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How To Apply For Cruise Ship Jobs

We work with a world-wide network of recruiting agencies to select only the most qualified crew, be aware fraudulent cruise employment opportunities.

We have recently been made aware of fraudulent entities around the world claiming to represent Princess Cruises as recruitment partners. We are working closely with our Security department and local police authorities in various countries to prevent individuals from wrongly representing themselves as Princess recruitment partners. We strongly suggest that you only discuss employment opportunities with the agencies/partners listed here. If you have any suspicion about the nature of an ad or website claiming to recruit on behalf of Princess Cruises, please contact the approved Princess agency located nearest your place of residence.

Authorized Recruitment Partners Please contact the recruitment agency that is closest to your permanent residence. The agencies listed below are the only agencies authorized by Princess Cruises to recruit on our behalf, and their activity is monitored by our corporate office.

Princess Cruises is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, disability or protected veteran status.

International Recruitment Partners

Princess Cruises works with a worldwide network of recruitment partners to select and support our crew. The agencies listed here are the only agencies authorized by Princess Cruises to recruit on our behalf.

Residents of Africa - Apply Now

Residents of the Caribbean -  Apply Now

The Seven Seas Group

Central & South America

Residents of Central & South America -  Apply Now

Selection Partners

Residents of China -  Apply Now

Carnival Singapore

Residents of Colombia -  Apply Now

Eastern Europe, Western Europe, United Kingdom, Canada & United States

Residents of Eastern Europe, Western Europe, United Kingdom, Canada & United States -  Apply Now

Princess Cruises Naples

Residents of Europe -  Apply Now

Residents of Hong Kong -  Apply Now

Residents of India -  Apply Now

Carnival Support Services India

Residents of Indonesia -  Apply Now

Alpha Magsaysay

Pt Johs Larsen (Deck & Tech)

Residents of Japan -  Apply Now

Middle East

Residents of the Middle East -  Apply Now

Residents of Malaysia -  Apply Now

Residents of Mexico -  Apply Now

Insearch Human Resources

Residents of Nepal -  Apply Now

British Gurkha Overseas Services

Philippines

Residents of Philippines -  Apply Now

Magsaysay Maritime Corporation

Residents of Romania -  Apply Now

Residents of Singapore -  Apply Now

South Africa

Residents of South Africa -  Apply Now

Blue Ensign

South Korea

Residents of South Korea -  Apply Now

Residents of Taiwan -  Apply Now

Residents of Thailand -  Apply Now

Thai Seafarer Recruitment Co Ltd.

All Medical Staff

All countries

Apply online for a medical role with Princess Cruises.

Your application will be processed internally and referred to the appropriate recruitment partner.

Additional Trusted Recruitment Partners

• Caribbean Cruise Careers
• Cruise Academy UK
• Excite Recruitment
• Pro Sea Staff
• Zest Recruitment

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Travelers of the World on a Budget

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Cruise Ship Jobs for Filipinos: How to Apply

Cruise ship jobs offer exciting career opportunities, like the ability to travel and receive higher compensation. Because the job is in a unique environment, employees need adequate training to ensure maximum safety throughout the trips.  Aside from seafarers, typical cruise ship jobs include entertainers, concierges, food and beverage staff, Messmen, cabin stewards, and security. If you are planning to apply for these positions, you need to look for licensed recruiters.

  Whether you’re just beginning your research or you’re ready to hit the high seas, here is a guide to help you find cruise ship jobs in the Philippines . Note that these jobs can take you around the world!

READ: App to Earn Money Online – Learn How to Use

Accredited Cruise Ship Manning Agencies 

Filipinos comprise the largest nationality employed by cruise lines like Royal Caribbean. About 11,000 Filipinos are part of the company, providing renowned service in the hospitality sector .  Before you get the chance to work for international cruise lines like RCC, you can also look for local partner recruiters. 

Magsaysay Maritime Corporation

One of the renowned local recruiters is the Magsaysay Maritime Corporation . The company provides access to the best available jobs for the maritime industry. It is an accredited recruitment agency of Princess Cruises, Arcadia Shipmanagement, Ariston Navigation Corporation, Costa Cruises, Star Cruises, and more .  You can check their website to know available positions, or you can also drop by at the Recruitment Center in Manila to get first-hand information on job availability. 

Career Philippines Shipmanagement Inc.

It is one of the oldest Shipmanagement companies in the Philippines, responsible for deploying more than 8,000 men and women in 300 ocean vessels. The company has a rigid selection process and provides comprehensive in-house training to meet international standards.  The Career Philippines Shipmanagement has two major offices in Pasay, Metro Manila. Available jobs under the company are also posted online at Seamanjobsite.com . 

Jebsens Maritime Inc. 

The company is a joint enterprise of Aboitiz Group of the Philippines and Jebsens Group of Norway. It provides competitive Filipino cruise ship crews for ship management, transport solutions, and more.  Currently, Jebsens Maritime Inc. recruits Filipinos for cargo-passenger, cruise ships, yacht, and ferry vessels . The recruitment office is located at Railroad Delgado Streets, South Harbor, Manila, Philippines.

READ: Online Data Entry Jobs Hiring – How To Apply?

Cruise Ship Job Requirements

• Seaman Book
• BST or STCW 95 Certificate

There is also a Pre-Employment Medical Examination comprising of 24 tests . Once the results show you are fit for seafarer jobs, you will be issued a Fit For Sea Duty Certificate . This is part of the requirements to apply for international cruise lines.  For those who will apply for other positions such as cooks and food service crew, additional requirements are provided by the recruitment agency. Normally, you need to have at least two years of experience in the foodservice industry.  Nurse and medical practitioners also have distinct requirements, including having a valid license and years of experience in the medical field. Some cruise lines require a minimum of three years of experience in the emergency or acute care department . 

How to Apply for Cruise Ship Jobs

To apply for cruise ship jobs , you need to contact accredited seafarer recruitment agencies. You can directly visit the recruitment centers to find out additional requirements. Once you have all the requirements, you need to submit documents to the agency and wait for additional instructions.  Once you are employed, you need to register to Philippine Overseas Employment Authority or POEA to become an official and registered Filipino Seaman . 

Working on a cruise ship is both rewarding and memorable. You can enjoy free boarding, meals and travel while earning a good salary . Follow this guide to land a job in an international cruise line. For more information, you can visit the website of recruitment agencies. 

Jane - Two Budget Travelers

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How to Apply to Work in a Cruise Ship

Do you want to work on a cruise ship ? To be more specific, do you want to leave your current job and try for a new career as a seafarer ? If so, then this article is for you. It focuses on the requirements necessary to pursue this new career path, as narrated by a former call center agent who decided to live his dreams.

Working on a cruise ship is an exciting career path. It may be a tough profession due to the number of hours you have to put in work, and the fact that you are away from home most of the time doesn’t make it any easier. Having said that, one of the many perks includes the chance to visit different places all over the world. If you are interested in learning how to be a cruise ship worker, then read on.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer: The information posted here is based on the personal experiences shared by the OFW in the video below. Please let this post serve as a guide only. If you have specific questions, you may ask the OFW by commenting on their video on their accounts.

How to Work as a Sea Farer

The information presented in this video is shared to us by Bam’s Travel Channel, a YouTube channel owned by a Filipino cruise ship worker. Bam specifically made this video for those who wish to shift careers; for example from being a call center agent to being a sea farer. If you are interested in learning more about this, then please click on the video link below:

The vlogger mentioned that he worked for 5 years as a customer service consultant. He worked for the following corporations: Teleperformance, VXI Makati, IBM Concentrix, etc.

After working for 5 years in the same industry, he decided to try a new career. That is, he wanted to be in a cruise ship industry. Primarily, he wants to be able to travel the world.

He has always dreamed of travelling to different countries across various continents. Unfortunately, he said that his salary is not enough to fulfill this dream.

As a result, he strongly felt that his only way of achieving this dream is by working in the cruise ship industry.

Moreover, he was inspired to try out this industry because of his social media friend. That friend kept on posting travel pictures on social media. He was awe inspired by the fact that in one day, his friend was showing photos of him being in Spain, then for the next two days being in France and then in Italy.

His friend, who was a cruise ship worker enjoying travel perks, inspired him to try the same.

Working as a Cruise Ship Worker without Experience

The vlogger said that he had no experience working in a hotel or a restaurant, let alone working in a cruise ship. However, this did not discourage him from trying. The question is, can you still work at a cruise ship even if you don’t have the necessary experience?

The answer to that question is yes. There are two ways to qualify as a cruise ship worker, and these are the following:

• 1-2 Years of hotel or restaurant work experience
• Several months of cruise ship work training.

The vlogger was not qualified for the first entry, and he figured that if worked for 1-2 years at a hotel or restaurant, this would take too much time. That’s why he looked for another way to qualify.

Training at Micha

The vlogger said that he found another option to qualify for work at a cruise ship, and that is to train at MICHA, or the Magsaysay Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts. He trained there back in 2014 for around for months.

In particular, he trained to be skilled at handling food and beverage. He took this option to just train, instead of working for 2 years. This is less time consuming, but at the same time he admitted that getting 1-2 years of real restaurant work experience is actually really good as well.

He trained at MICHA Manila from May to September of 2014. After the training, he and his classmates were fortunate enough to have been given an instant opportunity; there was a mass hiring in Magsaysay, and he was one of several students who were immediately endorsed for an interview.

During this phase, he was interviewed, made to take an exam, and he passed everything. The next step is to process all documents and requirements needed to work at a cruise ship.

Preparing requirements can be quite consuming in terms of time, energy, and resources, but if you have a goal, then no challenge is too hard. In fact, the vlogger said that you should take the whole process of processing requirements as an investment for the future.

So what are the requirements you need in order to begin the application phase of working at a cruise ship? Here they are:

• Passport – the first thing you need to do is apply online, at the DFA website. The regular price for getting a passport is 950 pesos, while the expedite price is 1,200 pesos. With regular, expect to receive your passport in 21 working days. With expedite, you get it in just a week.
• NBI Clearance
• Bank Account
• High school diploma plus transcript , or college diploma plus transcript

What are the requirements for getting a passport? Here they are according to the DFA website :

• Confirmed online appointment
• Personal appearance
• Accomplished Application form
• Original and photocopy of PSA Authenticated Birth Certificate on Security Paper
• Any of the following acceptable IDs with one photocopy: List of Acceptable IDs

To learn more about the details, then click on the DFA website link above.

If you are employed with another job while applying to be a sea farer, then you won’t have trouble preparing most of the documents mentioned above. You will only have to prepare your NBI clearance, TIN number, or even bank account if you don’t have one already.

So which bank should you create an account in? Well, it depends on your agency Some agencies require you to create a BDO bank account, for example. In particular, they would want you to have a Kabayan bank account. For this type of account, the maintaining is so cheap; probably around 50 to 100 pesos.

For the high school or college diploma plus high school or college transcript, you need to have these apostilled. Essentially, the DFA needs to know that your transcripts are certified true copies.

To do this, you should go to the school where you graduated and tell them about your application process. They will know what to do. If you choose to submit a high school diploma and high school transcript, you will most likely go to the DepEd division office (that is, if you graduated in a DepEd school). They will then give you a date when you can get your certified diploma.

SOLAS Training

At the MICHA, or other similar institution, you will be undergoing a SOLAS training for around 8 to 10 days. SOLAS stands for Safety of Life at Sea, and this includes basic training on swimming skills, fire training, and more.

How much will you spend on this training? Well, it depends on the institution, but you will probably spend around 8,000 pesos. After the SOLAS Training, you will get a SOLAS certificate.

If you want to train at MICHA Manila, then all you have to go to the Times Plaza building located in front of the UN Avenue LRT situation. Bring your ID and inquire about the SOLAS training.

Seaman’s book

To get the seaman’s book, you need the following requirements:

• High School or College Diploma or Transcript
• SOLAS Certificate
• PSA Authenticated Birth Certificate
• 2 Passport-Sized 2×2 pictures with colored or white background

Getting a seaman’s book is a lot like getting a passport. You need an appointment. The price is 1,500 pesos for expedite, and 300 pesos for regular.

To pay for your seaman’s book, all you have to do is go to the nearest bayad center. There are bayad centers in SM and in most 7-11 outlets, among others.

Other Possible Requirements

Other requirements include:

• Yellow paper vaccination
• Medical exam

These are already required when you are hired. The requirements mentioned in previous sections are for the application process.

Having said that, you can always get these documents if you want even before you are hired. That’s what some aspiring sea farers do, and that gives them the advantage of being ready for immediate hire once something of the like comes up.

Working at a Cruise ship

After submitting all requirements and passing all interviews, you may have to wait for a few more months before you can join a ship. The vlogger mentioned that his first ship is from P & O cruises.

His first few days were really rough. In fact, after 3 days he got really sick and almost gave up. He was so sick that he had to be isolated in the clinic for several days due to high fever and body pains.

He attributes this sickness to the fact that he isn’t used to the physical and long hours of work required in the industry. As a call center agent previously, he only had to sit and relax for 8 hours on the job, so this was definitely new for him.

He said that has a cruise ship worker you have to work for around 10-14 hours. He was so overwhelmed that he decided to call his mom and said he wanted to quit. However, he decided to stay for one more week and see if things get better.

Things did get better for him, and now he is a full-fledged cruise ship worker with tons of experience.

Advice for First Timers

The vlogger gives the following advice to those who will be joining the sea faring industry for the first time:

• Stay Physically fit – you need to be strong. For example, if you work at a restaurant in a ship, chances you will be working with one other person (a waiter, or assistant waiter), and will be serving around 5-7 tables with 5 guests per table. You need the endurance to do serve them all.
• Take care of your mental health – when your boss gets mad at you, just think that they are giving you constructive criticism. Stop thinking about your family too much; just focus on your work.
• Be emotionally ready – you will be dealing with people across different nationalities. The environment will be quite different from what you’re used to. You may have a boss that is too strict or shouts at you. Keep your emotions in check.
• Trust God – you have to pray all the time, especially if you feel alone. This will help you overcome challenges.
• Be friendly with your boss, supervisor or manager. – at the end of the day, they will be your first hand in terms of guidance and telling you how to do things right.
• Be friendly with your workmates – as a beginner, there is a learning curve that you need to tackle, and your more experienced work mates can help you speed up the learning process. They are there to help you perform your job well.
• Cabin Mate – you will most likely be staying with one other worker in a single cabin. You’ll be together for hours after work. Chances are you will be talking with that person. Don’t try to pick a fight with your cabin mate. Otherwise, you will only be putting yourself in a stressful situation. If you can’t handle your cabin mate then you can just request to be transferred.

There you have it. These are the steps needed in order to apply to become a cruise ship worker. The vlogger even shared tips on how to survive during your first few days, weeks or months onboard.

How the pandemic affected cruise industry workers

After the pandemic put a near halt to all leisure travel, the global cruise industry — and the many Filipino workers who power it — are back at sea.

By Yashika Torib

One March morning in 2020, a luxury cruise ship was sailing smoothly along the azure waters of southern Florida. The ship’s close to 1,800 crew members were gearing up for another day of work. Some of the 3,000 passengers ambled about, ready to be fed, entertained and pampered. The sea sparkled as the giant island of steel cut through its glassy surface, making way for its next port of call. 

It’s another great, sunny day , Justin Alcantara, 26, thought. 

Alcantara was the ship’s quartermaster, steering the ship and assisting navigators in the bridge. He looked far out to the horizon, ensuring their sea lane was clear. 

He was thinking also of his family back in the Philippines, daydreaming about where he would take them next for vacation, when his reveries were cut short by his officer.

“We are going home,” the officer said. 

“But, sir, we haven’t finished our contract yet,” Alcantara said. 

“Yes. They are repatriating us though,” the officer responded. Alcantara felt like he had been doused with cold water. If he wasn’t at sea, he wasn’t earning for his family.

Soon, he was packing his things and flying back home to Manila. What greeted him on land was baffling — the streets were almost empty, authorities were in full personal protective equipment, movement was restricted, and the air was thick with fear. It was a complete contrast to the revelries of the cruise ship he had just disembarked from. 

“A pandemic broke out in the continents as we go on with our lives on the high seas,” he recalls. “It was devastating coming home to confusion, restrictions and uncertainty.”

Alcantara, who is being identified by a pseudonym to protect his job, was among the 325,000 Filipinos whose jobs onboard cruise ships were sidelined by the Covid-19 pandemic. Though the seafarer was repatriated at the peak of the crisis, the International Maritime Organization estimated that 300,000 crew of various nationalities were trapped onboard past their contracts because of travel restrictions; more than 100,000 were working on cruise ships.

Going home would have been a relief for them. But unemployment was also a disaster. 

“I chose a career at sea because it is more lucrative than many other land-based jobs back home. I need more than the average salary to support my family,” Alcantara says. 

A minimum-wage worker in the Manila area earns 13,962 Philippine pesos (PHP) per month, about $271, according to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines. Alcantara earns PHP 61,548 to PHP 82,330 ($1,200 to $1,600) per month as a quartermaster. 

“I was grateful to be repatriated safely back home by my company,” he says. “It was unfortunate, however, that I had to fend for the next 14 months without work.” 

The cruise industry generated more than $150 billion in global economic activity and supported more than 1.1 million jobs in 2019, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). After the suspension of cruise operations began in March 2020, those figures dropped by more than half. As the ship manning capital of the world, the Philippines were particularly hard hit. 

The country has been the world’s main supplier of seafarers since 1987, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. Filipino workers make up more than 25% of the 1.5 million mariners in the world. 

Filipinos also have strong family ties; many people stay in the same household even after marriage. The heads of the family, or breadwinners, work hard to ensure the welfare of their people. That work ethic combined with Filipinos’ world-class skills and competence in seafaring have earned them the admiration of ship owners and managers. During the pandemic, the Philippines’ Maritime Industry Authority reported that cruise ship employment saw a 64% decline from 206,195 in 2019 to 73,328 in 2020. That drop put the survival of tens of thousands of Filipino families at risk.

The unsung heroes

Many countries repatriated overseas workers as the pandemic grew in intensity, but for workers at sea, the process was more complicated. Filipino Jewell Lorejo, 26, was working as an ordinary seaman on a cruise ship in the Bahamas when the news broke that their vessel would be laid up.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had issued a No Sail Order on March 14, 2020, and CLIA members suspended their U.S. cruise ship operations for 30 days. And then the CDC renewed its order for another month, and another month.

The global cruise industry has about 50 players, including the big three: Carnival Corp., Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. For some smaller operations, including the cruise company Lorejo worked for, the pandemic pause was more than they could handle.

“Our company went bankrupt due to the pandemic, and the ship I was working on was taken out of operations,” Lorejo says. “Unfortunately, I was not among the chosen who would be sent home.”

While most passengers were swiftly repatriated, cruise workers still aboard ships had to isolate themselves in their cabins. Hospitality staff, medical professionals and the crew responsible for the upkeep and navigation of the ship had to continue working, even if their contracts had already lapsed.

The No Sail Order went on for the next five months. Many seafarers experienced stress and depression from the isolation. Bloomberg reported at least a half dozen suicides by staff on cruise vessels during the pandemic. 

Ship owners and operators scrambled to ensure that deployed seafarers could safely get home amid the ever-changing travel and quarantine restrictions worldwide. 

“It was a completely different paradigm for the local manning agencies,” says Miguel Rocha, chief executive officer of C.F. Sharp Crew Management. Manning or crewing agencies recruit people to work onboard for their ship-owner clients, ensuring that all certificates, documentation, medical and travel requirements are complete before deployment.

“We were basically operating in an environment that has no prior infrastructure, protocol, or facilities,” Rocha says. “We were bringing hundreds of thousands of seafarers home while the government was still in the process of figuring out how to handle the pandemic and where these repatriates would be housed.” 

C.F. Sharp was among the first manning companies in the Philippines to take on the complex repatriation of its more than 11,000 cruise workers around the world, chartering 13 commercial flights over seven weeks. 

“Under normal circumstances, a manning agency is no longer responsible for the crew’s arrival in their home country when they are no longer under contract,” Rocha says. But in the pandemic, they had to arrange quarantine facilities, Covid-19 testing and other documentation requirements.

“All this groundwork implemented by the local government agencies were initiated by manning agencies in cooperation with ship owners,” he says. “These ship owners took it upon themselves to shoulder the cost of repatriation and quarantine. It was already beyond their responsibility but in the name of humanitarian efforts, they simply said, ‘We just need to get them home.’”

The repatriation and quarantine costs were later assumed by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, but for the first six months of the mass repatriation effort, the costs fell on the ship owners. 

Edgar Ala II, deputy general manager of North Sea Marine Services Corp., also found the situation challenging. 

“The best thing we could do was join the other manning agencies that are spearheading repatriation protocols for Filipino seafarers. These we all did virtually since no one was allowed then to work in person,” Ala says. “We managed crew changes onboard ships that, despite being on temporary stop-operations, still needed several seafarers to ensure the ship was still in good running condition.” 

Rocha concurred with the difficulty in crew changes. 

“Deploying a crew to a moving target in another country was especially difficult during the beginning of the pandemic,” he says. “The ever-changing conditions were a crisis on its own. Replacing a crew onboard was nearly impossible as many ended up getting stranded at sea — another set of humanitarian issues for the maritime industry.” 

Lorejo was among the fortunate cruise workers who felt taken care of, continuing to be paid past the end of their contract. It’s still uncertain when or if the ship will be bought by another operator.

“Even though our company has already filed for bankruptcy, we still receive our salaries. The pay is sometimes delayed, but I am glad it still comes in,” Lorejo says.

Today, more than two years later, Lorejo and his crew mates are still aboard the cruise ship, ensuring its seaworthiness until they can return home.

Silver linings

For a time, Alcantara was just another number in the unemployment statistics of the maritime industry. He opted to swim against the tide and made the most of the situation when he returned to the Ilocos Norte region of the Philippines.

“It had its advantages. The best one is being able to spend longer time with my family — two years straight,” he says. “The longest time I’ve spent with them was whenever I am given a three months’ vacation. Another upside was that I’ve learned to build and run my own business, supplying motorcycle gears. That has been our saving grace the entire time I was unemployed.”

Today, as cruise ships are returning to the seas, Rocha observed that hiring experienced hospitality workers has become a challenge.

“So many hotels and restaurants shut down for the past two years of the pandemic,” Rocha says. “Newly graduated hospitality professionals have nowhere to train and gain experience from. There is an increased demand now for cruise ship workers, but our local infrastructure could not produce the people that are demanded by the world.” 

C.F. Sharp is seeing a significant increase in the demand for Filipino cruise workers from ship owners and cruise operators.

“Other countries like India and Indonesia, who were traditionally sending hospitality crew on cruise liners, are now having their own pandemic-related challenges. Hence, the ship owners are now making deliberate efforts to hire additional Filipinos,” he says.

Rocha adds that even with the extra expenses incurred by ship owners for the quarantine and repatriation of crew during the pandemic, wages were stable when ships started operating again in the third quarter of 2021. 

Alcantara was among those who went back to sea as soon as he could. 

“Thankfully, I was redeployed on a cruise ship last August. The ships do not allow full passenger capacity yet; we are only 60% occupied,” he said. 

Alcantara observed that cruise passengers found the journey a respite from the harsh realities of the pandemic. 

“Some of them still talk about what happened to them during the pandemic, but many are already trying to forget,” he says. “This is better, though, as compared to being unemployed on shore.”

With fewer guests onboard, Alcantara notes that those working in hospitality are reporting fewer bonuses and tips from the passengers. And some crew members are taking extra jobs in the hospitality department to earn a little more.

According to the International Labor Organization’s Maritime Labor Convention, normal working hours onboard a ship should be eight per day, with one day for rest. The frugal Alcantara opts to stay aboard the ship during his rest hours rather than go ashore with his crew friends for shopping and sightseeing. 

“I am just in my cabin during my resting hours and days off. I simply believe that we are here onboard to earn, not to spend. The only rest and recreation I allow myself is the vacation I have with my family,” Alcantara says. “That’s how we are; we keep on grinding for as long as we can handle the job. We are doing this for our family.”

The Cruise Lines International Association predicts that passenger volumes will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2023, and cruise workers like Alcantara are ready to welcome them.

Yashika Torib is a maritime journalist, marine environment volunteer, public speaker, educator, author, and traveler. Her exposure with the Philippine maritime industry spans 15 years of writing and reporting for several print and broadcast maritime media, covering issues about crewing, maritime education and training, domestic and international shipping, maritime security, marine environmental protection, and interests of the seafaring families. She hails from a family of seafarers and has extended her passion for the sea by volunteering with the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary (PCGA) since 2011.

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

Explore the May 2024 Issue

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Cruise ship carrying 1,500 passengers stuck in Spain port due to Bolivian passengers’ visa problems

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A cruise ship reportedly carrying 1,500 passengers was stuck Wednesday in the Spanish northeastern port of Barcelona due to the visa problems of a group of Bolivian passengers who were due to disembark there, officials said.

Authorities say 69 Bolivians were not being allowed to leave the ship because they lacked valid documents to enter the European border-free Schengen area. Solange Duarte, a Bolivian diplomat in Barcelona, told The Associated Press she received reports some of the stranded Bolivians had been duped into obtaining fake visas but had no further information.

“We have asked the families to indicate who has processed this visa and we have not gotten answers,” she said, adding she heard it was possible the Bolivians would be transferred to a different ship.

Spain’s national police was looking into the possibility of a fake visa scam, Duarte said.

Spanish state news agency Efe and other media said some 1,500 passengers were on board the MSC Armony hoping to continue the cruise to Croatia.

Bolivia’s deputy foreign affairs minister, Fernando Pérez, said the country was waiting “to see what the Spanish authorities decide what to do.”

A statement from the Bolivian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the Bolivian Embassy in Spain and the country’s Consulate General in Barcelona “are carrying out the pertinent steps to address this case,” coordinating with Spanish authorities, as well as with the MSC Cruises Company.

MSC Cruises said in a statement the Bolivians included families and children.

It said the “passengers appeared to have proper documentation upon boarding in Brazil. We have been informed by the authorities that the visas are not valid for entry into the Schengen area. As a result, passengers have not been able to disembark in Barcelona, which was their final destination.”

The company said the ship remained in port while it works with authorities to facilitate the process.

The Schengen area is an ID-check-free travel zone comprising 29 European countries, most from the European Union.

This story was corrected to show that the Schengen zone is a European rather than European Union creation and comprises 29 countries.

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