by “There is going to be a riot. There’s going to be blood. Someone is going too far. I want to see. “We are witnessing the Fyre Festival… take me to the cruise.”
These were the words of Marc Sebastian, just one of hundreds of TikTok users who, in recent weeks, have developed an all-consuming new obsession: Royal Caribbean’s nine-month Ultimate World Cruise. Or, as it’s been dubbed on the app, the “nine-month TikTok reality show.”
Billed as “the most epic cruise to ever set sail,” the Ultimate World Cruise is Royal Caribbean’s longest cruise ever. With a 274-night itinerary, prices for the full trip start at $53,999 (£42,462) per person. They can cost up to $117,599 (£92,474) excluding taxes and fees, according to Royal Caribbean’s website. Passengers who have booked for the whole thing (some people are on board only for certain segments, more on that later) will visit 65 countries, including Antarctica.
Since the ship sailed on December 10, TikTok has been flooded (no pun intended) with guest posts documenting their journey. The passengers have become celebrities overnight and their followers have skyrocketed overnight.
Accounts of users on land chronicling the cruise have also quickly emerged, with creators obsessively analyzing passenger videos and anticipating the ship’s dramatic potential. It’s the Triangle of Sadness, the Titanic and Below Deck, and it has TikTok in a chokehold; In just two weeks, the #UltimateWorldCruise hashtag has attracted more than 150 million views. “I’m really interested in this 9 month world cruise because I know it’s going to be a hassle,” one person posted on X.
“Can’t WAIT for the nine month cruise ala (sic) Fyre Fest documentary,” said another. “Lord of the Flies is already playing.”
A TikToker created a virtual bingo card that went viral, with predictions including “potty neighbor drama,” “a wedding,” “stowaway,” and “pirate takeover.”
And so far, #cruisetok has delivered on the drama. There are already accusations that a class system is emerging, rumors of swingers, a flood, accusations of racism and outrage over overcrowded conditions. One creator, who refers to herself as the director of TikTok’s “sea tea” and updates her followers with “breaking news,” claimed that someone had already left the cruise.
If you’re wondering how entertaining a group of tech-illiterate retirees could be, think again. Part of the fun of UWC is that it has attracted everyone from Gen Z and social media-savvy millennials to boomers and the elderly. (One couple made onboard videos joking about how they spent their children’s inheritance on the trip.)
Passengers are documenting everything from relaxing on a private island in the Bahamas to MTV Cribs-style tours of their cabins (called staterooms). What might seem like mundane visits to the ship’s laundry, workouts, and all-day trips to the buffet have become blockbusters on the app.
Here’s everything you need to know about who’s on board and all the drama so far.
From Gen Z influencers to wealthy retirees: all the main characters on board
The ship, called Serenade of the Seas, can accommodate 2,476 guests, although so far no one knows exactly how many people are on board. However, eagle-eyed fans discovered that recent images from traveler @brooklynschwetje show a meeting on a cruise ship when it was revealed that 1,093 passenger members were on board.
The most prolific creator so far has been @amike_oosthuizen, a South African influencer with over 200,000 followers who is on board and working remotely with her husband. His video titled “What I Eat in a Day on a Nine-Month Cruise,” in which he takes viewers on a trip to the ship’s all-day buffet, had 3.9 million views at the time of release. write this article. Part of her meal included fruit, yogurt, a muffin, oatmeal, and a smoothie. For lunch, she eats a salad, a cheeseburger, and a plate of vegetables. She ends the day with fish, noodles, corn, and watermelon slices.
Mike and Nancy, an older couple whose TikTok bio says they are “finding fulfillment in the second phase of life,” have been sharing healthy content on their @livingphase2 account, amassing nearly 30,000 followers as of this writing.
Another #cruisetok star is Joe Martucci, a 67-year-old recent retiree from Florida, who posts from the boat under the handle @spendingourkidsmoney. Joe’s four children encouraged him to post video updates on TikTok, which he had never used before, he told the New York Times. His first video had almost half a million views at the time of writing and he has more than 70,000 followers.
Lindsay Wilson, a 32-year-old teacher from Arizona on board, told the New York Times that the attention “was very, very strange.” She said she and some of the other passengers who had amassed new followers on TikTok had connected in person and talked through group chats about her newfound celebrity status.
Some of these users, many of whom consider themselves the cast of The Ultimate Real World Cruise, have started hanging out with each other on the ship and posting content together.
Even some members of the staff on board have begun posting videos, such as Julián Mendoza with the handle @cooljul1.
“Really small” rooms
Of course, part of the fascination with #cruisetok is an obsession with the ridiculous lives of the super-rich and what they choose to spend their money on. Perhaps this is why TikTokers sharing in-depth tours of the rooms on board, often showing off their relatively small living conditions, have gone particularly viral. Schadenfreude sells.
One passenger, Ale Kenney, who is on board with her husband Andrew, recently shared a video of her room that has racked up almost three million views.
“The closet is really small; I’ll leave that to the imagination because if I open it, everything will fall out,” he says at one point, pointing to a small closet next to the door.
“Our bathroom is very small, but we make it work. “We added a couple of storage options (this magnetic shelf from Amazon) and then we just stuck our medications and my makeup down here.”
Pointing to the bathroom cabinet, he laughs: “This opens but it’s very small. And that’s it for our luxury bathroom experience.”
She and Andrew decorated the walls with banners, photographs and sketches, and the room has a window with an ocean view.
“This looks like a dystopian prison (sic),” commented one user. Another said: “I can’t imagine being on a cruise for 9 months without an outside stateroom. I would go crazy”.
Swinger rumours, flooding and accusations of racism: the drama on board so far
Social media was quick to compare the cruise to the hit reality show Below Deck, which follows crews working on luxury yachts, and users are eagerly awaiting an explosion of controversy. But has there been any drama yet?
Kind of.
There was a brief moment where it looked like there were some swingers on the boat, when a woman and her husband put a pineapple (a symbol used to signal other swingers) on their door. Unfortunately, the woman later clarified that she simply “liked pineapples.”
New images from inside the ship, largely posted on TikTok, show flooding on deck 12, and passengers reporting strong winds and storms outside. One user shared a video of the flooding with the caption: “Our first Ultimate WC storm, 60mph winds, flooding, front lifts closed until further notice.”
The main point of tension, however, has been an apparent class system that has emerged. The cruise is divided into four segments (Americas, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Mediterranean, and Europe and Beyond) and each is available to book individually, so not everyone on board will travel the full distance. There have been rumors of animosity between the “segmenters” and those on board for nine months, with the segmenters said to have received different treatment from those on board. However, the only real injustice so far seems to be that some full-board guests supposedly control the cruise’s Facebook group.
Perhaps the best update so far came from Mike and Nancy, an older couple who have been chronicling their boat trip on TikTok. In a video posted on January 2, the couple dropped the bombshell that the ship was running out of wine.
“Well, all of you on TikTok who have been asking for drama about Ultimate World Cruise, we finally have some drama for you. They’re running out of wine. Can you believe it?” Mike said. “They told us here that we’ve consumed more wine than they ever anticipated. They’re hoping to resupply, they’re trying at all the different ports. They tried to resupply in Barbados, but it didn’t work, they tried to resupply in Rio and “They got some. We’ll keep you posted.”
However, there have been more serious allegations. A week after the ship’s voyage, Brandee Lake, a passenger and Black content creator, posted a video (which has 2.6 million views as of this writing) in which she claimed she had been mistaken for a man multiple times. crew member, once by a passenger and once by a staff member.
“If you ask me if I work on this ship one more time,” he said on TikTok. “After I said I wasn’t working, they asked me if I was independently wealthy, like, basically, how could you afford this?” Alongside the video, she wrote the caption: “Apparently it seemed crazy to some that a black woman (and her family) could be invited to a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Brandee later told TODAY that after she posted her TikTok, the cruise hotel’s hotel manager made it a point to say hello to her during dinner. Royal Caribbean did not respond when she was asked about the allegations.
