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The Love Boat – Season 7, Episode 7

Long time no see; bear essence; kisses & makeup, where to watch, the love boat — season 7, episode 7.

Watch The Love Boat — Season 7, Episode 7 with a subscription on Paramount+.

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The Love Boat

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Episode list

The love boat.

S1.E0 ∙ The New Love Boat - The Newlyweds/The Exchange/Cleo's First Voyage

S1.E1 ∙ Captain & the Lady/Centerfold/One if by Land...

S1.E2 ∙ A Tasteful Affair/Oh, Dale!/The Main Event

S1.E3 ∙ Ex Plus Y/Golden Agers/Graham and Kelly

S1.E4 ∙ Message for Maureen/Gotcha/Acapulco Connection

S1.E5 ∙ Isaac the Groupie/Mr. Popularity/Help! Murder!

S1.E6 ∙ The Joker Is Mild/Take My Granddaughter, Please/First Time Out

S1.E7 ∙ Julie's Old Flame/The Jinx/The Identical Problem

S1.E8 ∙ Lost and Found/The Understudy/Married Singles

S1.E9 ∙ The Captain's Captain/Romance Roulette/Hounded (A Dog's Life)

S1.E10 ∙ Dear Beverly/The Strike/Special Delivery

S1.E11 ∙ Lonely at the Top/Silent Night/Divorce Me, Please

S1.E12 ∙ The Old Man and the Runaway/The Painters/A Fine Romance

S1.E13 ∙ Too Hot to Handle/Family Reunion/Cinderella Story

S1.E14 ∙ Isaac's Double Standard/One More Time/Chimpanzeeshines

S1.E15 ∙ The Eyes of Love/Masquerade/Hollywood Royalty/The Caper: Part 1

S1.E16 ∙ The Eyes of Love/Masquerade/Hollywood Royalty/The Caper: Part 2

S1.E17 ∙ Winner Take Love/The Congressman Was Indiscreet/Isaac's History Lesson

S1.E18 ∙ Last of the Stubings/Million Dollar Man/The Sisters

S1.E19 ∙ A Very Special Girl/Until the Last Goodbye/The Inspector

S1.E20 ∙ Memories of You/Computerman/Parlez Vous?

S1.E21 ∙ Taking Sides/Going by the Book/A Friendly Little Game

S1.E22 ∙ A Selfless Love/The Nubile Nurse/Parents Know Best

S1.E23 ∙ Musical Cabins

S1.E24 ∙ The Business of Love/Crash Diet Crisis/I'll Never Fall in Love Again

S1.E25 ∙ Pacific Princess Overtures/Gopher, the Rebel/Cabin Fever

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Princess Cruises Announces The Love Boat Themed Cruise with Iconic Original Cast

Fans can set a course for adventure, love and laughter aboard enchanted princess canada/new england voyage, august 31-september 7, 2024.

By downloading this image you agree to the Princess asset use terms and conditions

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (February 7, 2024) – Princess Cruises, known for its integral role as the ocean-going co-star in the iconic "The Love Boat" series, has officially unveiled a second themed cruise, reuniting cast members from the original show. Following the tremendous success of the inaugural Love Boat cruise in 2022, fans of the popular show can sail along with Doc, Gopher, Isaac and Vicki Stubing as they cruise roundtrip from New York to Canada & New England aboard Enchanted Princess, August 31-September 7, 2024.

Princess Cruises Celebrations Ambassador Jill Whelan (aka Vicki Stubing) will join fellow Love Boat cast members including Bernie Kopell (Doc), Fred Grandy (Gopher), and Ted Lange (Isaac). Ezra Freeman, the bartender from the recently aired The Real Love Boat on CBS reality dating series, will join the cast, along with other surprise guests to be announced.

Highly anticipated Love Boat -themed activities, include:

• Sailaway party introducing the cast 
• Meet-and-greet photo and signing opportunities
• The Love Boat -inspired guest activities with prizes
• Cocktail demonstration hosted by Ezra Freeman and Ted Lange – practice the finger point! 
• Symbolic renewal of vows ceremony, officiated by the cast, with commemorative certificate
• Cast Q&As sharing favorite memories of the show and stories of their careers
• The Love Boat episodes airing on Movies Under the Stars and in staterooms
• The Love Boat trivia with the Cruise Director
• The Love Boat inspired menus and specialty cocktails
• Themed décor, photo backdrops and merchandise 

“We had such a blast connecting with fans on our theme cruise in 2022, so bringing it back in 2024 feels like it was meant to be, especially with the addition of some surprise guests,” said Jill Whelan, Celebrations Ambassador for Princess Cruises. “Sailing with our fans brings us so much joy and this cruise will undoubtedly be a special reunion, taking us back to where it all began – on a Princess Cruise.”

Super fans may opt for a special Love Boat VIP Package , featuring an invitation to an exclusive cast cocktail party, reserved seating for the cast Q&A in the Princess Theater, front-of-the-line access for autographs and photos, dinner at the Captain’s Table, plus a themed cruise t-shirt and mug. More details on cost and how to book coming soon.

The seven-day Canada/New England Love Boat theme cruise aboard the 3,660-guest Enchanted Princess sails roundtrip from New York City and visits Newport, Rhode Island; Boston; Rockland, Maine; Saint John, Canada (for Bay of Fundy); and Halifax, Canada.

The Love Boat is credited with bringing cruising to the masses and showcasing the romance of the sea, taking Hollywood’s biggest stars to sought-after destinations as story lines always ended on a happy note. In the fall of 2022, Princess was featured again as the setting of The Real Love Boat on CBS and Paramount+, reality dating adventure series where three real-life Princess crew members and 12 singles looking for love joined hosts Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell onboard Regal Princess sailing through the Mediterranean.

Additional information about Princess Cruises is available through a professional travel advisor, by calling 1-800-PRINCESS (1-800-774-6237) or by visiting the company’s website at www.princess.com .

Media Contacts

Contact information for members of the media

Negin Kamali, +1 661-753-1539, [email protected]

Briana Latter, +1 661-753-1538, [email protected]

About Princess Cruises

Princess Cruises is The Love Boat, the world’s most iconic cruise brand that delivers dream vacations to millions of guests every year in the most sought-after destinations on the largest ships that offer elite service personalization and simplicity customary of small, yacht-class ships. Well-appointed staterooms, world class dining, grand performances, award-winning casinos and entertainment, luxurious spas, imaginative experiences and boundless activities blend with exclusive Princess MedallionClass service to create meaningful connections and unforgettable moments in the most incredible settings in the world - the Caribbean, Alaska, Panama Canal, Mexican Riviera, Europe, South America, Australia/New Zealand, the South Pacific, Hawaii, Asia, Canada/New England, Antarctica, and World Cruises. The company is part of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE:CCL; NYSE:CUK).

Additional media information is available at princess.com/news

Not a member of the media? 

Contact us at: 1-800-PRINCESS (1-800-774-6237) or 1-661-753-0000

More contact information is available on our Contact Us page

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Princess Cruises, known for its integral role as the ocean-going co-star in the iconic “The Love Boat” series, has officially unveiled a second themed cruise, reuniting cast members from the original show. Following the tremendous success of the inaugural Love Boat cruise in 2022, fans of the popular show can sail along with Doc, Gopher, Isaac and Vicki Stubing as they cruise roundtrip from New York to Canada & New England aboard Enchanted Princess, August 31-September 7, 2024.

Sail With The Original Cast

Princess Cruises Celebrations Ambassador Jill Whelan (aka Vicki Stubing) will join fellow  Love Boat  cast members including Bernie Kopell (Doc), Fred Grandy (Gopher), and Ted Lange (Isaac). Ezra Freeman, the bartender from the recently aired  The Real Love Boat  on CBS reality dating series, will join the cast, along with other surprise guests to be announced.

Highly anticipated  Love Boat -themed activities, include:

• Sailaway party introducing the cast
• Meet-and-greet photo and signing opportunities
• The Love Boat -inspired guest activities with prizes
• Cocktail demonstration hosted by Ezra Freeman and Ted Lange – practice the finger point!
• Symbolic renewal of vows ceremony, officiated by the cast, with commemorative certificate
• Cast Q&As sharing favorite memories of the show and stories of their careers
• The Love Boat  episodes airing on Movies Under the Stars and in staterooms
• The Love Boat  trivia with the Cruise Director
• The Love Boat  inspired menus and specialty cocktails
• Themed décor, photo backdrops and merchandise

“We had such a blast connecting with fans on our theme cruise in 2022, so bringing it back in 2024 feels like it was meant to be, especially with the addition of some surprise guests,” said Jill Whelan, Celebrations Ambassador for Princess Cruises. “Sailing with our fans brings us so much joy and this cruise will undoubtedly be a special reunion, taking us back to where it all began – on a Princess Cruise.”

Love Boat VIP Package

Super fans may opt for a special  Love Boat VIP Package , featuring an invitation to an exclusive cast cocktail party, reserved seating for the cast Q&A in the Princess Theater, front-of-the-line access for autographs and photos, dinner at the Captain’s Table, plus a themed cruise t-shirt and mug. More details on cost and how to book coming soon.

Canada/New England  Love Boat  theme cruise

The seven-day Canada/New England  Love Boat  theme cruise aboard the 3,660-guest Enchanted Princess sails roundtrip from New York City and visits Newport, Rhode Island; Boston; Rockland, Maine; Saint John, Canada (for Bay of Fundy); and Halifax, Canada.

The Love Boat

The Love Boat  is credited with bringing cruising to the masses and showcasing the romance of the sea, taking Hollywood’s biggest stars to sought-after destinations as story lines always ended on a happy note. In the fall of 2022, Princess was featured again as the setting of  The Real Love Boat  on CBS and Paramount+, reality dating adventure series where three real-life Princess crew members and 12 singles looking for love joined hosts Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell onboard Regal Princess sailing through the Mediterranean.

Additional information about Princess Cruises is available through a professional travel advisor, by calling 1-800-PRINCESS (1-800-774-6237) or by visiting the company’s website at  www.princess.com .

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Princess Announces ‘The Love Boat’ Themed Cruise

Sarah Bretz, Contributor

• November 3, 2021

Princess Cruises, whose ships were the star of the show “The Love Boat,” has announced a special voyage themed to the TV show coming in 2022.

The line’s vessel  Majestic Princess  has been chosen for the sailing, which will bring together the original ensemble cast and include a tribute celebration for the late actor Gavin MacLeod, aka Captain Stubing.

The themed elements of the cruise will be hosted by Princess Cruises Celebrations Ambassador Jill Whelan, who played Vicki Stubing in the show. She will be joined by fellow cast members Cynthia Lauren Tewes (Julie McCoy), Bernie Kopell (Doc), Fred Grandy (Gopher), and Ted Lange (Isaac).

Together, they will share their favorite memories from the show, participate in guest activities, and celebrate Gavin LacLeod, who served as Princess Cruises’ brand ambassador for over 35 years until his passing in May 2021.

The seven-night cruise will be from February 26 to March 5, 2022, setting sail from Los Angeles. It will be underway on MacLeod’s birthday — February 28 — and sail the line’s signature Mexican Riviera itinerary that was prominently featured during the TV show’s ten-year run from 1977 to 1986. The scheduled ports are Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Cabo San Lucas.

“Reuniting with the cast for this very special themed ‘Love Boat’ cruise and celebrating the show’s lasting impact with guests is sure to be nostalgic, fun and incredibly memorable,” said Jill Whelan. “While we always love to connect with fans this cruise will be extra special because we will also celebrate the life and career of Gavin, our fearless leader, who not only played my dad on TV but was also a true father figure to me beyond the show.”

MORE:  Sixth Princess Cruises Ship Resumes Service From San Francisco

“The Love Boat” themed cruise activities will include:

• Sail away party
• 1970s-inspired ‘Love Boat’ Disco Deck Party
• Renewal of vows ceremony hosted by Whelan and the cast on the upper deck
• Q&A with the cast, sharing favorite memories of the show and MacLeod
• Birthday celebration honoring MacLeod
• “The Love Boat” episodes airing on Movies Under the Stars and in passenger cabins
• “The Love Boat” trivia with the cruise director
• Cast photo opportunities
• “The Love Boat” themed menus and specialty cocktails
• Themed décor, backdrops, and merchandise

Princess Cruises has been connected to “The Love Boat” well beyond the setting of the show, reuniting the cast members for two ship christenings —  Dawn Princess  in 1997 and  Regal Princess  in 2014. They’ve also appeared on the line’s Rose Parade float and sailed on a throwback cruise in 2015 to celebrate Princess’ 50th anniversary.

In May 2018, the six original cast members and Princess Cruises received an honorary star plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of their contributions to the history of television.

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Best Alaska Cruise for Every Type of Vacationer

Posted: May 5, 2023 | Last updated: July 10, 2023

Best time to cruise to Alaska

An Alaska cruise is such a popular bucket-list item because it's one of the best ways to immerse yourself in some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. Not only will you get to see breathtaking glaciers closer than you ever dreamed, but you're also likely to see eagles soaring and whales spouting—often from the deck of your ship. The best Alaska cruises give you an opportunity to explore the Far North from both land and sea, and we've got cruise tips to help you optimize your time and your budget.

The state's long, cold winters are not conducive to cruising, so the Alaska cruise season is relatively short. The best time to travel to Alaska is from late spring to early fall, with peak cruising happening during July and August. Those are also the most crowded and expensive months, so don't rule out September, which is actually the best time to see the Northern Lights on an Alaska cruise. But with dozens of ships sailing to Alaska, how do you decide which are the best cruise lines for you?

Luckily, when it comes to Alaska cruises, there is truly something for everyone. Whether you're traveling solo or with kids, whether you're looking for total luxury or a bargain and whether you love giant ships or something more intimate, we've found the best Alaska cruises to fit your needs. See which one sounds right for you, and once you're booked, get a head start by checking out these hidden cruise features, cruise ship code words and things you can't do on cruises .

How we chose the best Alaska cruises

To find the best Alaska cruises, we followed expert recommendations and read hundreds of user reviews and ratings. Because I've been on several Alaska cruises alone, with my family and with my husband, I also based my choices on my own personal experiences. After combining all that information, we came up with this guide to the best Alaska cruises.

Best overall

Princess cruises.

Princess has been cruising to Alaska for more than half a century, and they continue to lead the industry by bringing more guests to the state than any other cruise line. In fact, they introduced a generation to the idea of cruising via the hit TV show The Love Boat , which was set on a Princess ship and featured many episodes in Alaska! Because of their deep ties to the state, the cruise line is able to offer a variety of itineraries and shore excursions, and they even own a number of Princess Wilderness Lodges near national parks , so you can add a land extension to your trip.

Onboard, there are plenty of activities for both adults and kids, including the North to Alaska enrichment program, which brings the state's culture to you so you can sample fresh Alaska seafood and hear from local celebs like Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the 1,100-mile Iditarod sled dog race.

• Guests can meet Alaskan Huskies on the ship through Puppies in the Piazza!
• So many options for cruise length, extensions and land and sea packages
• Price is not all-inclusive

Best for families

Disney cruise line.

With lots of outdoor activities and great wildlife sightings, an Alaska cruise is ideal for kids, and not surprisingly, no one does it better for them than Disney . Kids will love whale watching, panning for gold, searching for black bears and going dog sledding—and they'll equally love everything Disney has planned for them on the Disney Wonder, from live shows ("Frozen" takes on a whole new meaning in Alaska) and character greetings to kids clubs they won't want to leave to themed pools and restaurants. Little ones will be just as happy to see Goofy as they are to see a glacier, making this the best cruise for kids . Before you go, check out these Disney cruise tips .

• Disney is beloved by kids of all ages
• The focus is on families
• On the pricier side

Best adults-only

If you want to immerse yourself in the beauty of Alaska without the distraction of little kids, you'll be in good company on Viking . Their gorgeous ocean ships sail with a maximum of 930 passengers, all over the age of 18, so you can indulge in adult conversation over a bottle of wine or a cocktail or two. One of the many features that makes Viking the best adult-only cruise is that every single room comes with a private veranda, so you can take in the views and feel that fresh Alaska air with no one else around—and without paying extra. You can also get away without paying additional fees for shore excursions, because one is included in every port, giving you an opportunity to see the highlights of destinations including Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, Sitka and Valdez.

• Every stateroom has a veranda
• A shore excursion is included in every port
• Optional cruise extensions let you explore Talkeetna, Denali, Fairbanks and Anchorage on land
• The shortest Alaska cruise is 11 days

Best for solo travelers

Norwegian cruise line.

Cruising has traditionally been a bit of a challenge for solo travelers because of the single supplement that basically makes them pay the same price for a room as two people sharing a room would pay in total. Not with Norwegian , the best singles cruise ! The first cruise line to build staterooms and common areas specifically for solo travelers, they've made it easy for singles to cruise to Alaska comfortably and affordably. The Studio Lounge is a welcoming spot to meet other solo travelers so you can join up for meals or shore excursions to places like Dawes Glacier and Icy Strait Point.

• No single supplement
• A dedicated lounge just for solo travelers
• Lots of families and kids, which may not appeal to solo travelers

Best for couples

Celebrity cruises.

The best cruise for couples , both straight and gay, Celebrity offers lots of opportunities for romantic experiences in Alaska, from hiking through a rainforest in Juneau to cuddling up during a ride back in time on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway. On the ship itself, there are lots of spots where you can take some Instagrammable selfies with the majestic Alaska scenery behind you. What a backdrop for a wedding, honeymoon or vow renewal! Consider upgrading to The Retreat, Celebrity's exclusive ship within a ship, for a more private and intimate cruise.

• Many options for cruise length
• Offers land tour extensions
• Families with kids may disrupt the romantic atmosphere

Best budget

Carnival cruise line.

Yes, you can visit Alaska without spending a fortune, thanks to Carnival . You may not get all the bells and whistles that you would on more expensive cruises, but the views don't cost anything, and they're all around you as you chill by the pool or take advantage of one of the many activities and dining venues included in your fare. Save money to use for shore excursions by opting for an interior room, since you won't be spending much time in your cabin anyway.

• Affordable way to see Alaska
• Lots of cruise length options
• The party atmosphere may not be for everyone

Best luxury

Regent seven seas.

Regent's Seven Seas Explorer is all about luxury, from its all-suite design to its all-inclusive fares , which cover airfare, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, restaurants, gratuities, Wi-Fi, laundry and unlimited shore excursions. With only 750 passengers, service is exceptional and personal. Itineraries can be customized to fit your specific interests, whether you want to take a glacier hike, immerse yourself in Alaska's history or eat your way through the state.

• Truly an all-inclusive cruise
• All-suite accommodations are roomy and plush
• Only one Regent Seven Seas ship sails to Alaska

Best small ship

Seabourn cruise line.

A great choice for fans of smaller, more intimate ships, Seabourn's Odyssey holds 450 passengers and treats them to a personal, all-inclusive luxury experience. Smaller ships can take you to spots where the bigger ones just can't fit, and the Ventures by Seabourn program offers optional excursions where you can get up close and personal with some of Alaska's most awe-inspiring sights via kayak and Zodiac. You'll be sailing with a world-class expedition team, including a marine biologist, ornithologist, geologist, historian, photographer and natural experts who share their knowledge through lectures and casual conversations during scenic cruisings.

• All-inclusive
• Offers 7- to 14-day cruises
• Gets you closer to Alaska's natural beauty

Best large ship

Royal caribbean cruises.

Built for cruisers who believe the bigger, the better, Royal Caribbean's megaship, Quantum of the Sea, is the biggest ship in the region, with the capacity to hold 4,905 passengers. It also boasts the tallest viewing deck on any cruise ship—perfect for enjoying the stunning Alaska scenery. Three other Royal Caribbean ships sail to the state, as well—all big and beautiful and filled with enough activities to keep travelers of every age busy, including their signature Rock Climbing Wall, simulated skydiving and surf sessions on the Flowrider. Yes, you can "surf" in Alaska!

• There's literally something for everyone
• Studio staterooms are designed for solo travelers
• It can get crowded

Best for land and sea

Holland america line.

With more than 75 years of experience in Alaska—the longest of any cruise line— Holland America knows the state inside and out and presents you with lots of ways to enjoy it, from both the sea and land. Not only do they feature the most Glacier Bay itineraries, but they're also the only way to see the Yukon in combination with a cruise. You'll get to stay at Holland America's Westmark Hotels and their beautiful McKinley Chalet Resort at the entrance to Denali National Park, enabling you to get closer to wildlife and explore more of Alaska on land.

The cruise line has also expanded its onboard programming, so guests can engage with an Alaska naturalist, dig deeper into topics like Alaska's bush pilots and learn from a National Park Ranger and local Huna Tlingit guides.

• Every cruise includes a visit to one or more of Alaska's iconic glacier destinations
• Only cruise line to offer an Alaska cruise combined with an overland tour to Denali and the Yukon
• Land and sea Cruisetours range from 9 to 18 days
• Caters to an older crowd

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Carnival Jubilee ship review: A guide to Carnival's third Excel Class cruise ship

Editor's Note

When Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Jubilee debuted in December 2023, it became the third ship in the line's Excel Class , closely mimicking sister ships Mardi Gras and Carnival Celebration. Although there are more similarities than differences among the three, Carnival has still found a way to make Carnival Jubilee innovative and fun by tweaking a few of the offerings.

The ship shares Carnival's "zone" concept with its two older sisters, meaning it has dedicated areas for dining, drinking, entertainment and outdoor fun, including Bolt, a top-deck roller coaster. The biggest differences on the newest iteration are in two reinvented zones, Currents and The Shores; respectively, they take the place of The French Quarter and La Piazza on Mardi Gras , and The Gateway and 820 Biscayne on Carnival Celebration .

On my voyage, the ship carried 5,676 passengers, plus crew. This meant it wasn't at capacity, but it still felt loud and crowded, and often was fraught with lines. However, the service was generally excellent, with an exceedingly friendly crew.

The vessel is also a ton of fun, featuring two new shows (one with a football tailgate theme and the other with an onboard wedding plot), plenty of daily activities and so many fantastic dining options — many of them free — that it'll make your head spin.

Here's the rundown on what you can expect on board so you can determine if Carnival Jubilee is right for your next sailing.

For more cruise guides, news, reviews and tips, sign up for TPG's cruise newsletter .

Carnival Jubilee overview

Carnival Jubilee is a megaship, coming in at 183,521 tons and carrying up to 6,631 passengers at full capacity. It's tied with Carnival Celebration for the title of the largest ship in Carnival's fleet.

The vessel offers weeklong Caribbean voyages on a regular rotation from its home port in Galveston, Texas, meaning you'll find a healthy dose of Texas-style fun on board (more on that later). In fact, Carnival is so dedicated to keeping the ship in the Lone Star State that it had a Texas star painted on the ship's hull.

Carnival Jubilee's demographics run the gamut from families with young kids or extended family groups to groups of friends, couples and even solo cruisers (even though it doesn't have any cabins for singles). True to the rumors about Southern hospitality, the people on my cruise were some of the warmest and most polite I've ever encountered; fellow passengers were saying "excuse me," allowing others to go first in line and generally being more courteous than I've found on sailings from other places.

The ship is divided into six zones, where passengers can find a mix of bars, restaurants, live performances, water-filled fun and exhilarating activities like a ropes course, minigolf and, of course, the Bolt roller coaster . Here's a bit about each zone.

Carnival Jubilee zones

Grand Central: This bustling area rises up three decks — decks 6, 7 and 8 — and replaces the traditional atrium found on older Carnival vessels. The focal point is Center Stage, a starboard-side (on your right when facing the front of the ship) secondary theater that's home to events like bingo during the day and song-and-dance performances at night.

Surrounding the stage are tons of seating options, as well as JavaBlue Cafe, which serves coffee and snacks; Cherry on Top candy shop; the Center Stage and Grand View Bars; and Bonsai Sushi and Teppanyaki. It also serves as an access point for the onboard shops, Piano Bar 88, The Punchliner Comedy Club and the Jubilee Casino.

Currents: Currents is one of the other main social hubs on Carnival Jubilee. It starts on Deck 6, just aft of Grand Central and features two new bars. The Golden Mermaid has gilded decor and a custom-designed mural depicting mermaids and lots of hidden Easter eggs (look for SpongeBob SquarePants references). Meanwhile, Dr. Inks, Ph.D., is a bar based on the fictional character Dr. Inks — an octopus with academic credentials. Both bars have excellent drink menus.

Also in the space is Emeril's Bistro 717, a New Orleans-style, for-fee eatery developed by celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse.

On the wall above Dr. Inks, window-shaped screens provide a show for anyone passing through the length of the Currents promenade area. Programming rotates between underwater adventures, nature scenes and even artwork produced by passengers and kids from St. Jude's Children's Hospital. For a better view, head up one deck to the Alchemy Bar.

The Shores: If the Currents zone is the underwater-themed area of the ship, The Shores on Deck 8 is what you get when you pop your head above the metaphorical surface. Inspired by boardwalks and beaches, The Shores offers two walk-up food counters: Beach Buns (Carnival Deli on other ships) and Coastal Slice (the equivalent of Pizza Pirate or Pizzeria del Capitano). Offset by colorful, blinking carnival-style lighting, the venues all but scream, "Step right up!"

Other venues in the area include the Marina Bar for cocktails and coffee, complimentary Italian restaurant Cucina del Capitano and for-fee seafood eatery Rudi's Seagrill, created by food pop artist chef Rudi Sodamin.

Summer Landing: From The Shores, continue aft on Deck 8 to reach Summer Landing. It's an indoor space that encompasses Guy's Pig & Anchor Smokehouse Brewhouse, a Guy Fieri barbecue joint with its own microbrewery and live music; the Heroes Tribute Lounge, which honors members of the military; and soft-serve ice cream.

Outside, the area continues with The Patio, which features a pool and hot tubs, and neighboring The Watering Hole, a bar that serves the space.

Lido: A mix of food and fun, the Lido zone fans out on decks 16 and 17 around the ship's main Beach Pool, which serves as the center of the action. Around and above it, you'll find outdoor movies, dedicated teen hangouts, a video arcade, a two-story version of the RedFrog Tiki Bar, cruiser favorite BlueIguana Cantina, extra-fee Seafood Shack and Street Eats street food.

On the upper deck is the popular Guy's Burger Joint, which is oddly set a bit farther away from the action on Excel Class ships. Farther afield on Deck 16, passengers can check out Shaquille O'Neal's Big Chicken restaurant or venture to Lido Marketplace, the ship's complimentary buffet.

The Ultimate Playground: If you're looking for alfresco thrills to keep you busy, The Ultimate Playground is the place to be. It comprises a miniature golf course, a basketball court, a ropes course and the line's signature WaterWorks water park, all of which are free.

Of course, the highlight of this zone is the Bolt roller coaster. It's an added-fee experience during which passengers (one to two people per ride) zoom twice around the track on a motorcycle-style vehicle that allows you to throttle up or down to a speed that suits you.

What I love about Carnival Jubilee

Grand central.

Grand Central is one of my favorite spots on board. Although it's often loud, busy and difficult to navigate, especially on sea days, it's a prime place to sit and people-watch. I found myself gravitating there repeatedly to enjoy coffee or a snack from the nearby JavaBlue Cafe while watching the cast from that night's show rehearse at Center Stage — something you can't usually do on other ships.

Plus, the space is a bit of a throwback to the days when interior designer and architect Joe Farcus was responsible for Carnival's ship decor. The decor is midcentury modern style meets '80s quirk, featuring a pink and teal color scheme, fun light fixtures and a bar with colored mirror accents.

I'm not generally someone who cares about alcohol. Give me one or two pina coladas on a weeklong cruise, and I'm good to go. However, the massively creative options on the menus at both the Golden Mermaid and Dr. Inks, Ph.D., bars are absolutely worth a shoutout.

For the wow factor, the best drink I had was A Pearly Bubble. Found on the menu at the Golden Mermaid, it's a mix of gin, St-Germain liqueur, white cranberry juice, dragon fruit and lime juice. It was a bit too dry for me, so I didn't care for the taste; however, you won't want to miss the presentation, which involves a giant bubble atop the drink. It pops when you poke it, leaving behind a tiny poof of smoke.

For taste, which I know is subjective, my favorite is the Crimson Catch (Swedish Fish candy-infused vodka, lime juice, pomegranate liqueur, white cranberry juice and Swedish Fish candy). I prefer sweet drinks, and this hit the spot.

It's not unusual for the line at JavaBlue to snake around the corner and down the hall at peak times. The staff members try their best to keep things moving, but if you don't feel like waiting 10-15 minutes for a cuppa, head upstairs to Deck 8's Marina Bar instead.

There, you can order any of the same coffee beverages you'll find at JavaBlue but in far less time. If you're feeling more like a cocktail, you can grab one of those, too. On my sailing, the bartenders were phenomenal and even remembered that I prefer non-dairy milk with my lattes.

Bolt roller coaster

Cruise fans know that Carnival brought Bolt, the first-ever roller coaster at sea, to Mardi Gras in 2021. Carnival Jubilee offers the same ride — the third of its kind on a cruise ship — in the deck 18, 19 and 20 Ultimate Playground area.

Pay a fee to ride, and you (or you and a friend) can navigate two laps of twists and turns around the ship's funnel as you use the throttle and hyper-boost buttons to try to break the day's speed record. (Yes, you'll be timed, and don't forget to smile for a photo.) The ocean views from above are totally worth the cost.

What I don't love about Carnival Jubilee

There's no easy way to say this: The ship almost always feels crowded. If you want to enjoy it when it's not, you'll have to stay on board during port calls just to find some space to yourself. Many restaurants and walk-up counters have near-constant lines, particularly at the complimentary venues during peak dinner times every evening.

It's so common for JavaBlue to be backed up throughout the day that an easy-to-miss sign directs passengers to other locations where they can grab a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, lines at the onboard deli and pizzeria counters frequently snake so far down Deck 8 that they block the entrance to seafood restaurant Rudi's Seagrill. One night, as I was dining at Rudi's with some of my travel companions, we joked that the lines were dangerously close to melding with the line for the nearby guest services desk.

And it isn't just a problem with dining. I arrived 15 minutes early for a magic show at the Punchliner Comedy Club, and I couldn't find a single available seat in the entire place. On another night, I showed up on time for Family Feud Live in the ship's theater, and it was a standing-room-only situation. The sizes of the performance venues are generally way too small for the number of passengers wishing to watch the shows.

My cabin had some of the best soundproofing I've experienced on a new ship in a long time — I had balcony accommodations near an elevator bank and heard nothing when I was in my room. However, a couple of passengers told me they could hear noise from Bolt in their balcony cabin on Deck 15.

Most other places on board seem to be excessively loud. Even on port days, when most passengers are ashore, the public areas are filled with loud music that makes it hard to find a quiet escape. Some of it is understandable. After all, Carnival vessels are known as the Fun Ships, but some of it seems unnecessary.

One example is the Dr. Seuss-themed Seuss-a-palooza Parade that makes its way through the Currents zone once per sailing. I happened to be sitting at a table in the area when the festivities kicked off. I decided to stay to see what it was all about, and I'm sorry I did. As costumed Dr. Seuss characters arrived, Carnival staff asked the children to scream solely for the sake of screaming. Ear-piercing shrieks reverberated throughout the space, which was also blocked off to passengers trying to pass through.

The excessive upselling

Combining noise with the annoyance of hawking alcohol, the roving waiters visited every table at Chibang! — the ship's hybrid Mexican-Asian restaurant — one night while I was having dinner there. Their goal was to push Rumchata shots on everyone. Whenever somebody bought one, the waiter would demand that they yell "Shot, shot, shot!" before downing it. This was extremely disruptive and added to the already loud atmosphere.

One afternoon later in the sailing, two different crew members approached me a total of six times in less than half an hour while I was having lunch on the Lido deck. The first five times, I simply said, "No, thanks." After the sixth time, I had enough and told them nicely but firmly to stop asking me. I found the high-pressure sales tactics excessive and irritating when all I wanted to do was eat my meal in peace.

The inconsistencies

Oddly, there were some discrepancies on board that I was surprised to see on a ship that's been sailing for several months.

The first couple had to do with differences between the Carnival HUB app and the daily Fun Times printed schedule. On one occasion, the app said Seafood Shack opened half an hour earlier than it did, while the paper version of the daily schedule had the correct information. Another time, the printed daily had the wrong theater show listed for that night; the correct one was posted in the HUB. On another day, the printed schedule was missing part four of a four-part show, which did show up on the agenda in the app.

In terms of food and drinks, I had a strange experience at Chibang! when I ordered spring rolls. Usually, they don't have meat in them, nor was meat listed as an ingredient on the menu. When the waiter took my order, he said, "Spring rolls with chicken." When I asked him about it, he said he could request for them to be made without it, but that doesn't explain why something with meat in it wouldn't have meat in its list of ingredients. If I were a vegetarian or vegan, it would have concerned me.

As for drinks, I ordered a Snapping Pop at Dr. Inks., Ph.D. It was completely different — different color, different taste and different presentation — from what I received when I ordered the same drink on a sailing two months prior. I was told the drink had to be changed for several reasons. However, the old ingredients were listed on the menu, meaning passengers weren't getting what they thought they ordered.

Carnival Jubilee cabins and suites

Carnival Jubilee offers cabins in the usual varieties: insides with no windows or balconies, ocean-view accommodations with windows, balcony cabins with outdoor veranda space and suites that include additional perks. These include priority check-in, boarding and disembarkation; preferred dinner times in the main dining room; pillow-top mattresses; two large bottles of water and bathrobes; and extra square footage.

Within those categories, Carnival Jubilee offers three types of special cabins. First is Family Harbor, which offers nautically themed cabins that sleep up to five people and rooms that can be connected via an interior door. Families booked in Family Harbor cabins have access to a dedicated Family Harbor Lounge, which offers daily breakfast, snacks and drinks, as well as board games and TVs with a selection of movies and video games. They also receive a free night of babysitting in the kids club so parents can enjoy some alone time.

The second special cabin type is the Havana Cabana. Done up in bright, tropical colors, these rooms offer extended outdoor lounge space and private access to the Havana Pool and Bar area.

The third type is Cloud 9 Spa cabins. With calming seafoam green and yellow decor alongside extras like Elemis toiletries, bathrobes and slippers, these are some of the most relaxing cabins on any ship. These guests also receive priority spa appointments and free access to fitness classes and the onboard thermal suite.

Suites in all three of these special accommodation types also give passengers the suite perks mentioned above.

Excel Suites, Carnival Jubilee's highest-level accommodations, receive all standard suite perks plus additional ones. These include complimentary access to the private sun deck at Loft 19, priority cabana reservations at Loft 19, concierge services, guaranteed reservations at most extra-fee restaurants, free room service, upgraded toiletries, fruit and sparkling wine upon embarkation, a free soft drink package, free in-room movies, an in-cabin coffee machine and complimentary laundry service .

Standard amenities in all rooms include a queen bed that converts to two twins on request, bedside shelving with reading lamps and USB outlets, a desk and vanity area, a sofa or chair, a closet and drawers for storage, a safe for valuables, a house phone and a hair dryer.

Bathrooms feature a toilet, sink and shower with a door instead of a curtain. Complimentary toiletries are basic: bar soap for handwashing and dispensers of shampoo and shower gel mounted on the wall in the shower.

On my sailing, I stayed in a balcony cabin, which was elegantly decorated in neutrals with blue accents. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of storage space. I appreciated touches like ample vanity mirror lighting, adjustable shelving in the closets and a surplus of USB outlets throughout the room, including near the vanity and beside the bed.

Speaking of the bed, it was exceptionally comfortable, and I was excited to find that the TV across from it had a sizable selection of free movies (as well as newer releases for a fee). The TV also allows you to watch select live channels and shipboard programming and to check your onboard bill.

Dislikes for me include a shower door that opens toward you instead of into the shower, making the already tiny bathroom even tighter. I also didn't like the "SNOOZIN'" door hangers, which often got caught in my door when I closed it; I would've rathered a "do not disturb" button like many other new ships have.

I also would have liked a taller table on the balcony, but it only had room for two chairs (not lounger-style) and a small drinks table.

Carnival Jubilee offers 82 accessible cabins in a mix of types and categories: inside, ocean-view, balcony and suite, as well as rooms in the Family Harbor, Havana Cabana and Cloud 9 Spa categories.

Within those 82 options, there are fully accessible accommodations with access to both sides of the bed and rooms that are fully accessible with single-side access to one side of the bed, which work well for passengers who use wheelchairs and scooters. Ambulatory-accessible rooms provide accommodations for people who walk with the help of assistive devices like canes or walkers.

Fully accessible rooms are stair-free, flat-threshold cabins, which offer wider (32-inch) doorways, turning space and bathrooms equipped with grab bars and shower seats.

There are no solo cabins on Carnival Jubilee.

Cabin cleaning is limited to once per day. Unless you specifically request your cabin steward to come at night for turndown service instead of earlier in the day, your room will be made up in the morning. Hang the "SNOOZIN'" card on the outside of your door, and no one will bother you — but your room won't be cleaned that day.

Carnival Jubilee restaurants and bars

Carnival jubilee food.

One of the best ways Carnival provides value to its customers is through its food offerings. Complimentary dining abounds on Carnival Jubilee, and the variety of cuisines is impressive. You'll find more free options on Carnival ships than on just about any other fleet's vessels, and they're actually tasty. It's entirely possible to eat only food that's included in the cruise fare and not feel like you're missing out.

Excellent added-fee options include steak, seafood and teppanyaki, which might be worth trying if you're celebrating a special occasion or feeling like a splurge.

Dinner reservations are recommended for many eateries, even the main dining rooms. You can make them by visiting your restaurant of choice or by using the HUB app. If you don't make one, you might find yourself waiting 20 minutes or more for a table at peak times. If you make a reservation through the app, you'll receive a notification to report to the host stand when your table is ready.

In my experience, waiters were diligent in asking about dietary requirements and restrictions. However, it was disappointing to see that many menus weren't marked with specific options for vegetarians, vegans and people who can't eat gluten.

The ship has two main dining rooms: Atlantic Restaurant (Deck 6, mid) and Pacific Restaurant (decks 6 and 7, aft).

One of them is dedicated to passengers who select Your Time Dining, which lets you eat anytime between 5 and 9 p.m. (The dedicated YTD restaurant can vary by sailing, depending on how many people choose that option.)

Both serve the same menu for dinner, but only the larger Pacific Restaurant is open for Sea Day Brunch on sea days and breakfast (but not lunch) on port days.

I very much enjoyed an omelet with hashbrowns at Sea Day Brunch and salmon during the formal night dinner in the Pacific Restaurant. I also had a wonderful time at two special events — complimentary afternoon tea and an extra-fee Dr. Seuss-themed Thing 1 and Thing 2 Birthday Breakfast — held in the Atlantic Restaurant.

Tip: If you're a vegetarian or a fan of Indian food, don't miss the daily Indian dish on the main dining room menu.

The buffet is the other free food option that's a staple on just about any cruise.

On Carnival Jubilee, the Lido Marketplace on Deck 16 is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, but I found it largely uninspired and lacking in variety. The French toast I had for breakfast and the mahi mahi I had for dinner were tasty, but there are definitely better no-charge venues on board.

A little-known fact is that, at least for the inaugural season, passengers can dine at Mexican-Asian restaurant Chibang! and the Italian Cucina del Capitano, both on Deck 8, for free. Cruisers with YTD can eat there for dinner anytime; those with set seating can dine there after 7:45 p.m.

At Cucina del Capitano, I was exceptionally pleased with the spaghetti carbonara I ordered. The nachos and spring rolls are don't-miss items at Chibang!

Unfortunately, both the service and atmosphere at Chibang! are lacking. The space is simply packed with tables — so much so that there were only about two inches between my table and the one next to me, even though I was dining alone. It then took nearly 10 minutes for a waiter to bring me water and another 10 before someone came to take my order.

Also on Deck 8 are Coastal Slice and neighboring Beach Buns, which respectively replace the pizza and deli counters found by the pool on most other Carnival ships.

The former bakes several different types of pies nearly around the clock, and they're scrumptious. The latter whips up hotdogs, soups and a variety of sandwiches. (I was pleasantly surprised by the grilled ham and cheese.) Lines for both counters are often long, but I promise it's worth the wait.

Two great staples in the ship's outdoor Lido zone are the BlueIguana Cantina (Deck 16), where you can find yummy tacos and burritos throughout the day, and Guy's Burger Joint (Deck 17), which is the place to grab some of the best burgers at sea via Carnival's partnership with chef and TV personality Guy Fieri.

The breakfast burritos at BlueIguana are fantastic. My pick from Guy's is the Chilius Maximus — an 80/20 ground chuck patty with cheese, chili, onion rings and barbecue sauce.

Guy Fieri isn't the only celebrity affiliated with Carnival's free food.

Shaq's Big Chicken , a restaurant backed by basketball great Shaquille O'Neal (who is also Carnival's CFO, chief fun officer), is perfect if you have a hankering for some fried chicken. In addition to chicken strips, sandwiches and fries, the counter-service venue also serves breakfast. Do yourself a favor and try the chicken and biscuit combo with fries.

If you're seeking a between-meal snack or light bite, try the JavaBlue Cafe on Deck 6 in Grand Central. The cafe offers a sizable menu of specialty coffee beverages and tea, as well as free and for-fee snacks.

Breakfast pastries, bowls and English muffin sandwiches, as well as all-day options like salads, sandwiches, wraps, empanadas and calzones, are complimentary; cookies, doughnuts, cupcakes and cheesecake cost extra.

As a sucker for soft-serve ice cream, I was a frequent visitor to the three soft-serve ice cream and frozen yogurt machines on decks 8, 16 and 17. At some point, I lost count of how many cones I ate.

Since there are no toppings, I recommend you snag a bowl of dry Froot Loops from the buffet during breakfast, and stash them in your cabin to mix with your ice cream later. Or grab cookies from the buffet for a DIY ice cream sandwich.

Carnival Jubilee has so many places to eat that I ran out of time to try them all on my weeklong sailing.

I missed Fresh Creations, a salad station in the adults-only sun deck area on Deck 18, and Street Eats, a set of three street food-style walk-up windows on Deck 16 near the main pool. The walk-up windows include Steam Dream, which serves dumplings; Time Fries, offering creative takes on french fries; and Sizzle, a grill that specializes in kebabs and other dishes.

Extra-cost food

My favorite onboard dining experience of the whole sailing was at Emeril's Bistro 717 in the Currents zone on Deck 6. A version of this chef Emeril Lagasse-affiliated spot is on each of Carnival's Excel Class ships, bearing the hull number of the original vessel for which the new one is named. Simply walk up to order at the counter, have a seat and a waiter will take over from there.

During my visit, I ordered a pound of stone crab claws in garlic butter (market price) with red beans and rice ($3) and a brie bowl ($6). The food was fabulous, and the service was friendly. My only complaint is that, apart from a claw cracker, there were no other tools available to get to the crab meat. (I asked.) My waiter had no bibs or wet wipes to offer, which left me a bit messy afterward.

The food item I most recommend you try when sailing on Carnival Jubilee is an order of beignets at Emeril's. Pillows of soft fried dough coated in powdered sugar with chocolate and strawberry sauces for dipping are $5 for an order of six.

My second favorite experience was a calm, quiet and uncrowded lunch at Bonsai Sushi on Deck 8. I partook in edamame ($3) and a California roll ($8). It was fresh, tasty, filling and reasonably priced.

Another excellent dinner during my voyage occurred at Rudi's Seagrill (Deck 8), an upscale seafood restaurant named for chef and pop artist Rudi Sodamin. The lobster macaroni and cheese was the perfect indulgence to start my meal, and I followed it up with a delicious crab cake.

I wasn't overly hungry when I sat down, but the $49 cover charge ($15 for kids) would also have included a soup or salad and a dessert if I had wanted them.

No Carnival sailing would be complete for a carnivore without a visit to Fahrenheit 555, the onboard steakhouse . On Carnival Jubilee, it's adorned in neutral tans, dark browns and red tones.

The menu has several types of meat — including steak, of course, as well as lamb chops and chicken — and seafood items like fish and lobster tail. I went with a 9-ounce filet mignon, which was cooked to perfection. It came alongside several sauces and sides of broccoli and crinkle-cut fries for $49 ($15 for kids).

My two most disappointing extra-fee food encounters on Carnival Jubilee were Seafood Shack (Deck 16, in the Lido zone, near the pool) and room service.

The first one opened late, and despite my order being the first one of the day, it still took more than 20 minutes to be served. I chose a single crab cake for $15. When I received it, the bun was soggy, and no garnishes or sauces were offered until I went back to the counter to ask for coleslaw and tartar sauce, neither of which helped the flavor.

It didn't hold a candle to the crab cake from Rudi's, and I ended up abandoning most of it.

Room service, which comes with a la carte fees (except for free Continental breakfast), set me back almost $20 for a chicken quesadilla, chicken fingers with curly fries and a chocolate chip cookie, which I ordered sometime around 2 a.m.

Everything arrived quickly and at the right temperature. The fries and cookie were great, but the chicken fingers were rubbery and full of gristle. When I tried to order the quesadilla without chicken, I was told they were already made, which seems strange. Shouldn't room service be made to order?

Again, I couldn't fit every single restaurant into my time on Carnival Jubilee, so I missed out on Bonsai Teppanyaki, where chefs grill your food right in front of you, complete with corny jokes. I also missed Guy's Pig & Anchor Smokehouse Brewhouse, another Guy Fieri creation that serves barbecue fare, wings and microbrewed beer made right on the ship (lunch is free). I couldn't make it to Chef's Table, an exclusive multicourse small-group dining experience that's the most pricey meal on board, either.

Carnival Jubilee bars

Drinks are priced individually unless you have a Cheers beverage package that includes alcohol.

My favorite bar on Carnival Jubilee is the Marina Bar in The Shores zone on Deck 8. It offers a menu of adult beverages, but it also serves the same specialty coffees you'll find at JavaBlue, which often has a long line.

This nautically themed outpost is next to a popular access point to the outer decks, so the only downside is that you might be blasted with hot air while your drink is being made.

Unique to Carnival Jubilee are two new bars in the Deck 6 Currents zone.

The Golden Mermaid is a nod to treasures one might expect to find under the sea, and a mural on the opposite wall depicts underwater scenes, including mermaids. (For some "Where's Waldo"-style fun, try to spot a miniature likeness of the ship, a pair of custom sneakers and references to SpongeBob SquarePants.)

The menu of drinks is noteworthy, too, featuring names like From Far Seas and Atlantis Potion. My favorite, though, is A Pearly Bubble — a blend of gin, St. Germain liqueur, white cranberry juice, lime juice and dragon fruit that's as much for show as it is for taste.

The second new bar is Dr. Inks, Ph.D. In addition to a fun selection of cocktails — some of which involve candy — the bar's theme is tied to an animated octopus named Dr. Inks. She has a Ph.D., pet butterflies and extensive collections of both books and fashionable eyewear. Every so often, she'll appear on the screens above the area to chat.

Cruiser-favorite Alchemy Bar — where white-coated apothecaries prescribe drinks to heal what ails you (try the Cucumber Sunrise) — and the bar at Guy's Pig & Anchor Smokehouse Brewhouse returned to Carnival Jubilee after finding success on other Carnival ships.

Besides beer that's brewed right on board — which you can order by the glass, flight or growler, or in cocktails — you can snag one of several whiskies or interesting cocktails like a smoky watermelon margarita and a black bourbon fizz. I tried a bacon Manhattan, but the taste wasn't my favorite. I also wasn't impressed with how long it took a bartender to ask for my order, especially since it wasn't particularly crowded.

I'm not a huge drinker, so I didn't personally try cocktails from the Center Stage Bar (Deck 6) or Grand View Bar (Deck 7) in Grand Central. The former features a bit of a retro vibe, and the latter is backed by a giant light-up wall that looks like wave.

I also missed out on the RedFrog Tiki Bar, a two-deck (decks 16 and 17), hut-style setup that replaces the RedFrog Rum Bar found on many other Carnival ships' pool decks. It's where you'll find the most quintessentially tropical menu of mixed drinks on board.

Other outdoor bar options include The Watering Hole near Summer Landing on Deck 8, the Serenity Pool Bar on Deck 18 in the adults-only area and the Loft 19 Bar on the exclusive Loft 19 sun deck. (Access is free for passengers booked in suites or anyone who reserves a cabana for anywhere from $250 to $500 per day.)

Back inside, Deck 6's Piano Bar is where passengers can order a tipple while an onboard pianist tickles the ivories. Make your way up a deck, and you'll find the Limelight Lounge, which serves as a secondary performance space and trivia outpost.

Go one deck farther, and you can choose between the Havana Bar, which serves Latin-themed cocktails, and the Heroes Tribute Lounge, which has a special menu of drinks dedicated to military members.

Carnival Jubilee entertainment

Carnival jubilee activities.

Carnival Jubilee offers a full roundup of daily activities on each voyage.

Passengers might choose to head to the casino, play bingo, enjoy an alcohol tasting, participate in a sports tournament, go on a digital scavenger hunt, mingle at a deck party, play minigolf, take a dance class, learn towel folding, or attend a spa, jewelry or shopping seminar.

Particularly notable are the rotating animations that pop up throughout the Currents zone during each voyage.

If you show up during "Soundwaves Jukebox," you'll see synthesizer-like graphics pulsating to the music on the giant screens above the space.

"Change the Currents" will allow you to view underwater scenes from different areas of the world, including the Arctic and swampy Everglades; other experiences take you on an underwater adventure in a submarine and display ocean-themed artwork drawn by kids at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Some of my personal favorite pastimes on board included trivia, pool deck movies, for-fee culinary classes and a particularly relaxing massage. (Watch out for discounts early in your sailing or on port days.)

In addition to treatments, the Cloud 9 Spa offers salon services and a thermal suite — access to which is free with the purchase of a pass or a spa treatment — with a thalassotherapy pool, heated tile loungers, a sauna and two steam rooms. The adjacent fitness center is on the small side but features for-fee personal training and organized fitness classes, as well as equipment that's free for passengers to use.

Looking to find a group of like-minded travelers on your sailing? Check out meetups for solo travelers, singles, veterans and members of the LGBTQ+ community listed in the daily program.

If you're interested in spending time outdoors working on your tan by the pool, you can do so at one of five onboard pools.

There's the Havana Pool (private access for cruisers staying in Havana Cabanas) and the Patio Pool, both on Deck 8 (the latter with hot tubs); the Beach Pool and Tides Pool on Deck 16 (also with hot tubs); and the Deck 18 adults-only Serenity Pool (with hot tubs). There's also a hot tub at Loft 19 on Deck 19, which charges a fee for access.

Cabanas are available for rent on a first-come, first-served basis. Prices vary by sailing, but on my voyage, they were $500 per day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pool lifts accommodating up to 300 pounds are available for passengers with limited mobility.

On Deck 18, you'll find Waterworks, which offers waterslides and a splash area for kids.

Kids and adults who aren't afraid of heights will enjoy the top-deck ropes course, which offers two options for different levels of skill and bravery. The Bolt roller coaster, a minigolf course and a basketball court are also found in the SportSquare area within the Ultimate Playground zone.

Additional activities for youngsters take place in Camp Ocean, Carnival's kids club , which splits children into four groups: Turtles (up to 2 years old), Penguins (2-5), Stingrays (6-8) and Sharks (9-11).

Fun pursuits on the daily schedule might include arts and crafts, themed parties, science experiments, games and story time, depending on the age group.

Camp Ocean also has an interactive space wall, where astronauts lead kids on virtual expeditions, complete with a ceiling that lights up like the night sky to show the constellations.

Kids can also attend Build-A-Bear workshops, march along in a Dr. Seuss-themed parade led by the Fox in Socks and Thing 1 and Thing 2, and listen to the Cat in the Hat read stories.

Tweens and teens have their own dedicated hangout spaces. Activities here are less structured, and participants can come and go as they please. Plus, an onboard arcade offers video games for a fee.

Carnival Jubilee shows

Entertainment on Carnival Jubilee is a combination of passenger favorites from other ships and new shows that you'll only find on this vessel.

Of the performances, I most enjoyed two main-theater shows that are also found on some other ships in the fleet. "Celestial Strings" is a mix of classical and modern pop instrumentals partnered with ethereal costumes and sets; "Soulbound" is a song-and-dance performance with a Victorian steampunk vibe, set in what feels like New Orleans, during which a soul-stealer tries to mess with a twisted love story.

Another excellent show is "Rio Carnival," which occurs at Center Stage in the Grand Central zone instead of the main theater. Although the first half felt a bit shaky and slightly boring to me, the second half redeemed it all, featuring a parade of dancers and aerialists dressed in flamboyant costumes synonymous with Rio de Janeiro's Carnival.

The ship's two new shows are just OK. The first, "Dear Future Husband," is a song-and-dance theater show with a plot that involves a couple taking their closest friends on a cruise for a combination bachelor/bachelorette party and wedding. Musical numbers befit the wedding theme and include Bruno Mars' "Marry You" and, of course, Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband."

After the performance, a "reception" (read: dance party with a DJ and visits from the cast) is held in one of the ship's public areas. When I saw this show several months ago, the reception was in the Limelight Lounge. On this more recent voyage, Dr. Inks, Ph.D., served as the reception location.

The second new show is the "Lone Star Tailgate." Drawing on Texas' love for all things football, Carnival has created four indoor/outdoor "quarters" of fun to mimic the four quarters of a football game. When I sailed, the first quarter, which is all about pool deck games for kids, was held on one sea day, and the other three were held on another sea day.

The second quarter involves pool deck games where passengers have to dress up in football gear to complete team races.

During "halftime," the ship's theater singers and dancers put on a show on the pool deck, dressed in team colors to support the fictional Carnival University — the team cruisers are supposedly cheering on during the festivities.

The third and fourth quarters occur in the Summer Landing zone; passengers can rope hay bales, participate in a hot wing-eating contest at Guy's Pig & Anchor Smokehouse Brewhouse and follow it up with music from a live band.

Don't miss the audience participation-style game shows like "Family Feud Live," "Deal or No Deal" and the "Love & Marriage Show." The first pits two family teams against one another to guess popular answers to survey questions; the latter tests couples to see how well they know one another, often resulting in hilarious answers.

Other entertainment during my sailing included several day and nighttime comedy acts, an absolutely phenomenal magic show (be sure to arrive at the Punchliner Comedy Club at least 30 minutes early or you won't find a seat) and "We Are One," a farewell show that focuses on togetherness.

Carnival Jubilee itineraries and pricing

Through at least April 2026, Carnival Jubilee offers two seven-night Western Caribbean itineraries out of its Galveston home port on a regular rotation. Both types of sailings begin and end in Galveston and visit Mahogany Bay in Roatan and Costa Maya and Cozumel in Mexico with three sea days mixed in. The only difference between the two itineraries is the order in which the port calls and sea days occur.

At the time of publication, prices started from $709 per person ($101 per person per night) for an inside cabin or $919 per person ($131 per person per night) for balcony accommodations.

What to know before you sail on Carnival Jubilee

Required documents.

If you're a U.S. citizen on a cruise that starts and ends in a U.S. port, you'll need a current passport or an official copy of your birth certificate and a driver's license or other government-issued photo identification to sail. A few other forms of identification, such as a passport card, also are acceptable.

Passports must be valid for at least six more months. For cruises from international ports, you'll need a passport. Note that it is important that the name on your reservation be exactly as it is stated on your passport or other official proof of nationality. All this said, we recommend checking Carnival's website before sailing for up-to-date requirements.

Related: Which documents do you need for a cruise?

Carnival Jubilee passengers will automatically have $16 per person per day added to their onboard bills. Cruisers staying in suites will pay $18 per person per day. (Children younger than 2 are exempt from gratuities.) An 18% gratuity is also added to bar and cafe bills, spa treatments and the cover charge of the Chef's Table.

Related: Everything you need to know about tipping on cruise ships

Carnival Wi-Fi is generally fast and reliable, and Jubilee features StarLink connectivity. However, don't be surprised if you find yourself repeatedly and automatically disconnected, which is annoying.

Packages have increased significantly in price in recent years, and each plan is only for one device. (You can log out of one and into another with the same account, but you can't connect more than one simultaneously unless you buy additional plans.)

Three package tiers are available: Social (access to most social media and airline websites and apps for $18 per day or $126 for a weeklong cruise), Value (same as Social, plus access to financial and news websites and apps for $23 per day or $161 for a week) and Premium (everything from the Social and Value packages plus Skype access and video calling for $25 per day or $175 for a week). Passengers can also choose 24 hours of Premium access for $35.

Carnival claims that its packages don't allow FaceTime, iMessage or streaming from popular apps like Netflix and Hulu. However, TPG writers have had success using all of those services with the Premium package.

Carnival Jubilee is also the first ship in the fleet to offer 5G cellphone connectivity, which means faster speeds when you connect using your cellphone's plan. But be warned: If you don't have a special plan that allows you to connect at sea without roaming, you could be looking at hefty fees when you return. Generally, it's best to keep your phone in airplane mode when you sail.

Related: 5 things to know about cruise ship Wi-Fi

Carry-on drinks policy

Passengers can carry on one bottle of wine or Champagne per person (21 years and older); this will incur a $15 corkage fee for consumption in public areas. Each person can also bring up to 12 standard cans or cartons of nonalcoholic beverages like juice or soda. Alcohol-free drinks in plastic and glass bottles aren't allowed.

Related: Can I bring my own alcohol on a cruise ship?

Smoking policy

Smoking (including electronic cigarettes) is allowed but only in designated outdoor areas on Deck 8 mid-ship on the starboard side. Smoking is also allowed on the starboard side of the casino, but it's for cigarettes only. All types of smoking are forbidden in cabins and on cabin balconies.

Related: Cruise line smoking policies

Carnival Jubilee has self-service pressing rooms on decks 4, 5, 9, 14 and 15 with ironing boards and irons that are free to use. There are no self-service laundry facilities, though. Instead, passengers can send out their clothing for washing, pressing and dry-cleaning for a per-item fee.

Related: Everything you need to know about cruise ship laundry

Electrical outlets

Carnival Jubilee has standard North American 110-volt outlets in its cabins, as well as plenty of USB ports. In my balcony room, I had three standard outlets and four USB lightning ports by the vanity. There was also a USB port (non-lightning) on either side of the bed, just below the reading lamp.

The currency on Carnival Jubilee is the U.S. dollar. The ship also operates without cash. Passengers link credit cards to their onboard accounts or put up a set amount of cash to charge against, using their keycards as a means of making purchases. The only time you might want to have some bills handy is for tipping your room steward, bartenders, room service delivery people, luggage porters or shore excursion guides.

Drinking age

You must be at least 21 years old to drink alcohol on Carnival Jubilee.

Carnival Jubilee does not have a specific daytime dress code, and people dress casually. If it's a sea day in a warm-weather destination, and you're bound for the top deck, T-shirts, shorts and bathing suits (with a cover-up to go inside) are just fine.

During the evenings, the official dress code is pretty laid-back. Most nights are designated "cruise casual," which means just that — khakis or jeans, polo shirts, sundresses and the like. Super casual items such as cutoff jeans, men's sleeveless shirts, T-shirts and gym shorts are supposedly not permitted, but I saw plenty of them in the dining rooms during dinnertime on Carnival Jubilee.

Each weeklong cruise will schedule two formal nights — known as "elegant nights." If you're bound for the dining rooms, men are expected to turn up in dress slacks and a dress shirt, preferably with a sports coat or even a suit. The suggested attire for women on such nights is cocktail dresses, pantsuits, elegant skirts and blouses. Passengers who wish to avoid dressing up can enjoy dinner in any of the casual eateries aboard.

Related: What to wear on a cruise – all about cruise line dress codes

Bottom line

Sure, Carnival Jubilee carries a lot of people, and it can feel crowded and cumbersome to learn your way around at first.

However, it offers new ocean- and beach-themed zones, delicious food, creative cocktails, friendly crew members, comfy cabins, outdoor thrills, Texas charm and a marquee packed with fun daily diversions and nighttime shows. You'll find it's an affordable Caribbean vacation that speaks to just about any traveler who enjoys a large-cruise-ship experience.

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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.

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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.

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‘The Love Boat’: How a TV show transformed the cruise industry

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

(CNN) — From steam-powered ships, to mega-liners, the cruise industry has been through quite a transformation over the years. And the market has skyrocketed.

Back in 1970, an estimated 500,000 people went on a cruise holiday. That figure had jumped to five million by 1997.

So what brought about this sudden surge in interest? According to industry experts, it was mainly down to a certain TV show with a catchy theme tune.

“Come aboard, we’re expecting you!”

Produced by TV legend Aaron Spelling, ”The Love Boat” first aired in 1977 and went on to become one of the most successful shows in TV history during its decade-long run.

The program, which is still available on streaming services such as Paramount Plus, partnered with Princess Cruises , and episodes were filmed aboard various Princess Cruise ships, the Pacific Princess and Island Princess being the most notable.

‘Greatest product placement’

Based on a non-fiction book written by former cruise director Jeraldine Saunders, “The Love Boat” centered around ship captain Merrill Stubing (played by Gavin MacLeod) and his on-board crew, while different guest actors played passengers each episode.

The show, which spawned several spin-offs, has since been described as “the greatest product placement” ever, serving as a complete introduction to cruising for many of its avid viewers.

“‘The Love Boat’ really created the cruise industry,” Michael L. Grace, who worked as a scriptwriter on the program during the 1980s, told CNN Travel in 2022. “Because you had 50 million people watching, and they all wanted to go on a cruise.”

Several modern cruise lines existed when the show began, including Princess, founded in 1965 with a single ship cruising to Mexico. Royal Caribbean had launched in 1968, and Carnival Cruise Line was founded in 1972.

But the cruising demographic was very different to what it is now.

Although cruise companies were apparently keen to attract younger passengers, many people simply didn’t know much about cruising, and those who did had a very specific idea of it.

“Back in the day, people would say cruising was for the nearly dead or newlywed,” says cruise journalist Carolyn Spencer Brown, chief content officer for Cruise Media, LLC.

“So when ‘The Love Boat’ came on and showed people of all ages and races having fun and being lively on a cruise ship, that opened up cruising to a world that didn’t really know it existed.”

Each week, tens of millions of people around the world would tune in to follow the exploits of Captain Stubing, Dr. Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell), cruise director Julie McCoy (Lauren Tewes), bartender Isaac Washington (Ted Lange) and the captain’s daughter Vicki, played by Jill Whelan, and suddenly going on a cruise soared to the top of many a wish list.

The passengers “would come on the ship,” Grace says of the formula for the hour-long show. “They’d have a problem. Then the problem is solved and they all come together again. [The episodes] were like small movies.”

Cruise-building boom

The launch of the “The Love Boat” came at a time when the vast majority of cruise ships on the water were former liners that had been converted. There were few new ships in service.

However, this quickly changed when demand shot up thanks to the success of the show.

The show “did so well that Princess Cruises were selling out their ships,” cruise historian Peter Knego tells CNN Travel. “And that led to the first boom of new cruise ship building in the early 1980s.”

The fact that scenes from “The Love Boat” were occasionally filmed aboard real-life cruises, with the passengers serving as extras, only added to the appeal.

“So many cruise lines want to create experiences for you that you probably couldn’t create on your own,” notes Spencer Brown.

Becoming an extra on a popular TV show “certainly qualifies as something that doesn’t happen to most people.”

Keen to strike while the iron was hot, existing cruise lines began building brand-new purpose-built cruise ships in order to cater to this fast-growing market, while new companies emerged like Celebrity Cruises, founded in 1988.

“Back then, to build new cruise ships, that was a big deal,” says Knego.

During the 1980s, almost 40 new cruise ships were constructed, including Tropicale, from Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Princess, Princess Cruises’ first purpose-built cruise ship.

Royal Princess “had new features like balconies, which were pretty rare with mainstream cruising,” he adds.

As more cruise lines emerged and began competing with each other, cruising became more affordable, expanding the market even further.

Entertainment focus

“The Love Boat” may also have played a part in the heavy entertainment focus we see on modern-day cruise ships.

Outlandish musical performances were often featured on “The Love Boat,” and they proved to be a big hit with viewers.

During one of the show’s specials known as “The Love Boat Follies,” iconic stage and screen stars Della Reese, Ethel Merman, Carol Channing and Ann Miller sing a rendition of “I’m The Greatest Star” from the 1968 musical “Funny Girl” together.

“It was very spectacular,” says Grace, who is working on a book about the impact of “The Love Boat.”

“And what was so strange is, when they would flash back to the people watching in the audience, it was like a small little club. But the stage was the size of a West End theater.”

Off screen, the Island Princess and its sister ship Pacific Princess, the two ships primarily used for filming towards the start of the series, held main stage production shows that became hugely popular with cruising fans.

This led to the introduction of some grand new features on cruise ships in later years.

“Princess and other cruise lines went on to build ships with state-of-the-art showrooms with huge stages, sound and lighting effects that are now standard on modern cruise ships,” says Knego, adding that the modern atriums seen on cruise ships today can also be traced back to “The Love Boat” ships.

“The two deck lobbies with the grand staircase that was replicated for the studio shoots were early versions of the big atriums that are now popular features on modern cruise,” he says.

Romantic adventures

Romance was understandably a very important factor in “The Love Boat.” While the relationship plots certainly kept viewers entertained, Spencer Brown stresses that this focus was also beneficial when it came to maintaining the notion that “cruises really are quite romantic.”

“For a long time, Princess had all sorts of enhanced amenities that were pointed to romance,” she adds.

“They really embraced this concept all the way through. You could have a balcony, sunset dinners, and rose petals strewn on your bed. All of these lovely, romantic things.”

Long-time cruise enthusiast Judi Patterson, who met her husband Andy when he was working on board another cruise ship, P&O’s SS Oriana, was a fan of “The Love Boat,” but says her own cruising experiences were very different to what was portrayed on screen.

The show “bears no resemblance to reality,” says Patterson. “But it was fun. I don’t know if people actually believe that that’s what happens [on cruise ships].

“It was fun to watch and think that these things might possibly happen.”

“The Love Boat” reruns were still airing around the world years after its last episode, and the show’s fan base has remained incredibly loyal.

Lasting legacy

Spencer Brown, who also met her now husband on board a cruise ship – the couple even got engaged on a cruise – believes that the partnership between “The Love Boat” and Princess Cruises has been the key to its longevity.

“They truly embraced each other in a way that was really genuinely heartfelt,” she says. “The cast members became such a part of the cruise line, and they still are.”

Princess Cruises often holds reunion cruises, with the actors from “The Love Boat” appearing as special guests.

The cruise line recently announced that Jill Whelan – now Celebrations Ambassador for Princess Cruises – Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange and Fred Grandy (who played Gopher) would be reuniting for a seven-day trip from August 31 to September 7.

Ezra Freeman, the bartender who appeared on short-lived reality show “The Real Love Boat,” which aired on CBS in 2022, will be joining the cast for the cruise, according to a press release issued by Princess Cruises.

Knego, who has attended previous reunion cruises, says that he’s often struck by the strength of the fan’s love for the show and its stars.

“People stand in line for hours just to get their picture taken with cast members,” says Knego. The cast “sign autographs and it’s quite a wonderful situation to this day.”

MacLeod was a regular on the popular cruises until his death in 2021.

“People always ask us why ‘The Love Boat’ was so popular and I always say it’s because it gave people something to dream about,” the actor said back in 2015.

“They could dream about being out on the open seas on a cruise and discovering the worlds’ greatest destinations, dreaming about love and of course happy endings since the shows always ended on a high note. I’m proud to have played a role in the growth of the cruise industry.”

Now a billion-dollar industry, cruising has evolved considerably since “The Love Boat.”

There are currently over 1,200 cruise ports across the world.

More than 100 new ships were built during the 1990s , with most of them significantly bigger than the vessels that featured on the show.

Royal Caribbean’s MS Sovereign of the Seas, considered to be the first mega ship, with a passenger capacity of 2,850, took its maiden voyage in 1998, while Disney Cruise Line was established that same year.

At present, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, a 20-deck ship and a crew of 2,350, is the current record-holder for world’s biggest ship.

While the Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly devastated the cruise industry, things have bounced back considerably since then, with 14 new ships expected to enter service in 2024 alone.

“To me, the cruise industry is almost a victim of its success,” says Knego, who runs YouTube channel MidShipCinema, which is dedicated to old and new cruise ships.

“Because the mainstream cruise ships now carry up to 5,000 people and they’re absolutely massive.

“They don’t have the same kind of intimacy that you had back when ships only carried 800 or maybe 1,200 people like the Love Boats.”

However, there are various cruise companies that offer smaller ships for those keen for a more Love Boat-style cruising experience.

Patterson and her husband have taken many trips with leading small-ship cruise line Viking.

“We only travel on small ships now,” she says, noting that it’s slightly more expensive to travel on more modestly sized ships. “We had our turn on the bigger ones.”

New chapter

Pacific Princess and Island Princess, the original Love Boats, have been scrapped i n recent years.

Knego managed to photograph the Island Princess during its final days at a scrapyard in India and was able to rescue a few of the furnishings and ornaments, including a bronze mermaid sculpture and some of the furniture from the lobby area of the ship.

In 2022, another Princess ship, the Regal Princess, took center stage, albeit on a very different format, when it appeared in “The Real Love Boat.”

“It’s good for the cruise industry,” Spencer Brown said of the series at the time, noting that a reality show was “a pretty radical reinterpretation” from the original show.

And the latest “Love Boat” themed cruise, featuring meet-and-greets, menus inspired by the show and episode screenings, will be held on board Princess Cruises’ 330-meter Enchanted Princess this summer, sailing from New York to Canada and New England.

“Sailing with our fans brings us so much joy and this cruise will undoubtedly be a special reunion,” Whelan says in a statement . “Taking us back to where it all began – on a Princess Cruise.”

This article was first published in 2022 and updated in 2024.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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Frank Bruni

Republicans are fleeing the stench of a rotten congress.

By Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

When it comes to Donald Trump, House Republicans do a convincing pantomime of love. Many of them chirpily parrot his lies. Most of them merrily launder his misdeeds. They grovel for his favor, gush about getting his endorsement and speak and vote in line with his desires.

They’re half partisan, half courtesan.

But there’s heartache underneath. Misery, even. That’s the truth of the Trump era, and that’s the moral of the 2024 exodus from Congress.

More than two dozen House Republicans, along with more than two dozen House Democrats, have headed or are headed for the exits , but the largeness of those numbers — which track with those in other election years over the past decade — doesn’t tell the story. What matters is who those Republicans are, the disgust in their goodbyes, their palpable sense of defeat and how it contradicts the fact that they have been in the majority in the chamber since early 2023.

In power, they have found themselves close to powerless. That’s the hellish paradox of their surrender to Trump.

For many of them individually, his blessing is the best or only way to maintain support among their Republican constituents back home and win election. But for the lot of them, he’s a curse, because he has contributed mightily to a degrading and dysfunctional culture on Capitol Hill.

Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and other banes of a serious, half-serious or even quarter-serious Republican lawmaker’s existence are Trump’s spiritual spawn. He begot their antics. He nurtured their rage. If being a House Republican has become unbearable, he bears critical responsibility for that.

The Trump giveth, and the Trump taketh away.

Five of the Republicans who decided to escape the Hill’s poisonous climate didn’t or won’t even wait until the end of this year and finish out their terms. They can’t flee fast enough.

Among them is Representative Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican. “This place just keeps going downhill,” he told reporters, “and I don’t need to spend my time here.” You say that kind of thing about a rundown bar where there’s no eradicating the stench of spilled beer. He was talking about a broken-down institution that reeks of abandoned principles.

It’s losing longtime Republican leaders estranged from and spurned by greener, meaner MAGA hellions. Kevin McCarthy, who was the House speaker for less than 10 months last year, has already resigned and is gone. Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who served as a temporary speaker after McCarthy, won’t seek re-election.

They carry the scars of a scabrous 2023. Such was the Republican infighting that McCarthy’s ascent to House speaker required an unprecedented 15 roll call votes — and then he was ousted after the third-shortest speakership in history.

In a profoundly depressing analysis in The Times, Carl Hulse called 2023 “one of the most tumultuous and unproductive legislative years in recent memory.” Vital bills languished. Bedlam prevailed. Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said that McCarthy had purposely elbowed him in the kidney. “And then I chased after him,” he proudly reported. Zygotes behave more maturely.

“It was historical and hysterical,” Representative Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican, said at the time. McHenry called it “a very actively stupid political environment.”

Now, its fruits. “Four G.O.P. committee chairs are leaving,” Marianna Sotomayor wrote in a roll call of the Republican refugees in The Washington Post last weekend. “Eight lawmakers are retiring from the coveted Energy and Commerce Committee, and eight subcommittee chairs are leaving.”

Sotomayor quoted Buck as saying: “The populist wave has eroded the conservative values that I had when I came to this place. Now, we’re impeaching people like it’s some kind of carnival, and the Constitution is just a thing of the past to the very same people who were tea party patriots 10 to 12 years ago.”

A carnival ethos. Contempt for the Constitution. Call to mind any former president you know?

In terms of the Republican Party’s devolution over the past dozen years, there can be genuine debate: Which came first, the tempest or the Trump? But it’s indisputable that he worsened the weather. Perhaps he swept in on storm clouds already formed. But only then came the lightning.

And now they seek shelter — McCarthy, McHenry, Buck and so many more. They weren’t built for the apocalypse. They should have done more to head it off.

For the Love of Sentences

The writer Gary Shteyngart spent a week on the Icon of the Seas, billed as the biggest cruise ship ever, and his account in The Atlantic was a prose buffet from which many of you plucked morsels. “The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally,” he wrote. “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.” Also: “There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy.” (Thanks to Melissa Guensler of Fredericksburg, Texas, and Pam Vetter of Austin, Texas, among many others, for spotlighting Shteyngart’s article.)

In The Santa Barbara Independent, Zak Klobucher marveled at one of Bruce Springsteen’s live performances: “He carped so much diem that when he called on the audience, ‘Can you feel the spirit?’ Robin Williams showed up to ask him to take it down a notch.” (Mark Flannery, Fullerton, Calif.)

In The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, James Lileks described his attempt to use a snowblower as a slush blower: “I pushed it into the drift, and it was like trying to eat a thick, wet pillow with your dentures out.” (Marie McGeehan, St. Louis)

In The Financial Times, Anjana Ahuja questioned the potential of a new meat: “With half the U.K. population reporting anxiety about snakes and about one in 50 harboring a phobia, the idea of snakes as the new livestock of choice might not have legs.” (Lois Russell, Somerville, Mass.)

In The Times, Wesley Morris appraised Larry David: “I’ve never seen any actor with David’s grasp of how to play skepticism for laughs. Eyebrows as up-yanked drawbridge, forehead creases as lasagna of vexation. That rawboned voice of his soars, if not in octaves, then certainly with tickly, prickly dynamism.” (Carol Ball, Boston, and Annie Stamford, Philadelphia, among many others.) I was as taken with this bit of Wesley’s about “Curb Your Enthusiasm”: “It presents the American id at war with its puritanical superego. Sometimes Larry is the one. Sometimes he’s the other. The best episodes dare him to inhabit the two at once, heretic and Talmudist.”

Also in The Times, Kevin Roose gave thanks for Andres Freund, a Microsoft employee who might have prevented a major cyberattack: “In the cybersecurity world, a database engineer inadvertently finding a back door in a core Linux feature is a little like a bakery worker who smells a freshly baked loaf of bread, senses something is off and correctly deduces that someone has tampered with the entire global yeast supply.” (Paul Frame, Long Island City, N.Y., and Meg Smith, Old Saybrook, Conn., among others)

Ezra Dyer paid tribute to an automotive throwback, the Dodge Challenger Black Ghost: “It’s a stupid car, really, peak mouth-breather, screaming of wretched excess. But its analog mechanical brutality activates some primal lobe deep in our brains, the one that catalyzes noise into adrenaline. The final V-8 Challenger rolled off the line on Dec. 22 last year, another dinosaur obliterated by the E.V. asteroid.” (Gerry O’Brien, Goderich, Ontario)

And Christopher Kuo reported on a gang of museum robbers less polished than their serial heists suggest: “In court records and interviews, they come across as more 7-Eleven than Ocean’s Eleven.” (Gary Carter, Winston-Salem, N.C., and Miriam Bulmer, Mercer Island, Wash., among others)

In The London Review of Books, Michael Hofmann took pointed issue with some right-wing warriors: “It seems there is only one model for today’s ‘man of action,’ and that is shock and awe. Overwhelming force deployed suddenly and overwhelmingly. A theatrical performance with no audience as such, only a houseful of victims. The lions eat the circus and then tweet about it.” (William Wood, Edmonton, Alberta)

And in The Atlantic, David Frum remembered the death of Miranda, his daughter, in her early 30s: “For me, the thought of my own death has never been a distressing subject. We live, we love, we yield the stage to our children. I hoped that when the time arrived, I would have the chance for farewells. If that wish were granted, I could with total content ride the train to my final destination. It never occurred to me that one of my children might board the train first, pulling away as her parents wept on the platform.” (Howard Yegendorf, Ottawa)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.

What I’m Reading, Writing and Doing

My pooch partiality perhaps makes me the wrong judge, but I had a blast reading an advance copy of “ Dogland: Passion, Glory and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show ,” by Tommy Tomlinson, which will be published on April 23. It’s more than a behind-the-curtain look at that storied competition. It examines the history, absurdities, vanities and poignancy of our relationships with dogs, at times making the case that they’ve trained us every bit as much as we’ve trained them.

As someone who has written the kinds of articles that fetishize and make much fuss about food, I appreciate counternarratives that puncture all that pretension. Peter C. Baker’s “ The Case Against ‘Good’ Coffee ,” published in The Times Magazine, does precisely that, with abundant style and sense.

If you aren’t aware of and haven’t been reading The Point, a relatively new blog in Times Opinion, please check it out . It’s a showcase of quick takes by columnists and other Opinion writers and editors. I recently contributed this post about some Democrats’ complaints that other Democrats are being unduly alarmist about the 2024 election.

I’m excited to be onstage with David Axelrod at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics at lunchtime on Friday, April 26, for a conversation about my new book, “The Age of Grievance,” that doubles as a live taping of his “Axe Files” podcast. Registration details here . I’ll discuss the book with Katie Couric at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. Details here . Other cities and events are listed here on my website.

On a Personal Note

There’s a riot outside my bedroom window.

Chirping. Trilling. Cawing. Squawking. I need a thesaurus to do a proper aural inventory. I need noise-canceling headphones to make it go away. But I don’t want to silence or muffle it; it’s an exquisite cacophony, a tapestry of sound that’s perfect, even though it’s all loose threads. I’m nestled in a noisy aviary.

And in a vivid garden. There’s a second riot outside the window, one of color: the pinkish blossoms of a tree whose pedigree I keep forgetting, the red and white flowers spread like frosting atop a hedge of azaleas, the purple fringes of my redbud trees. Early April is when spring struts the most flamboyantly here in my area of North Carolina. The Duke campus is positively Edenic.

And it’s scrambling my relationship with the seasons. I’ve always been an autumn guy — and, for the most part, still am. It’s hard to argue with those colors and with the delicious bite of the air in early November.

But now that I have a house and a yard with yellow daffodils that showed up like an advance guard more than a month ago, pink and red camellias that followed fast on their heels and a cherry tree that peaked for a few glorious mid-March days, I’m wondering if spring has the edge. There are no leaves to collect (though there is the green pollen spreading across my screened porch). No frigid hints of the winter to come.

And there are all these chattering birds! I know that they’re talking with one another, but I like to pretend they’re speaking to me. They’re telling me that amid all the ugliness these days, there’s ample beauty.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book "The Age of Grievance" and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter .   Instagram   • Threads •  @ FrankBruni • Facebook

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‘The Love Boat’: How a TV show transformed the cruise industry

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

(CNN) — From steam-powered ships, to mega-liners, the cruise industry has been through quite a transformation over the years. And the market has skyrocketed.

Back in 1970, an estimated 500,000 people went on a cruise holiday. That figure had jumped to five million by 1997.

So what brought about this sudden surge in interest? According to industry experts, it was mainly down to a certain TV show with a catchy theme tune.

“Come aboard, we’re expecting you!”

Produced by TV legend Aaron Spelling, ”The Love Boat” first aired in 1977 and went on to become one of the most successful shows in TV history during its decade-long run.

The program, which is still available on streaming services such as Paramount Plus, partnered with Princess Cruises , and episodes were filmed aboard various Princess Cruise ships, the Pacific Princess and Island Princess being the most notable.

‘Greatest product placement’

Based on a non-fiction book written by former cruise director Jeraldine Saunders, “The Love Boat” centered around ship captain Merrill Stubing (played by Gavin MacLeod) and his on-board crew, while different guest actors played passengers each episode.

The show, which spawned several spin-offs, has since been described as “the greatest product placement” ever, serving as a complete introduction to cruising for many of its avid viewers.

“‘The Love Boat’ really created the cruise industry,” Michael L. Grace, who worked as a scriptwriter on the program during the 1980s, told CNN Travel in 2022. “Because you had 50 million people watching, and they all wanted to go on a cruise.”

Several modern cruise lines existed when the show began, including Princess, founded in 1965 with a single ship cruising to Mexico. Royal Caribbean had launched in 1968, and Carnival Cruise Line was founded in 1972.

But the cruising demographic was very different to what it is now.

Although cruise companies were apparently keen to attract younger passengers, many people simply didn’t know much about cruising, and those who did had a very specific idea of it.

“Back in the day, people would say cruising was for the nearly dead or newlywed,” says cruise journalist Carolyn Spencer Brown, chief content officer for Cruise Media, LLC.

“So when ‘The Love Boat’ came on and showed people of all ages and races having fun and being lively on a cruise ship, that opened up cruising to a world that didn’t really know it existed.”

Each week, tens of millions of people around the world would tune in to follow the exploits of Captain Stubing, Dr. Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell), cruise director Julie McCoy (Lauren Tewes), bartender Isaac Washington (Ted Lange) and the captain’s daughter Vicki, played by Jill Whelan, and suddenly going on a cruise soared to the top of many a wish list.

The passengers “would come on the ship,” Grace says of the formula for the hour-long show. “They’d have a problem. Then the problem is solved and they all come together again. [The episodes] were like small movies.”

Cruise-building boom

The launch of the “The Love Boat” came at a time when the vast majority of cruise ships on the water were former liners that had been converted. There were few new ships in service.

However, this quickly changed when demand shot up thanks to the success of the show.

The show “did so well that Princess Cruises were selling out their ships,” cruise historian Peter Knego tells CNN Travel. “And that led to the first boom of new cruise ship building in the early 1980s.”

The fact that scenes from “The Love Boat” were occasionally filmed aboard real-life cruises, with the passengers serving as extras, only added to the appeal.

“So many cruise lines want to create experiences for you that you probably couldn’t create on your own,” notes Spencer Brown.

Becoming an extra on a popular TV show “certainly qualifies as something that doesn’t happen to most people.”

Keen to strike while the iron was hot, existing cruise lines began building brand-new purpose-built cruise ships in order to cater to this fast-growing market, while new companies emerged like Celebrity Cruises, founded in 1988.

“Back then, to build new cruise ships, that was a big deal,” says Knego.

During the 1980s, almost 40 new cruise ships were constructed, including Tropicale, from Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Princess, Princess Cruises’ first purpose-built cruise ship.

Royal Princess “had new features like balconies, which were pretty rare with mainstream cruising,” he adds.

As more cruise lines emerged and began competing with each other, cruising became more affordable, expanding the market even further.

Entertainment focus

“The Love Boat” may also have played a part in the heavy entertainment focus we see on modern-day cruise ships.

Outlandish musical performances were often featured on “The Love Boat,” and they proved to be a big hit with viewers.

During one of the show’s specials known as “The Love Boat Follies,” iconic stage and screen stars Della Reese, Ethel Merman, Carol Channing and Ann Miller sing a rendition of “I’m The Greatest Star” from the 1968 musical “Funny Girl” together.

“It was very spectacular,” says Grace, who is working on a book about the impact of “The Love Boat.”

“And what was so strange is, when they would flash back to the people watching in the audience, it was like a small little club. But the stage was the size of a West End theater.”

Off screen, the Island Princess and its sister ship Pacific Princess, the two ships primarily used for filming towards the start of the series, held main stage production shows that became hugely popular with cruising fans.

This led to the introduction of some grand new features on cruise ships in later years.

“Princess and other cruise lines went on to build ships with state-of-the-art showrooms with huge stages, sound and lighting effects that are now standard on modern cruise ships,” says Knego, adding that the modern atriums seen on cruise ships today can also be traced back to “The Love Boat” ships.

“The two deck lobbies with the grand staircase that was replicated for the studio shoots were early versions of the big atriums that are now popular features on modern cruise,” he says.

Romantic adventures

Romance was understandably a very important factor in “The Love Boat.” While the relationship plots certainly kept viewers entertained, Spencer Brown stresses that this focus was also beneficial when it came to maintaining the notion that “cruises really are quite romantic.”

“For a long time, Princess had all sorts of enhanced amenities that were pointed to romance,” she adds.

“They really embraced this concept all the way through. You could have a balcony, sunset dinners, and rose petals strewn on your bed. All of these lovely, romantic things.”

Long-time cruise enthusiast Judi Patterson, who met her husband Andy when he was working on board another cruise ship, P&O’s SS Oriana, was a fan of “The Love Boat,” but says her own cruising experiences were very different to what was portrayed on screen.

The show “bears no resemblance to reality,” says Patterson. “But it was fun. I don’t know if people actually believe that that’s what happens [on cruise ships].

“It was fun to watch and think that these things might possibly happen.”

“The Love Boat” reruns were still airing around the world years after its last episode, and the show’s fan base has remained incredibly loyal.

Lasting legacy

Spencer Brown, who also met her now husband on board a cruise ship – the couple even got engaged on a cruise – believes that the partnership between “The Love Boat” and Princess Cruises has been the key to its longevity.

“They truly embraced each other in a way that was really genuinely heartfelt,” she says. “The cast members became such a part of the cruise line, and they still are.”

Princess Cruises often holds reunion cruises, with the actors from “The Love Boat” appearing as special guests.

The cruise line recently announced that Jill Whelan – now Celebrations Ambassador for Princess Cruises – Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange and Fred Grandy (who played Gopher) would be reuniting for a seven-day trip from August 31 to September 7.

Ezra Freeman, the bartender who appeared on short-lived reality show “The Real Love Boat,” which aired on CBS in 2022, will be joining the cast for the cruise, according to a press release issued by Princess Cruises.

Knego, who has attended previous reunion cruises, says that he’s often struck by the strength of the fan’s love for the show and its stars.

“People stand in line for hours just to get their picture taken with cast members,” says Knego. The cast “sign autographs and it’s quite a wonderful situation to this day.”

MacLeod was a regular on the popular cruises until his death in 2021.

“People always ask us why ‘The Love Boat’ was so popular and I always say it’s because it gave people something to dream about,” the actor said back in 2015.

“They could dream about being out on the open seas on a cruise and discovering the worlds’ greatest destinations, dreaming about love and of course happy endings since the shows always ended on a high note. I’m proud to have played a role in the growth of the cruise industry.”

Now a billion-dollar industry, cruising has evolved considerably since “The Love Boat.”

There are currently over 1,200 cruise ports across the world.

More than 100 new ships were built during the 1990s , with most of them significantly bigger than the vessels that featured on the show.

Royal Caribbean’s MS Sovereign of the Seas, considered to be the first mega ship, with a passenger capacity of 2,850, took its maiden voyage in 1998, while Disney Cruise Line was established that same year.

At present, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, a 20-deck ship and a crew of 2,350, is the current record-holder for world’s biggest ship.

While the Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly devastated the cruise industry, things have bounced back considerably since then, with 14 new ships expected to enter service in 2024 alone.

“To me, the cruise industry is almost a victim of its success,” says Knego, who runs YouTube channel MidShipCinema, which is dedicated to old and new cruise ships.

“Because the mainstream cruise ships now carry up to 5,000 people and they’re absolutely massive.

“They don’t have the same kind of intimacy that you had back when ships only carried 800 or maybe 1,200 people like the Love Boats.”

However, there are various cruise companies that offer smaller ships for those keen for a more Love Boat-style cruising experience.

Patterson and her husband have taken many trips with leading small-ship cruise line Viking.

“We only travel on small ships now,” she says, noting that it’s slightly more expensive to travel on more modestly sized ships. “We had our turn on the bigger ones.”

New chapter

Pacific Princess and Island Princess, the original Love Boats, have been scrapped i n recent years.

Knego managed to photograph the Island Princess during its final days at a scrapyard in India and was able to rescue a few of the furnishings and ornaments, including a bronze mermaid sculpture and some of the furniture from the lobby area of the ship.

In 2022, another Princess ship, the Regal Princess, took center stage, albeit on a very different format, when it appeared in “The Real Love Boat.”

“It’s good for the cruise industry,” Spencer Brown said of the series at the time, noting that a reality show was “a pretty radical reinterpretation” from the original show.

And the latest “Love Boat” themed cruise, featuring meet-and-greets, menus inspired by the show and episode screenings, will be held on board Princess Cruises’ 330-meter Enchanted Princess this summer, sailing from New York to Canada and New England.

“Sailing with our fans brings us so much joy and this cruise will undoubtedly be a special reunion,” Whelan says in a statement . “Taking us back to where it all began – on a Princess Cruise.”

This article was first published in 2022 and updated in 2024.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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