vessel's engine room knocked out all but emergency operations early Monday morning -- leaving the Splendor to float listlessly off the coast of Mexico.

CLICK HERE to see some of the passenger videos on "GMA".

The biggest complaint, however, was the smell from toilets that did not flush for a day and a half and from food that spoiled without refrigeration.

"It was very difficult, especially because the smells were unbelievable," passenger Stacy Noriega, who was married Saturday and on her honeymoon, told "Good Morning America." "It seemed like almost every floor we went up was a different odor."

Noriega said passengers also quickly tired of the cold food they were given -- meat sandwiches and salads all around.

"We're eating spoiled turkey sandwiches and warm milk and warm yogurt," Noriega's husband, Joseph said Wednesday. "Everything smells like it's spoiled. ... Nothing's cooked. It's all sandwich meat. It's disgusting. You're afraid to eat it 'cause it's been left out and touched by everybody else on the ship."

To help remedy the situation, the U.S. Navy air-dopped thousands of pounds of food, from Pop Tarts to SPAM, although the SPAM was never served, according to Carnival's twitter feed. On a ship that's designed to entertain, one passenger said in a video that those airdrops were easily the highlight of the long, powerless days.

Despite all the challenges, many said both the passengers and the crew were making the best of things.

"The crew ... [was] really trying to keep really good spirits, trying to make it like it wasn't a really big crisis," Noriega said. "We were not without anything, the only thing is we didn't get room service."

"I also want to tell you that the guests have been magnificent and have risen to the obvious challenges and difficult conditions aboard," Carnival senior cruise director John Heald wrote in a blog once the ship regained Internet access.

"It wasn't as horrible as it could've been," Joseph Noriega said. "Everybody was in good moods."