“There’s gonna be mutiny. There’s gonna be blood. Someone is going overboard, I want to watch,” raves TikTok creator Marc Sebastian. The clip, posted in December 2023, has since gained more than 1.3 million likes. “Bravo, where are you?” he asks. But he’s not talking about a hot new reality TV show—he’s referring to a cruise ship that was set to sail for 274 nights at sea.
While Bravo didn’t make it on board, a number of TikTokkers took up the reins and spent the last nine months documenting Royal Caribbean’s Ultimate World Cruise (using the hashtag #ultimateworldcruise). Now docked at the same location it departed from exactly one year ago, a journey that captured the internet is finally coming to a close.
After the cruise ship set sail last year, many passengers started filming their daily routines, giving tours of the rooms and documenting the highs and lows of life at sea. The entire voyage consisted of four segments—the Ultimate Americas Cruise, the Ultimate Asia Pacific Cruise, the Ultimate Africa and Southern Europe Cruise, and the Ultimate Europe and Beyond Cruise, per its official website. Those who signed up will have parted with between $60,000 and $118,000 for the experience.
Less than a week into the nine-month passage, a TikTok went viral for listing all the “things that stress me out the 9mo cruise.” The list included “affairs,” “serial killers,” and the potential health effects of eating “unlimited cruise food” for nine months.
A number of accounts sprung up to meticulously document everything that happened aboard the boat, including a retired couple with the username @spendingourkidsmoney and a guest accused of being a swinger (she wasn’t) because she had a pineapple decoration on her cabin door. Those on board even hosted a meetup where all the cruise’s “main characters” got together to the excitement of their fans back on dry land.
While the cruise may not have reached reality TV levels of drama, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. A flooding incident closed a set of ship elevators and one cruiser was temporarily banned from reboarding the boat for 12 days after he took an unauthorized trip to Brazil. Some guests were also unhappy at the special treatment for Royal Caribbean loyalty program members versus regular passengers.
After boarding for an 18-day stretch in January courtesy of Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books, model and influencer Marc Sebastian ruffled feathers for his brutally honest reviews of day-to-day life on the ship. In his daily reviews, Sebastian describes how he was “scolded for swearing” by loyalty program members and read out his numerous hate comments in one of the cruise’s related Facebook groups. In his final review, he called the cruise “a floating retirement home with a Cheesecake Factory attached.”
