Unraveling the Reality behind Royal Caribbean's Ultimate World Cruise

(Part 1 of ?): An introduction to a new ongoing series

On December 10th, 2023, Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas set sail out of PortMiami, signaling the start of a nine-month-long marathon of a cruise scheduled to dock at 65 countries worldwide. When in mid-September the passengers return to Florida’s warm waters, they’ll have circumnavigated the globe, set foot on every continent, and witnessed all seven wonders of the world¹.

Royal Caribbean’s “Ultimate World Cruise” is just one of several recently announced large-scale world cruises, likely conceived to drum up excitement for an industry almost killed by COVID. Regent launched a world cruise of its own on January 6th. Princess currently has two 2024 offerings leaving ports on January 18th and April 30th. And why wouldn’t they? What better way could there be to motivate vacationers to spend holidays at sea than by touching on the nearly forgotten but oft-romanticized human desire to discover and conquer?

The Serenade’s 274-day itinerary, however, is an especially ambitious endeavor² in terms of time spent at sea and overall passenger count. Perhaps for this reason, it has recently caught the attention of TikTok and become the center of something akin to an immersive live-action reality television series.

The comparison to reality television is not one that I have made on my own – the most popular users on CruiseTok (TikTok accounts that have carved a niche creating cruise-related content) have quite literally referred to the constant feed of images and video clips coming from the Serenade as a reality show. When a new passenger uploading Serenade-related content is “discovered”, CruiseTok accounts enthusiastically announce a new “character drop” as if referring to a fictional drama rather than a person that exists independently of their Ultimate World Cruise experience. The concept of a small society living more-or-less isolated at sea is frequently described as a “social experiment”, mirroring the language TV host Jeff Probst has used to describe the pioneering reality series Survivor for the last two decades, and indeed it seems as though the people most invested are eagerly awaiting and anticipating some “voted off the island”-tier drama. Hell, the New York Times published an article on the cruise just last week describing it as “TikTok’s Favorite New ‘Reality Show’”.

But if I’m being honest, I feel the reality television comparison undersells how truly strange it is to “watch” what’s currently happening on the Serenade. It’s not a semi-scripted plot unfolding in front of a camera crew ultimately invested in capturing an easily digestible narrative. Instead, it is something paradoxically organic, yet highly exaggerated. It is something that has undergone multiple rounds of culling in an ultimately futile attempt to construct perfection, captured through dozens of lenses working in perfect synchronization.

The best way I can think to explain this is to break the Ultimate World Cruise down to its core components.

The Serenade itself is inherently artificial, divorced from reality, carefully engineered to entertain at all times. Despite being a behemoth³ of a “home”, the ship is equipped to constantly combat the claustrophobia that naturally sets in when one submits the better part of a year to the whims of a Royal Caribbean sailing schedule. The swimming pools with retractable glass ceilings to shield passengers from bad weather, the onboard night club miles from shore where booze flows freely for tipsy partygoers, the miniature golf course that can’t be disturbed by the ocean’s crashing waves – all of it defies nature for the benefit of customers. This is not to say that cruises should be an uncomfortable experience (they shouldn’t be) so much as it is pointing out that this manufactured environment is designed to be a utopia devoid of the problems that dictate how we navigate life. And while this brand of all-inclusive experience entirely disconnected from the real world is nothing out of the ordinary for a week’s getaway, sustaining such a lifestyle long-term is decadence that the majority of us cannot even fathom.

The port stops (and the additional excursions that go along with them) are also artificial, in the sense that they are experiences curated to be without flaw. Passengers are intentionally brought to only the most outwardly fantastic spots, carefully manicured with visitors in mind. The ugly, hard-to-grapple-with parts of each locale are hidden from view and rarely acknowledged. Stops are short by design to keep the intensive tour moving forward, making it difficult to stay in any one place long enough to experience downsides. Should you choose to follow the adventures of Ultimate World Cruise passengers on social media, this creates a bizarre browsing experience centered around a feed featuring nearly identical experiences presented ad nauseam.

A recent stop in Rio de Janeiro resulted in dozens of shots of cruisers visiting (and subsequently sharing photos of) Christ the Redeemer.

Overly problematic places are bypassed altogether. And while Royal Caribbean has a moral obligation to keep its passengers safe from the dangers of, say, Somali pirates patrolling the Horn of Africa, this practice excludes tens of thousands of miles of shoreline from a cruise marketed to go around the world. Huge swaths of reality are ignored to, in theory, create an experience that is better than reality.

The content we are finally presented with goes through yet another round of curation before it reaches our eyes, this time conducted by the passengers themselves. And in these snippets are where things really start to get interesting, because it is where the perfect veneer of the voyage (and all that it represents) begins to crack.

Traveling alongside your typical retiree with the time and expendable income to spend on a grand adventure are a small number of digital nomads and aspiring influencers who have conscientiously chosen to view the Ultimate World Cruise as a potential career opportunity. This subset of digital natives carefully craft travel vlogs at each port, draft cruise food reviews to match perfectly plated snapshots, and stage eye-catching images edited with the specific intent of inspiring wanderlust fantasies in onlookers. These individuals know how to design digital content that garners audiences and generates likes, and thus far they’ve done so quite successfully. But their success at bringing eyes to the Ultimate World Tour has unintentionally created a new genre of cruise content creator – those who curate their pre-curated vacation fully aware that they’re putting on a show for a newly found unseen, anonymous audience.

Some of the Serenade’s “Main Characters” met up on a slow sea day in mid-December and filmed a makeshift “game show”, which was subsequently shared across several TikTok accounts. Interestingly, travel blogger drjennytravels introduces herself as a newly “unlocked” character, perhaps in an attempt to capitalize fully on the fleeting nature of viral TikTok fame by ensuring her name made it to as many CruiseTok viewers as possible.

Many of these accounts are cute and cheeky. Adita Larson (@aditaml2759), for instance, has a penchant for pineapples and loves to tease viewers with sexual double entendres⁴. Joe Martucci and his wife initially started a TikTok account (@spendingourkidsmoney) to share their adventure with their children, but have since taken on the self-appointed role of ‘cruise mom and dad’ and collectively greet all of their 500k followers with a cheerful “Hey kids!” at the start of each new installment.

But equally appealing to curious voyeurs (if not more so) are the pitfalls that inevitably take place on even the most meticulously planned excursions. Since time immemorial, humankind has derived pleasure from chaos and the destruction of that which is perfect – and many of the folks enjoying newfound pseudo-fame on the internet are all too aware of this.

Some of the drama leaking off of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship is objectively funny, such as the alleged wine shortage caused by cruisegoers bearing unlimited drink packages⁵. Other incidents are more troubling, such as ongoing visa mishaps and language barriers that at one point (allegedly) culminated in 100+ Chinese tourists⁶ being told that they’d be unable to get off the ship at Buenos Aires, even though many had prepaid for costly excursions and flights to Iguazu Falls. Perhaps most disconcerting yet was a storm on January 2nd, which resulted in flooding in parts of the ship. This development in particular has generated some degree of concern⁷ as the ship heads toward Antarctica and into the notoriously treacherous waters of the Drake Passage⁸.

Screenshots show flooding aboard the Serenade amidst a storm at sea.

Seeing different perspectives of identical events is a treat in itself, but the task of parsing out fact and fiction from the constant stream of rumors seeping into our smartphones adds a whole new layer to the act of watching. The fact that passengers have now become performers eager to upload new episodes further complicates the process of determining where, on a scale of hell to paradise, life on the Serenade lands.

As if that wasn’t enough, Ultimate World Cruise TikToks have garnered enough awareness that the most popular posts are beginning to prompt real-world responses. For instance, on December 20th a TikTok personality by the name of Marc Sebastian made a post that generated 7 million views demanding that someone “put cameras on that goddamn cruise”. Within a week, a sponsor got in contact with Marc and booked him 18 nights on the Serenade. On his first day aboard, the influencer complained in jest about the wire hangers in his room, which threatened to damage the knitwear he had packed along for the journey. By the time his next cruise update came out, Royal Caribbean had delivered plastic hangers to the room without prompting, a subtle reminder that the most influential voices aboard are trapped in some sort of backward-ass corporate panopticon where any semblance of a complaint is recognized and rectified as quickly as humanly possible.

This slightly creepy, hyper-vigilant policy displayed toward a select number of hyper-visible individuals is at its core a survival strategy. Positive posts essentially function as free advertising for an industry in need of a post-pandemic makeover, and Royal Caribbean has taken advantage of this fact by sending the most popular internet personalities aboard to partake in exclusive luxury experiences, including a multi-course gourmet meal at the ship’s in-house fine dining restaurant. Likewise, critical viral content circulating among a new generation of potential customers could have disproportionately devastating effects on a business model struggling to overcome mounting heaps of negative press.

Frankly, I have no idea how the next several months aboard the Serenade will play out. Perhaps it will turn into some modern-day, real-life rendition of Around the World in 80 Days, captivating audiences curious about the world outside of their immediate reach. Maybe it will fizzle into obscurity, another casualty in a long line of ephemeral internet fads. And, though the chances seem slim, this complicated dance that straddles the line between corporate manufacturing and human authenticity may just shape the way we think about storytelling, advertising, and reality itself for years to come.

But from my vantage point, anchored firmly to the ground, I intend to tune into the warped reality-divorced-from-reality playing out at sea over the next nine months, providing updates on this strange sojourn around the world. I hope you’ll ride alongside me, too.

If you appreciate works like this but aren’t necessarily interested in upgrading to a paid subscription, please consider buying me a coffee!

1. And by “wonders of the world”, I’m referring to the new seven wonders of the world, which were established in the year 2000 since the only wonder of the ancient world still standing today is the Great Pyramid of Giza (which Serenade passengers will visit on May 21st).

2. Life at Sea Cruises planned out a whopping three-year excursion that recently made headlines after failing to procure a boat in time for passenger send-off.

3. (At least by my standards, as a person who has never set foot on a cruise ship. Evidently, at 965 ft long x 106 ft wide, the 13-deck Serenade of the Seas is actually kind of small in the grand scheme of things. Royal Caribbean’s recently launched Icon of the Seas, for comparison, is significantly longer, wider, and boasts double the capacity of Serenade.)

4. For the uninitiated, upside-down pineapples are a symbol that swingers frequently use to identify one another.

5. Mike and Nancy, the couple that initially broke the news on their TikTok account (@livingphase2), claim that the ship has already gone through three pallets of Oberon red wine alone. A bit of cursory research has revealed that a standard pallet averages about 672 bottles in total. If what Mike and Nancy say is true, that means that the passengers went through over 10,000 glasses of just Oberon red wine in three weeks.

6. This incident – and the perspective of tourists from outside the Western world, for that matter – has gone widely unnoticed. At the time of publication, I’m unsure whether something similar to the CruiseTok phenomenon might be happening on outlets popular outside of the Western world such as Douyin.

7. Whether that concern is largely sincere or disingenuous is debatable.

8. As of Jan 8, there have already been changes made to the Serenade’s route and itinerary in anticipation of rough waters ahead.