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Cruise, Live and Explore the World from your Home at Sea

Sailing on November, 2024

Cruise the world.

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Embark on a 3 Year Ultimate Bucket List World Cruise.

Come onboard for a first of its kind 3-Year World Cruise  aboard the beautifully revitalized MV Lara . The first reasonably priced, all-inclusive world cruise starting from only $77,026 per year based on double-occupancy that will cover over 130,000 miles across all 7 continents and 140 countries, 382 ports

Experience the World, One Country at a Time

The Art of Adventure

Visit 13 of the 14 Wonders of the World and embark on a journey of a lifetime that will take you through the most Hidden Gems the world has to offer

Adventure at Every Turn

Experience a wide range of onboard activities and entertainment, from Golf and Fitness to live shows and performances, we've got something for everyone.

Cultural Immersions and Discoveries

Explore and learn about different cultures, cuisines, and landmarks through our curated excursions and educational opportunities, each tailored to enhance your overall travel experience.

Live at Sea

Where neighbors become family.

Life at Sea Cruises is the first World Cruise specifically tailored to guests wanting to Cruise, Live, Work and Explore from their Home at Sea. Free Medical Visits, from Free WIFI to the ability to invite Friends and Family, we have thought of everything you need on an everyday basis to live your life to its fullest

Dive Around the World

Explore the depths of adventure.

Break the routine, renew your life and explore new horizons

Redefine the Everyday

Wake up with new Backyard Every Morning, Make Friends who become Family, Learn Something New Every Day and Elevate your Taste Buds to the Next Level.

Relax and Rejuvenate

Take a pause from life, and indulge in the replenishing sanctuary with invigorating treatments and services to beautify, unwind and replenish your physical and mental wellbeing. Our Salon staff are trained internationally in face, body, hair, and nail treatments, and will provide a wide range of reasonably priced treatments for everyone.

Experience More

With everything taken care of, you have time to explore in every port for more immersive experiences. Visit the Hidden Gems away from the populous and explore off the beaten paths.

Life at Sea Highlights

Golf around the World, Invite your Friends & Family to Visit Onboard, and 2-3 Days in port for Immersive Experiences.

In the News

Financial Times

Travel + Leisure

The Guardian

Office duties from anywhere in the world.

We have developed a first of its kind Business Center at Sea with Meeting Rooms, Offices, Relaxing Lounge and a Self-Service Café. Loaded with Screens, Conference Equipment, WIFI, Printers and staff ready to assist. Making money at Sea has never been easier, and with the Tax Benefits of an International Residence, you may keep more of what you earn!

Tax Benefits

Speak to your Tax Accountant about the advantages of being an international resident aboard a ship.

Star link internet

Always stay connected to the real world with the fastest internet available at sea

Explore every Corner of the World

Visit 382 Destinations, 6 Equator Crossings to all 7 Continents and 140 Countries. Over 100 Tropical Islands to explore and Countless Hills to climb, the opportunities to explore are truly endless!

All you need, included in a single package

Starting from $77,026 per year.

Included all Essentials, World Class Local Cuisine, Wash-Fold Laundry, Entertainment and endless Learning Opportunities just for You.

All-Inclusive Dining

Savor every bite with our all-inclusive dining options featuring a wide variety of cuisines and dishes, expertly prepared by our talented chefs. With all meals, snacks, and selected beverages included, you can indulge in culinary delights without a care in the world.

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The details of what is included in the all-inclusive package can be found on our all-inclusive page.

No, dogs are not allowed on the cruise ship.

There is no charge for additional guests staying in your cabin, however family and friends are responsible for paying the local port taxes and fees($33 Per-day). Guest cabins are available, subject to availability and seasonal rates.

Cabin can be transferred to a 3rd person with 2 weeks prior notice to Life At Sea Management

The fitness center on our cruise ship offers a variety of state-of-the-art equipment and amenities, including treadmills, weight machines, exercise bikes, and free weights. Our fitness center is open 24 hours a day and is staffed by certified personal trainers who can assist you

Yes, global Star-Link Wi-Fi is available and included in package.

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This 3-year cruise around the world is called off, leaving passengers in the lurch

Bill Chappell

When the Life at Sea cruise line failed to purchase the German cruise ship AIDAaura, seen here in 2020, its plans for a worldwide cruise embarking in November began to unravel. Marit Hommedal/NTB Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

When the Life at Sea cruise line failed to purchase the German cruise ship AIDAaura, seen here in 2020, its plans for a worldwide cruise embarking in November began to unravel.

They were promised the world. But cruise company Life at Sea recently told customers who bought passage on a three-year voyage that rather than visiting 140 countries, their trip was called off.

Those customers are now scrambling to make new plans for where they will live for the next three years — and to extract refunds from the cruise line. The intense fallout is drawing comparisons to infamous debacles such as the Fyre Festival — the "luxury" music festival that was more like a "disaster relief area."

Here's what to know about the cruise around the world that was called off

What was promised? The world.

The original itinerary mapped 1,095 days of travel, heading from Istanbul to Europe and then to South America and the Caribbean. Passengers would then pass through the Panama Canal before seeing the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii and Alaska and then head west across the Pacific.

"We are going to be following summer the entire time that we go around the world," then-Life at Sea CEO Kendra Holmes told prospective passengers in a Zoom webinar in September.

$73,499-Per-Guest World Cruise Sells Out In Less Than 3 Hours

Voyagers were to see seven continents, visiting 140 countries. They would spend roughly 300 days at sea, 795 days at port and have 413 overnight port stays, Chief Operating Officer Ethem Bayramoglu of Miray Cruises, the Turkish parent company of Life at Sea, said in that online session.

Along the way, they would explore wonders of the world, visit UNESCO World Heritage sites and have plentiful chances to go diving and snorkeling, the company said.

The three-year voyage was to begin on Nov. 1, departing from Istanbul. Some passengers reportedly only learned of the cancellation after arriving in Turkey.

What are customers saying?

"Some people read the headlines and think, 'Oh, that was a scam,' but I really did my homework before I put a deposit down," Keri Witman of Cincinnati told NPR. She had attorneys check the company's background, for instance.

Witman, who owns a marketing agency named Clever Lucy, was planning to work remotely aboard the ship, using its Starlink internet service. And as a single woman, she had been looking forward to exploring the world with a group.

"Having a like-minded community of people that all were interested in travel at the ready was really appealing to me," she said.

When the cruise missed its planned departure date, the company promised to resolve lingering issues. But after further delays, the trip was canceled.

Witman says the company has begun the refund process, accepting her requests for other expenses to be paid, from airfare to the costs of foreign visas. But some of her fellow customers seem more frustrated.

20 years ago, the supersonic passenger jet Concorde flew for the last time

"Still waiting for my refund. And now you've gone belly up?" a woman who identified herself as a Life at Sea customer said recently on the company's Instagram account . The woman, a retired educator, did not respond to NPR's message seeking further comment.

Former flight attendant Meredith Shay was looking forward to the trip as a centerpiece of her retirement.

"How did I feel about it?" Shay said in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America . "Devastated, disappointed, sad. I packed up my belongings, put them in storage, sent four boxes to Miray Cruises."

Witman says she also shipped boxes to have on the cruise, back in early October.

"I'm following them along on my AirTags today," she said. "They're on their way back."

How much did the Life at Sea cruise cost?

The cheapest packages started at $196,000 for a single traveler, and $231,000 for couples, according to the company's website . Costs ranged much higher for guests staying in premium rooms.

In exchange, passengers — or residents, as the company called them — were promised a long list of amenities, including an onboard hospital and doctor. Some cabins could host cats; travelers were also promised high-speed internet, free dining, alcohol and laundry service, and "enrichment seminars."

Terms of the deal help illuminate the would-be passengers' financial and logistical plight. Life at Sea set initial deposits at 30% of the overall cost. Under its 12-month payment plan, the first draw came due one month ahead of the sail date.

And rather than portioning the cruise for sale in smaller stages, the company required customers to commit to the full three years.

"Our residents are changing their lives for this opportunity, and we are honored to be a part of their personal journeys," Holmes said in June .

A wide range of passengers had booked cabins.

"The age group is split pretty much between 35 and 85" years old, and the passengers included a large number of Americans, Holmes said.

The Two-Way

Paradise lost: luxury music festival turns out to be half-built scene of chaos, did the cruise line actually have a ship.

"In two days' time, we own this vessel," Life at Sea itinerary planner Robert Dixon said in late September , speaking in a promotional video from the bridge of a ship he called the "MV Lara."

But the company wasn't able to close that deal, and the ship in question — the 20-year-old AIDAaura — was instead sold in November to Celestyal, which specializes in Mediterranean cruises.

Miray's attempts to purchase the ship dragged on for weeks, and it eventually stalled after investors balked, according to a company message obtained by CNN and other outlets.

Environment

In warmer climate, a luxury cruise sets sail through northwest passage.

"If you're focused on the ship, this is not the journey for you," Holmes said in the September webinar. But two months later, she would leave her leadership post at Life at Sea and Miray, as plans for the ambitious cruise unraveled.

Holmes was trying to allay concerns about the quality of the vessel. But it seems that it was the company's focus, not the public's, that was the problem.

Warning flags went up earlier this year, when the company changed course from its initial plan to refit one of its ships, the MV Gemini. For the lengthy worldwide voyage, it planned to deploy the larger "MV Lara" — a ship that never materialized.

What does the cruise company say now?

It's complicated. On Sunday, Miray Cruises issued a statement in Turkish , denying that the cruise is canceled. Instead, the company said the voyage is postponed — and it blamed a lack of enough passenger bookings, rather than problems finding an appropriate ship.

But responding to a social media comment about that same statement, the company sought to clarify that its other operations are unaffected — and in doing so, it stated , "The cancellation in question is related to our 3-year world tour project."

The company said that anyone requesting a refund will get one, and that it will reimburse travel expenses related to the cruise. Miray also says it plans to mount a similar trip next year.

Witman, for one, says she's still interested in a worldwide cruise.

"There are two other companies that have been working on a similar concept" that have also run into delays, she said.

19-Hour London To Sydney 'Test Flight' Shows How To Make Long Hauls Tolerable

"I think one of them will make it happen in 2024," Witman said. "And I'm hopeful that it will, because I'd like to be on it. I still believe in the concept. I think it's a really perfect opportunity for me."

Despite the setback, Witman says she's been able to form connections with other would-be passengers, who have been keeping in touch via apps and group texts. Some of them are even making plans to travel together this winter.

"I don't regret at all going down this path," Witman said. "It moved me forward in a way that I wouldn't have done without this instigation. And I'm really thankful for it. I'm disappointed, but I'm ready to go for whatever opportunity comes up next."

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They Sold Everything to Go on a 3-Year Cruise. How It All Unraveled.

The Life at Sea cruise was supposed to be the ultimate bucket-list experience: 382 port calls worldwide over 1,095 days. The only thing missing was a trip-worthy ship.

By Ceylan Yeginsu

Kara and Joe Youssef sold their two apartments, withdrew their life savings, gave up most of their belongings and, in late October, set out for Istanbul for the trip of a lifetime: a three-year cruise around the world, scheduled to depart Nov. 1.

But in late November, after months of behind-the-scenes chaos, the Youssefs were stuck in Istanbul, with the cruise company canceling the trip. It did not have a ship that could handle the journey.

The Turkish company, Miray Cruises, had announced the cruise, called Life at Sea , in March. It claimed it would be the longest cruise ever — 382 port calls over 1,095 days — and a community at sea, with opportunities to explore the globe. Starlink internet and a business center would allow passengers to work remotely.

The cruise seemed ideal for a post-pandemic era, targeting people longing for an escape. With fares starting at $90,000 for an inside cabin and going up to $975,000 for a suite, the trip even seemed like a bargain to some prospective passengers, cheaper than living three years in many cities.

Within the first month of sales, more than half of the ship’s 400 cabins had been reserved. But putting together a cruise of this magnitude is a monumental task, requiring a ship large enough to carry hundreds of people, docking rights around the world and secure funding.

Like a high-seas version of the Fyre Festival, which promised a luxury music concert in the Bahamas and delivered cold sandwiches and makeshift tents, the cruise imploded. It has left people, like the Youssefs, frustrated and confused. Despite promised refunds, only a small portion of the money has been returned so far.

In an interview in December, Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, blamed a lack of financing and interest for the cruise’s cancellation.

“We tried everything to find a solution, but at the end of the day we couldn’t get the investors and we couldn’t sell enough cabins,” he said.

That has left Ms. Youssef, 36, a former humanitarian worker from Ohio, and her husband sitting in Istanbul with three suitcases and a carry-on, waiting for a refund of $80,000.

“They kept leading us on, making us hold out hope until the very last minute, just days before we were supposed to depart,” she said. “We sold everything we have to make this dream happen. We feel completely defeated.”

A big dream, but no ship to sail on

In June 2022, as the cruise industry was recovering from its pandemic shutdown, Mikael Petterson, an entrepreneur based in Miami, had an idea for a three-year cruise. Long-term cruises are not unheard-of, but they usually last a year at most, because of the logistics involved.

Mr. Petterson had plans to hit destinations all over the world. What he did not have was a ship. Through a broker, he was introduced to Miray International, which had been offering voyages and cruise-operation services since 1996.

Mr. Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, suggested the MV Gemini. He had acquired the 400-cabin, 1,074-passenger vessel in 2019, and had mainly used it for excursions between Turkey and the Greek islands.

Mr. Petterson couldn’t afford to buy the ship, so instead the two groups joined forces. He would do the marketing while Miray took care of operations.

In November 2022, Mr. Petterson signed a three-month contract to develop their new brand: Life at Sea Cruises. He had not seen the Gemini, but said that he trusted Miray’s nearly 30 years of experience.

Kendra Holmes, then vice president for business development strategy at Miray, said the company had not only the vessel but a budget of about $10 million to refurbish it for such a long cruise. It also had the experience and staff required, she said.

Mr. Petterson visited Turkey in December 2022 and saw the Gemini, but said his focus was on design and creating renderings for marketing. He planned to carry out a technical inspection later, he said.

“The cabin configuration was perfect for the pricings and affordability we were marketing,” he said.

On March 1, 2023, Life at Sea began selling space on the cruise, drawing millions of clicks to a newly created website. “It just blew up, and we could barely keep up,” Mr. Petterson recalled.

Many of the prospective passengers had never been on a cruise. Keri Witman, 56, a marketing executive from Cincinnati, was looking for a change, a new community and adventure.

She liked the ability to travel while continuing to work. “This seemed like the perfect opportunity,” she said.

Ms. Witman was one of the first to book in April. She asked a lawyer to look into the company and, after finding no red flags, placed a $5,000 deposit for her $185,120 cabin and put her house up for sale.

Refueling concerns: Is this the right ship?

When Mr. Petterson returned to the Gemini in April, questions were raised about the ship and its itinerary. Could it even hold enough fuel to sail between some of the more distant ports? In an audio note sent to his team, Robert Dixon, the itinerary planner, said he was denied access to the engine room and was told by an engineer that the vessel could not hold enough fuel to cross the Atlantic Ocean on schedule. He also raised concerns about a planned crossing in the South Pacific.

“Even if you spend another $10 million on that ship, I don’t think it is enough to do what we want to do,” Mr. Dixon said in the recording. He declined to be interviewed.

Beyond that, there were questions about Gemini’s size. If the cruise sold out its 1,074 capacity, would there be enough space for people to lounge or work, as many of them planned to do, for three years?

A pizza shop in Orlando

Amid questions about the Gemini, tensions started to build. Mr. Petterson’s team complained that it could not process credit card transactions and lacked an escrow account to secure deposits, as is common in the United States.

Miray had expected the sales team to collect the full fare upfront, but asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars at once was prohibitive. Mr. Petterson introduced an installment plan, which helped boost sales, but caught Miray unprepared. And there was no account in the United States for the sales team to use as it secured reservations.

The head of Miray, Mr. Ugurlu, owned a pizza parlor in Orlando, Fla., and Mr. Petterson said the company asked him to deposit the initial payments into the shop’s account. According to Ms. Holmes, that was suggested as a temporary solution.

Miray pursued other ways to accept payments, including the use of Square, the online payment platform, but after Miray had a dispute with Square, Mr. Petterson, concerned at the lack of secure ways to hold deposits, asked the company to refund all the clients’ deposits. Worried that the cruise was in jeopardy, passengers canceled reservations for at least 25 cabins.

‘We felt very nervous’

In May, amid the turmoil, the Youssefs attended a webinar for prospective passengers, but heard nothing about payment issues. The couple was assured, even on another ship, that the cruise would depart on Nov. 1. On May 6, they put down a $5,000 deposit and were told that a 25 percent payment was due on June 7.

By then, Mr. Petterson had left the company. The internal corporate squabbling became public on the app and Facebook page created for the cruise. Mr. Petterson told passengers that Life at Sea was dismantled, and that Miray was refusing to answer critical questions. He urged passengers to complain to U.S. maritime authorities.

Ms. Holmes, of Miray, portrays Mr. Petterson as the loser in a power struggle. “It got to the point where somebody can’t be the captain, so they try to sink the whole ship,” she said. She became chief executive of Life at Sea and began working to reassure passengers.

Confusion and panic set in among the passengers, many of whom had already started uprooting their lives. “We felt very nervous, first sitting through one webinar with the team that left, then with Kendra Holmes,” Ms. Youssef recalled.

But in the weeks that followed, Ms. Youssef said she felt more comfortable as Ms. Holmes and her team hosted daily webinars focusing on getting a new ship.

“Kendra was very convincing and dedicated,” Ms. Youssef said, noting that “she was very realistic, whereas Mikael had promised us the sun and the moon.”

In a webinar on May 31, Ms. Holmes said that the company had decided not to set up an escrow account. She said that it would use another method of protecting passenger deposits, a bond filed with the Federal Maritime Commission, a U.S. agency that helps to regulate ocean transportation. But the bond was never filed.

A new ship and the scramble for investors

In early July, Life at Sea announced that “due to unprecedented demand,” it had acquired a larger 627-cabin ship — to be named the MV Lara. In actuality, the company had put down a deposit and was negotiating to buy the Lara with the help of investors, at a cost Mr. Ugurlu later put at between $40 million and $50 million.

At that time, Mary Rader, 68, a retired social worker from Westchester County, N.Y., asked a travel agency to look into Miray Cruises and was told it was reputable. When a couple offered to transfer their cabin to her at a discounted rate, she took the opportunity, withdrawing $80,000 from her retirement savings.

Ms. Rader made two payments, $50,000 and $35,000, but said she never received a receipt and the couple never received a refund. She eventually got a boarding pass, but on the cruise app, she and the couple were listed in the same cabin.

“This is when I started to see all the red flags, but I was trapped because I had already made the payments,” she said.

In September, the Youssefs sold their apartment to keep up with their cruise payments; others started applying for visas, shipping belongings to Istanbul and making arrangements for their pets.

At that point, although only 111 of the ship’s 627 cabins had been sold, passengers who had signed up were assured that the ship would sail, even with as few as two passengers.

On Sept. 26, the day the payment was due to secure the Lara, Ms. Holmes received a call from Miray’s owner, Mr. Ugurlu, saying the lead investor had dropped out, but that he was working on other candidates. After receiving some cancellation requests, Ms. Holmes posted in the cruise app that, according to the contract’s terms, passengers who canceled now would only receive a 10 percent refund.

By Oct. 27, only days before the cruise’s scheduled departure — and with 30 passengers in Istanbul, ready to board — the company announced the trip had been delayed to Nov. 11 and would depart from Amsterdam. Days later, the departure was postponed again, to Nov. 30.

On Nov. 16, Ms. Youssef learned from a newspaper that the Lara had been acquired by another company. “We were frustrated and felt stuck in limbo, with no information to go on but what we discovered on our own,” she said. Ms. Holmes resigned from Miray the same day.

On Nov. 19, Mr. Ugurlu issued a statement saying that investors had pulled out because of the unrest in the Middle East; the next day Miray confirmed that the cruise was canceled.

Waiting for refunds

A day later, passengers were asked to sign an agreement with Miray, which would spread refund repayments over three months, from December to February. The first deadline passed on Dec. 22, with only some passengers getting any money. Miray said that the delay was caused by banks’ requesting extra documentation.

The Youssefs said on Dec. 28 that they had still not received their refund. For the past month they have been living in a hotel in Istanbul paid for by the cruise company.

“We could soon be homeless,” Ms. Youssef said.

Miray, Ms. Holmes and Mr. Petterson are now separately working on other three-year cruises, to launch next year.

Ms. Rader, the retired social worker, is not hopeful. “I have received nothing yet, but I did not expect to,” she said. “My guess is that the company will be shut down or restructured, and anything I put in cash will never get paid out.”

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023 .

Ceylan Yeginsu is a travel reporter. She was previously a correspondent for the International desk in Britain and Turkey, covering politics; social justice; the migrant crisis; the Kurdish conflict, and the rise of Islamic State extremism in Syria and the region. More about Ceylan Yeginsu

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Three-year Life at Sea cruise is canceled; company acknowledges it has no ship

They had signed up for the experience of a lifetime: three years traveling the world from the comfort of a cruise ship, at prices that rivaled regular living expenses.

But now the dream is over for passengers who'd signed up for Life at Sea Cruises' inaugural three-year voyage. After weeks of silence, the company has acknowledged to passengers that it has no ship, and has canceled the departure, vowing to refund those who'd signed up for cruises costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The cruise was originally due to depart Istanbul, Turkey, on November 1, but shortly before that date, departure was postponed to November 11 and relocated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and then to November 30, again from Amsterdam. But on November 17 - less than two weeks before the third departure date - passengers were informed the cruise was off.

Some of the passengers who booked the 111 cabins sold are still in Istanbul, having made their way there ahead of the original departure date. Others say they have nowhere to return to, having sold or rented out their homes in anticipation of the round-the-world voyage, as well as jettisoning their possessions.

Most have spent tens of thousands of dollars on what was meant to be the experience of a lifetime, and now face a wait of at least several months to get their money back. The company has said it will make repayments in monthly installments, starting from mid-December and completing repayments in late February. It has also offered to pay for accommodation until December 1 and flights home for anyone now stranded in Istanbul. But some say they have no homes to return to.

"There's a whole lot of people right now with nowhere to go, and some need their refund to even plan a place to go - it's not good right now," said one passenger, who wished to remain anonymous until they get their promised refund.

Running aground

Life at Sea Cruises had been planning to buy the AIDAaura, a ship retired this summer by AIDA Cruises, a German subsidiary of Carnival Corp. It was due to be rechristened as the MV Lara. The company had originally slated the sale to go through by the end of September, before working on the ship in dry dock in Germany, then renovating it before sailing to Istanbul to start the cruise.

But after six weeks of uncertainty, during which Life at Sea repeatedly told guests that the sale was taking longer than planned, on November 16 another company, Celestyal Cruises, announced that it had bought the AIDAaura.

A day later, Life at Sea's former CEO Kendra Holmes - who had resigned days earlier and said she was not speaking on behalf of the parent company, Miray Cruises - recorded a 15-minute video for passengers, admitting that the cruise would not be going ahead. It's unclear why Holmes was chosen to make the announcement, which was provided to CNN by a passenger. She has declined to comment to CNN.

Forty eight hours after Holmes' video, passengers received a message from Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray Cruises, which owns Life at Sea. Declaring himself "extremely sorry for the inconvenience," he confirmed the cruise would not be departing as planned. The reason: they couldn't afford the ship.

In his message, Ugurlu claimed that "Miray is not such a big company to afford to pay 40-50 million for a ship," but that it had "presented the project to investors, and had official approval from some of them to buy the vessel."

He said that while the company had made the down payment for the ship, the investors "declined to support us further due to unrest in the Middle East."

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, a week after the ship's sale was originally supposed to have concluded. Life at Sea didn't respond to a query about what prior unrest they were referring to that could have impeded the completion of the transaction.

Ugurlu also told passengers that day that the company then tried and failed to buy another ship, and that it was working on a third.

"If we will not be able to sail on December 1, we will offer you to sail on another departure date or refund all the payments within a short schedule," he wrote. "We have tried everything to make your dreams come true and we will continue to do so."

He added that the company could, in theory, launch the cruise on the MV Gemini, Miray's smaller ship which it had originally planned for the voyage, before deciding it was too small.

"We choose not to because we have promised you a larger, newer vessel," he wrote. The Gemini is at the heart of a defamation lawsuit brought by Miray against former managing director of Life at Sea Cruises, Mikael Petterson, who was one of several employees to split from the team in May . The lawsuit states that Petterson called the ship "unseaworthy" - a claim that Miray vehemently denied.

Ups and downs

Just a day after Ugurlu's glimmer of hope, another staff member of Life at Sea, Chief Operating Officer Ethem Bayramoglu messaged passengers to confirm that the cruise was off. "In case we weren't clear, the Life at Sea cruise trip is canceled," Bayramoglu wrote, giving instructions on the refund process, and how passengers can retrieve "pods" full of their belongings - which they'd shipped in advance of the cruise.

Yet at the same time, Bayramoglu added, the company "intend [ s ] to honor our commitments."

"Although we are all disappointed and frustrated that we didn't sail this time, it is important to us that you feel positive overall about your experience with us," the message reads. "Vedat in particular is still hopeful that Miray will someday soon have an option for you to consider."

Bayramoglu subsequently met with stranded passengers in Istanbul to help plan their returns home.

Stormy waters

Would-be cruisers - who wanted to remain anonymous until their refunds come through - have told CNN of their shock and dismay that the trip has been canceled. Some had sold their homes or wound up businesses to join the cruise.

"I'm very sad, angry and lost," said one. "I had the next three years of my life planned to live an extraordinary life, and now [ I have ] nothing. I'm having a hard time moving forward.

"I was proud and feeling brave, now I don't trust anyone or anything. I know it'll work out and life will go on, but I'm uncertain of the direction."

Another said they felt "incredibly sad and incredibly betrayed."

"The company seems to have no consideration about what they've done to our lives," they said.

"I never imagined I'd be in this position as a senior citizen."

They also lamented the loss of community that had been built in the run-up to the cruise: "I was looking forward to building friendships - that's what made it different from a regular cruise. We were all of the same mindset and all started with the same thing in common."

A third, speaking just before the cruise was confirmed as canceled, said they were feeling "let down, deceived and betrayed."

Jumping ship

In the meantime, Life at Sea's erstwhile CEO, Kendra Holmes, who resigned last week, claims she's planning to offer a new long-term cruise with a different company.

In her 15-minute video address to Life at Sea passengers on Friday - despite having already resigned from the company - she solicited interest in a long-term, round-the-world cruise offered by a new company that she'll be working with, which she named as HLC Cruises.

Holmes didn't respond to questions from CNN, but a spokesperson for HLC Cruises , who said they were on the company board, confirmed Holmes was the company's new CEO and told CNN: "We have nothing to do with Life at Sea, we do not want our name to be associated with them, but we are working on something and are trying to help people who are left without homes if we can." Its website currently advertises "boutique cruise liners" selling duty free gold bullion, diamonds and gems onboard.

Holmes told stranded Life at Sea passengers that if 60 or 70 of them "transferred" to the new company, they would be able to "get something going" by the first week of December, and already had approval from the HLC board to do so.

The company would get a temporary ship to sail for three or four months, she said, while purchasing a permanent vessel for a longer voyage to start next year. If Life at Sea passengers didn't take up the offer, she said, they'd also be looking to launch a long-term cruise in October 2024.

"There's a lot of ships out there so we'll get something in place probably early next week then start looking for a permanent vessel," she said on November 17 - before updating them via social media 72 hours later that the offer of a temporary cruise was, in fact, off, and that HLC was "targeting an official start date sometime in March."

"People got their hopes up once again only to be dashed a few days later - I'm surprised no one in the group has had a heart attack," said one would-be passenger.

Meanwhile, Villa Vie Residences - the company set up by Petterson and the other former Life at Sea staffers who left in May to start their own rival business - is promising low deposits and guaranteed introductory rates for anyone who wants to join them. They do not as yet have a ship or a launch date, either.

Life at Sea Cruises and Miray Cruises did not respond to specific questions from CNN, but sent a statement from Ugurlu addressed to passengers citing "investor withdrawal" causing "challenges" to the project. The letter was sent to CNN November 21 and spoke about a potential upcoming cruise date - despite the cruise having already been canceled.

"While we're in talks to acquire a similar vessel, if the December 1 sail is jeopardized, we offer alternative departure dates or expedited refunds," said the statement, which went on to describe the refund process.

"As we navigate these challenges, we are actively working on creating alternative plans for the future, ensuring an unforgettable experience for our valued community," it concluded.

"I regret any inconvenience and assure you of our commitment."

One passenger from the failed cruise, however, is feeling more than inconvenienced.

"I'm in a state of disbelief that they've done this to us," they said, adding that staff had started out "eager and confident, and then the past few months just slowly disappeared."

"I can't even begin to wrap my head around the disappointment of losing this opportunity," they said.

"I don't think they will ever understand how much damage they've caused us."

The CNN Wire ™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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This 3-Year Cruise Will Visit 148 Countries on All 7 Continents

The epic journey departs from istanbul in november, with sailings (including accommodations and meals) starting at $38,500 per year..

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Your home at sea: The 1,074-passenger MV Gemini will be where guests “live” throughout the three-year journey.

Courtesy of Life at Sea Cruises

How do you pack a suitcase for a trip that includes ogling emperor penguins in the Falkland Islands, lazing on the beach in Hawai‘i, and spending nights out in major cities like Cape Town and Beijing? It’s a question you’ll have to ask yourself if you sign up for Life at Sea Cruises’ new around-the-world itinerary.

The Florida-based Life at Sea Cruises, a spin-off of ship management company Miray Cruises, recently announced a three-year cruise , during which guests will sail roughly 130,000 miles, stop in 375 ports across 148 countries, and visit every continent.

The vessel will depart from Istanbul, Turkey, on November 1, 2023, before making additional stops (where passengers can also embark) in Barcelona and Miami. In the more than 1,000 days that follow, the ship will explore much of South America, Antarctica, the Caribbean, Central America, the USA (including California, Hawai‘i, Washington, and Alaska), northern Asia, the South Pacific, Australia, countries on the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, southern and western Africa, and coastal Europe.

The balcony suites feature a queen bed, bathroom, and living room area.

During that time, the sailing will deliver passengers to myriad iconic and UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Great Wall of China, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue, and India’s Taj Mahal.

While other around-the-world cruises typically spend a day or two at each port, the advantage of this much longer sailing is that it will dock for up to seven nights in some larger cities, like Shanghai and Singapore.

The cruise was originally slated to take place on the MV Gemini, which could accommodate up to 1,074 passengers, but due to demand, the company has since switched to the MV Lara , which allows for 1,266 passengers.

Cabin sizes range from 145 square feet for interior staterooms (which include a double bed, a bathroom, and a desk) to 220 square feet for balcony suites (which have an additional living room area).

Pricing, which includes all meals, drinks (both alcoholic and nonalcoholic), laundry, Wi-Fi, gratuities, housekeeping, and port fees, starts at $38,513 and goes up to $98,226 per year based on accommodations. There isn’t the option to do shorter legs; however, it is possible to go in on one room with family and friends and divvy up the costs with who is on the boat at any given time. The company is also offering a matchmaking scheme, where passengers co-own a cabin with another group and split time on board.

For meals, passengers can choose to dine at either of the two main restaurants, visit the café on the pool deck, or order room service. The ship’s amenities include a swimming pool, sun deck, a golf simulator, a fitness center, and a hospital staffed with healthcare providers and a dentist and outfitted with a pharmacy and medical equipment such as X-ray and ultrasound machines and defibrillators. (According to the cruise line, the medical staff “even has the capability to perform certain surgeries.”) For those who want to work from sea, there’s also a large business center (replacing a former casino) with meeting rooms, dedicated office spaces, a library, and a lounge area.

In the past year, as cruisers have returned to the sea with a fervor following the pandemic pause in global sailings, cruise lines have been witnessing incredible demand for around-the-world sailings —one of Oceania Cruises’ 180-day itineraries sold out in 30 minutes last year. Life at Sea Cruises isn’t the only cruise line that has introduced the idea of a multi-year sailing. Another cruise company, Storylines, recently unveiled plans to launch a residential cruise ship, MV Narrative , that will sail indefinitely starting in 2024.

This story was originally published in March 2023 and has since been updated with new information.

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3-Year Cruise Itinerary at Sea Miray | Intended Rute, Expected Costs and 2024

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Note: The Travel Awaits team regularly updates content to provide the latest, and most accurate information to our readers. The updated content in this article may not reflect the views or opinions of the original author.

If your goal has been to see the world, this may be the way to do it. Life at Sea Cruises is setting sail for the world’s first — and only — three-year world cruise, visiting 135 countries and seven continents. 

“Life at Sea Cruises offers the ultimate bucket list cruise without having to sacrifice the comforts of home,” says Irina Strembitsky, director of sales & marketing at Life at Sea Cruises. “It’s your home at sea with the world as your backyard.”

About Life At Sea Cruises

Life at Sea Cruises is owned by Miray International , which has been bringing unique cruising experiences since 1996. It owns and operates the MV Gemini throughout the Aegean Sea, and the vessel Amor , which gives dinner and entertainment river cruises.

3-Year Cruise Itinerary at Sea Miray

The 130,000-mile journey begins on November 1st , 2023, from Istanbul , with pickups in Barcelona and Miami. The MV Gemini will visit 375 ports, allowing travelers to spend multiple days in some to explore. 

This ultimate bucket list cruise will take passengers to South America and Antarctica visiting 11 countries in 98 days. You’ll be able to explore cities, glaciers, and ice formations. 

For 67 days, the ship will explore the Caribbean and Central America with 29 destinations including Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the ancient Mayan ruins of Mexico and Belize. 

In North America and Hawaii, 98 days give you the chance to explore landscapes in Alaska, stunning beaches, interesting cultures, and go on adventures. 

On this sea cruise, you will visit 23 destinations including ancient temples and vibrant cities in northern Asia. Stops in Tokyo, Seoul, Jeju Island, and Shanghai give plenty of time to explore over 70 days. 

While on the longest leg of the journey for 206 days in the South Pacific and Australia, you’ll visit Sydney and Melbourne, the beaches of Fiji, the mountains of New Zealand, and the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. 

Visit the ruins of Angkor Wat while sailing the South China Sea and Serengeti, Zanzibar, and Madagascar in southern and western Africa. You’ll spot big game on a safari and experience local culture in ancient cities. 

In Europe, you’ll sail from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean visiting 38 countries and exploring art, historic monuments, and rich culture. 

‘MV Gemini’ Amenities 

It might seem hard to imagine living on a ship for three years, but the amenities on the MV Gemini make it possible. It has 400 cabins and room for up to 1,074 people. It has world-class dining, onboard entertainment, activities, and modern workspace facilities, which include a first-of-its-kind business center with 14 offices, a lounge, and a business library. 

There will also be a 24-hour, on-call hospital, which will include free medical visits, learning and enrichment classes, and opportunities to volunteer. 

“Professionals need connectivity, the right amenities, and the functionality to perform their jobs. There is no other cruise product that offers this sort of flexibility to their customers,” says Mikael Petterson, managing director of Life at Sea Cruises. 

Cabins range from 130 square feet for Virtual Inside and Oceanview staterooms to 260 square feet for Balcony suites. Cruisers can enjoy a state-of-the-art wellness center, sundeck, swimming pool, and plenty of dining options. 

Cost To Cruise The World 

The three-year Life at Sea Cruises offers a starting price of $29,999 per year. Passengers have payment options from $2,499 per month. There is also the possibility that travelers can get additional tax benefits when working as international residents aboard the ship.

This cruise has been canceled . 

2024 Update

Why was life at sea’s 3-year cruise cancelled.

The  MV Gemini cruise ship was scheduled to set sail on November 30, with the original departure date having been rescheduled several times.

However, less than two weeks before its maiden voyage, Life at Sea has acknowledged to anxious passengers that there is no ship and that the once-in-a-lifetime trip has been canceled or ‘‘postponed’’, according to the company.

Miray Cruises said that anyone requesting a refund will get one and that it will reimburse travel expenses related to the cruise. The cruise company also claims it is planning a similar trip in 2024.

Future Still Looks Bright for Multy-Year Cruises in 2024

About a month after Life at Sea Cruises canceled its debut three-year voyage, Villa Vie Residences company upped the stakes by announcing plans to sail the world in 3.5 years. 

The price starts at $89 per day and includes food, laundry service, weekly housekeeping, and internet service. At an added charge you’ll get spa and bar services, and shore excursions. 

The ship will feature eight decks that will house three restaurants, a communal kitchen, a large pool with four Jacuzzis, a business center, and space for entertainment.

What Happened With Life at Sea’s 3-Year Cruise?

Life at Sea Cruises announced canceling its three-year voyage in November 2023 because the cruise company couldn’t secure a ship after plans had already been delayed several times. 

Is Miray Cruises Still Planning a 3-Year Cruise in 2024?

It’s quite possible. Miray Cruises owner Vedat Ugurlu said in a statement that the cruise wasn’t canceled but postponed until May 2024. He also stated that the reason for this postponement is the need for a bigger vessel capacity of more than 600 cabins.

What Did the Life at Sea’s 3-Year World Cruise Itinerary Looked Like?

The original itinerary was supposed to last 1,095 days, starting from Istanbul and Europe and then heading to South America and the Caribbean. The voyage would continue through the Panama Canal before visiting the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska and then heading west across the Pacific.

What UNESCO World Heritage Sites Can Be Visited on Life at Sea’s 3-Year World Cruise?

During the cruise of the seven continents, the passengers would see the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Great Wall of China, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue, and India’s Taj Mahal.

Does Any Other Cruise Company Offer a 3-Year World Cruise?

Yes, Villa Vie Residences, plans to sail the world in three and a half years, after purchasing a 924-passenger ship that is expected to launch in May. The MS Breamer ship will undergo a renovation that will begin early in 2024 and take roughly eight weeks to complete.

Allison spent almost 20 years of her career as a TV news anchor. She’s covered everything from political conventions to Super Bowl LV to hurricanes and, most recently, the pandemic. She is a two-time Emmy award-winning journalist. She's been recognized for her work nationally and regionally by organizations including the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists.

You can now live on a cruise ship for US$30K per year

Have you ever dreamed of giving it all up, leaving it all behind and hitting the road to escape all your responsibilities?

It sounds good, doesn't it? But it also sounds expensive. Or at least, it did sound expensive until now -- because now a cruise company is launching a three-year, 130,000-mile (209,000-kilometre), escape-your-daily-life cruise for a relatively affordable US$30,000 per person per year.

Life at Sea Cruises has opened bookings for its three-year voyage on the MV Gemini, which sets sail from Istanbul on Nov. 1.

Yes, Nov. 1, 2023 -- so you have eight months to get your passport, vaccinations and remote working abilities in order.

The company is promising to tick off 375 ports around the world, visiting 135 countries and all seven continents. The ship will cover more than 130,000 miles over the three years, taking in iconic sights from Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue and India's Taj Mahal, to Mexico's Chichen Itza, the pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China. It even slots in trips to 103 "tropical islands." Of those 375 ports, 208 will be overnight stops, giving you extra time in the destination.

The company is a spin-off of Miray Cruises, which currently has the MV Gemini cruising around Turkiye and Greece. The company has a 30-year history in the cruise industry. The MV Gemini will be overhauled for the voyage.

It has 400 cabins, with room for up to 1,074 passengers.

And because of the nature of the voyage, as well as traditional cruise ship amenities, restaurants and entertainment, the Gemini will also be kitted out with remote working facilities. The company promises a full-scale business centre complete with meeting rooms, 14 offices, a business library and a lounge, presumably for your mid-shift coffee breaks. Access is free.

There will also be a round-the-clock hospital with free medical visits. The company also floats the possibility of "additional tax benefits when working as an international resident aboard the ship."

"Professionals need connectivity, the right amenities and the functionality to perform their jobs," Mikael Petterson, Life at Sea Cruises's managing director, said in a statement. "There is no other cruise that offers this sort of flexibility to their customers."

Cabins run the gamut from 130-square-foot "Virtual Inside" staterooms -- which start at US$29,999 per person per year, coming out at US$179,994 for the three-year trip for two people -- to Balcony Suites, which are double the size and go up to US$109,999 per person. The cheapest outdoor cabin costs US$36,999 per person.

Passengers must sign up for all three years, though the company is launching a matchmaking scheme, where passengers will be allowed to "share" a cabin with someone else, dipping in and out of the itinerary. For instance, two couples could buy one cabin for the entire trip, and then divide up the travel between them.

Single travellers get a discount of 15% on the double occupancy rate. A minimum down payment of US$45,000 is required.

Beyond the business centre, there'll be plenty to keep you busy: a sundeck and swimming pool, wellness centre, auditorium and "multiple dining options," though the full details have yet to be revealed. Onboard instructors will be on hand to teach dance and music, and there will even be singles mixers for those travelling alone. Want to shape up first? There'll be a gym and salon onboard too.

Highlights include Christmas in Brazil and New Year in Argentina. The ship will loop all the way around South America (hopping south to Antarctica), island-hop around the Caribbean and take in both coasts of Central America, then go up the west coast of North America, crossing over to Hawaii.

Stops in Asia include Japan (12 stops), South Korea (including Jeju island) and China. It also takes in most of the classic Southeast Asia destinations, from Bali, Da Nang in Vietnam and the Cambodian coast to Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

It'll loop Australia, New Zealand and island-hop through the South Pacific; journey round India and Sri Lanka; then visit the Maldives and Seychelles before crossing west to Africa, hitting the continent at Zanzibar and then looping down to Cape Town and up the west coast of Africa -- with quick dips west to islands including St. Helena, the Canaries and Madeira.

It also sails round the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

Just one word of warning: You'd need not just a cruise ship but a time machine to visit some of the stops listed on its "13 wonders of the world" list, which includes places like the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the statue of Zeus at Olympia -- all of which were destroyed in antiquity.

However, the cruise also includes free high-speed Wi-Fi, which should make up for any disappointment. Cruisers will also be able to have family and friends on board to visit, for free. The long list of what's included in the trip also includes alcohol at dinner plus soft drinks, juice, tea and coffee all day, laundry, port fees and housekeeping. All meals are also included.

A previous search-engine headline for this story incorrectly indicated the cruise company would pay individuals US$30K to live and work aboard the ship.

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This 3-year cruise around the world was going to cost passengers less than the average rent in NYC—now it's canceled

In March, Life at Sea Cruises announced it was accepting reservations for its three-year cruise around the world. The ship was scheduled to set sail on November 30, with the original November 1 departure date having been rescheduled several times.

Now, less than two weeks before its maiden voyage, Life at Sea has acknowledged to anxious passengers that there is no ship, and that the once-in-a-lifetime trip has been canceled, CNN reported.

A press release shared with CNBC Make It back in March stated that the trip would cover over 130,000 miles and visit 375 ports across 135 countries and seven continents. The prices started at $29,999 a year and payment options started at $2,499 per month.

The three-year cruise was initially set to depart from Istanbul, Turkey on November 1. Shortly before that date, it was postponed to November 11 and relocated to Amsterdam, then rescheduled to November 30.

On November 17, passengers were informed by Miray Cruises, Life at Sea's parent company, that the company could not afford to buy a ship after "investors declined to support us further due to the unrest in [the] Middle East," according to ABC News . The company had been trying to buy AIDAaura, a 20-year-old ship, which was sold in November to another cruise company.

In a statement to the news outlet, Miray Cruises owner Vedat Ugurlu said the cruise wasn't canceled but postponed until May 2024.

"We just had to extend our approval," he said. "Because as you know, three-year cruises is a mega project. The reason for this is our vessel capacity—needed to exceed more than 600 cabins. And right now, we only have 104 cabins."

A statement posted on Miray Cruises' Instagram page in Turkish on November 27 stated the Life at Sea Cruises trip was postponed because the number of passengers was below expectations and had no mention of the company rescheduling because it couldn't acquire a ship.

Life at Sea Cruises also stated in the translated statement that any customers who want a refund will receive it, including money spent on acquiring visas and other travel expenses. They also told ABC News that those who have already paid will have a cabin waiting when the ship is ready.

According to reports from ABC News and CNN, some passengers are now faced with what to do next after having sold their homes to embark on the three-year journey.

Representatives for Life at Sea Cruises and Miray Cruises did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It's request for comment.

The company has said it will make refund repayments in monthly installments starting mid-December and will complete them in late February, according to CNN. It has also offered to pay for accommodations until December 1 and flights home for anyone who has already traveled to Istanbul.

Miray and Life at Sea cruises are also offering customers who bought into the original cruise a separate, shorter free cruise next summer.

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How Life at Sea’s 3-Year Cruise Unraveled

Kara and Joe Youssef sold their two apartments, withdrew their life savings, gave up most of their belongings and, in late October, set out for Istanbul for the trip of a lifetime: a three-year cruise around the world, scheduled to depart Nov. 1.

But in late November, after months of behind-the-scenes chaos, the Youssefs were stuck in Istanbul, with the cruise company canceling the trip.

It did not have a ship that could handle the journey.

The Turkish company, Miray Cruises, had announced the cruise, called Life at Sea, in March.

It claimed it would be the longest cruise ever — 382 port calls over 1,095 days — and a community at sea, with opportunities to explore the globe. Starlink internet and a business center would allow passengers to work remotely.

The cruise seemed ideal for a post-pandemic era, targeting people longing for an escape.

With fares starting at $90,000 for an inside cabin and going up to $975,000 for a suite, the trip even seemed like a bargain to some prospective passengers, cheaper than living three years in many cities.

Within the first month of sales, more than half of the ship’s 400 cabins had been reserved.

But putting together a cruise of this magnitude is a monumental task, requiring a ship large enough to carry hundreds of people, docking rights around the world and secure funding.

Like a high-seas version of the Fyre Festival, which promised a luxury music concert in the Bahamas and delivered cold sandwiches and makeshift tents, the cruise imploded.

It has left people, like the Youssefs, frustrated and confused. Despite promised refunds, only a small portion of the money has been returned so far.

In an interview in December, Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, blamed a lack of financing and interest for the cruise’s cancellation.

“We tried everything to find a solution, but at the end of the day we couldn’t get the investors and we couldn’t sell enough cabins,” he said.

That has left Ms. Youssef, 36, a former humanitarian worker from Ohio, and her husband sitting in Istanbul with three suitcases and a carry-on, waiting for a refund of $80,000.

“They kept leading us on, making us hold out hope until the very last minute, just days before we were supposed to depart,” she said.

“We sold everything we have to make this dream happen. We feel completely defeated.”

A big dream, but no ship to sail on

In June 2022, as the cruise industry was recovering from its pandemic shutdown, Mikael Petterson, an entrepreneur based in Miami, had an idea for a three-year cruise.

Long-term cruises are not unheard-of, but they usually last a year at most, because of the logistics involved.

Mr. Petterson had plans to hit destinations all over the world. What he did not have was a ship.

Through a broker, he was introduced to Miray International, which had been offering voyages and cruise-operation services since 1996.

Mr. Ugurlu, the owner of Miray, suggested the MV Gemini.

He had acquired the 400-cabin, 1,074-passenger vessel in 2019, and had mainly used it for excursions between Turkey and the Greek islands.

Mr. Petterson couldn’t afford to buy the ship, so instead the two groups joined forces. He would do the marketing while Miray took care of operations.

In November 2022, Mr. Petterson signed a three-month contract to develop their new brand: Life at Sea Cruises.

He had not seen the Gemini, but said that he trusted Miray’s nearly 30 years of experience.

Kendra Holmes, then vice president for business development strategy at Miray, said the company had not only the vessel but a budget of about $10 million to refurbish it for such a long cruise.

It also had the experience and staff required, she said.

Mr. Petterson visited Turkey in December 2022 and saw the Gemini, but said his focus was on design and creating renderings for marketing.

He planned to carry out a technical inspection later, he said.

“The cabin configuration was perfect for the pricings and affordability we were marketing,” he said.

On March 1, 2023, Life at Sea began selling space on the cruise, drawing millions of clicks to a newly created website.

“It just blew up, and we could barely keep up,” Mr. Petterson recalled.

Many of the prospective passengers had never been on a cruise.

Keri Witman, 56, a marketing executive from Cincinnati, was looking for a change, a new community and adventure.

She liked the ability to travel while continuing to work. “This seemed like the perfect opportunity,” she said.

Ms. Witman was one of the first to book in April.

She asked a lawyer to look into the company and, after finding no red flags, placed a $5,000 deposit for her $185,120 cabin and put her house up for sale.

Refueling concerns: Is this the right ship?

When Mr. Petterson returned to the Gemini in April, questions were raised about the ship and its itinerary.

Could it even hold enough fuel to sail between some of the more distant ports?

In an audio note sent to his team, Robert Dixon, the itinerary planner, said he was denied access to the engine room and was told by an engineer that the vessel could not hold enough fuel to cross the Atlantic Ocean on schedule.

He also raised concerns about a planned crossing in the South Pacific.

“Even if you spend another $10 million on that ship, I don’t think it is enough to do what we want to do,” Mr. Dixon said in the recording.

He declined to be interviewed.

Beyond that, there were questions about Gemini’s size.

If the cruise sold out its 1,074 capacity, would there be enough space for people to lounge or work, as many of them planned to do, for three years?

A pizza shop in Orlando

Amid questions about the Gemini, tensions started to build.

Mr. Petterson’s team complained that it could not process credit card transactions and lacked an escrow account to secure deposits, as is common in the United States.

Miray had expected the sales team to collect the full fare upfront, but asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars at once was prohibitive.

Mr. Petterson introduced an installment plan, which helped boost sales, but caught Miray unprepared.

And there was no account in the United States for the sales team to use as it secured reservations.

The head of Miray, Mr. Ugurlu, owned a pizza parlor in Orlando, Fla., and Mr. Petterson said the company asked him to deposit the initial payments into the shop’s account.

According to Ms. Holmes, that was suggested as a temporary solution.

Miray pursued other ways to accept payments, including the use of Square, the online payment platform, but after Miray had a dispute with Square, Mr. Petterson, concerned at the lack of secure ways to hold deposits, asked the company to refund all the clients’ deposits.

Worried that the cruise was in jeopardy, passengers canceled reservations for at least 25 cabins.

‘We felt very nervous’

In May, amid the turmoil, the Youssefs attended a webinar for prospective passengers, but heard nothing about payment issues.

The couple was assured, even on another ship, that the cruise would depart on Nov. 1.

On May 6, they put down a $5,000 deposit and were told that a 25 percent payment was due on June 7.

By then, Mr. Petterson had left the company. The internal corporate squabbling became public on the app and Facebook page created for the cruise.

Mr. Petterson told passengers that Life at Sea was dismantled, and that Miray was refusing to answer critical questions.

He urged passengers to complain to U.S. maritime authorities.

Ms. Holmes, of Miray, portrays Mr. Petterson as the loser in a power struggle.

“It got to the point where somebody can’t be the captain, so they try to sink the whole ship,” she said.

She became chief executive of Life at Sea and began working to reassure passengers.

Confusion and panic set in among the passengers, many of whom had already started uprooting their lives.

“We felt very nervous, first sitting through one webinar with the team that left, then with Kendra Holmes,” Ms. Youssef recalled.

But in the weeks that followed, Ms. Youssef said she felt more comfortable as Ms. Holmes and her team hosted daily webinars focusing on getting a new ship.

“Kendra was very convincing and dedicated,” Ms. Youssef said, noting that “she was very realistic, whereas Mikael had promised us the sun and the moon.”

In a webinar on May 31, Ms. Holmes said that the company had decided not to set up an escrow account.

She said that it would use another method of protecting passenger deposits, a bond filed with the Federal Maritime Commission, a U.S. agency that helps to regulate ocean transportation. But the bond was never filed.

A new ship and the scramble for investors

In early July, Life at Sea announced that “due to unprecedented demand,” it had acquired a larger 627-cabin ship — to be named the MV Lara.

In actuality, the company had put down a deposit and was negotiating to buy the Lara with the help of investors, at a cost Mr. Ugurlu later put at between $40 million and $50 million.

At that time, Mary Rader, 68, a retired social worker from Westchester County, N.Y., asked a travel agency to look into Miray Cruises and was told it was reputable.

When a couple offered to transfer their cabin to her at a discounted rate, she took the opportunity, withdrawing $80,000 from her retirement savings.

Ms. Rader made two payments, $50,000 and $35,000, but said she never received a receipt and the couple never received a refund.

She eventually got a boarding pass, but on the cruise app, she and the couple were listed in the same cabin.

“This is when I started to see all the red flags, but I was trapped because I had already made the payments,” she said.

In September, the Youssefs sold their apartment to keep up with their cruise payments; others started applying for visas, shipping belongings to Istanbul and making arrangements for their pets.

At that point, although only 111 of the ship’s 627 cabins had been sold, passengers who had signed up were assured that the ship would sail, even with as few as two passengers.

On Sept. 26, the day the payment was due to secure the Lara, Ms. Holmes received a call from Miray’s owner, Mr. Ugurlu, saying the lead investor had dropped out, but that he was working on other candidates.

After receiving some cancellation requests, Ms. Holmes posted in the cruise app that, according to the contract’s terms, passengers who canceled now would only receive a 10 percent refund.

By Oct. 27, only days before the cruise’s scheduled departure — and with 30 passengers in Istanbul, ready to board — the company announced the trip had been delayed to Nov. 11 and would depart from Amsterdam.

Days later, the departure was postponed again, to Nov. 30.

On Nov. 16, Ms. Youssef learned from a newspaper that the Lara had been acquired by another company.

“We were frustrated and felt stuck in limbo, with no information to go on but what we discovered on our own,” she said. Ms. Holmes resigned from Miray the same day.

On Nov. 19, Mr. Ugurlu issued a statement saying that investors had pulled out because of the unrest in the Middle East; the next day Miray confirmed that the cruise was canceled.

Waiting for refunds

A day later, passengers were asked to sign an agreement with Miray, which would spread refund repayments over three months, from December to February.

The first deadline passed on Dec. 22, with only some passengers getting any money. Miray said that the delay was caused by banks’ requesting extra documentation.

The Youssefs said on Dec. 28 that they had still not received their refund. For the past month they have been living in a hotel in Istanbul paid for by the cruise company.

“We could soon be homeless,” Ms. Youssef said.

Miray, Ms. Holmes and Mr. Petterson are now separately working on other three-year cruises, to launch next year.

Ms. Rader, the retired social worker, is not hopeful. “I have received nothing yet, but I did not expect to,” she said.

“My guess is that the company will be shut down or restructured, and anything I put in cash will never get paid out.”

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Cruise ship that lets you live onboard for 3 years for $38,000 per year will accommodate more passengers

Apparently, the number of people who want to sail away from their lives is bigger than expected.

Life at Sea cruises, which announced plans for a three-year world cruise that will cover over 130,000 miles and hit all seven continents and 135 countries in March, says it has acquired a newer, larger vessel to accommodate more than 200 additional passengers.

The MV Lara will take over duties from the MV Gemini, offering passengers not only more potential slots, but also new amenities, including redesigned staterooms, a business center with offices, and a cigar and wine bar, the company says.

“Seeing such an overwhelming interest in our itinerary and unique ports where we will always be in summer is truly thrilling” said Ethem Bayramoglu, COO of Miray Cruises, parent company of Life at Sea, in a statement. “This is evidence of the allure of our extended world cruise concept and the exceptional experiences that await our residents aboard MV Lara.”

The MV Lara has room for up to 1,250 passengers, but Life at Sea is capping capacity at 85%, as was the plan with the Gemini.

The laws of supply and demand aren’t suspended at sea, however. With the additional capacity and passenger interest, Life at Sea is also increasing the cost of the trip. Originally priced at $30,000 and up , the minimum cost for the trip now stands at $38,513 per year. (Passengers who booked before the upgrade was announced will keep their original rate, the company says.)

The MV Lara will depart from Istanbul on Nov. 1. The ship’s itinerary shows a litany of stops, from Aberdeen, Scotland to  Zhanjiang, China. If you want nicer accommodations than the inside cabins (the $38,513 option), those will cost more too. An outside cabin has jumped from just under $41,000 per year to $65,052. And a balcony cabin will now run $98,226 per year.)

Part of the idea behind this, of course, is to take advantage of the notable number of remote workers who learned during the pandemic that they could still do their jobs without having to commute into the office each day. There are other savings beyond rent, however. Workers could face some tax advantages by working as an international resident. And, of course, three are no utility charges on a ship. Wi-Fi is included in the cost, as are medical visits and exams, port taxes and service charges. Even food and beverage charges are included in the fees, the company says.

You’re on your own as far as shore excursions and booze, though.

Friends and family will have to pay local port taxes and fees, but there’s no charge for anyone to stay in your cabin. And you won’t have to schlep your belongings on board in a cadre of suitcases. Once you book, the cruise line will send a pod, which consists of two closets, which passengers pack and send along to the ship before they embark.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect Life at Sea’s price increase on the cruise.

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These 3 lesser-known cruise lines offer amazing voyages on sail-powered ships

There is nothing quite as magical — or romantic — as a cruise on a sailing ship.

To stand on the deck of a vessel topped with dozens of billowing sails, propelled through the waves by the power of the wind alone, is to go back in time to an earlier age of travel, when crossing the world's oceans was as adventurous as it was challenging.

It's an experience that's all about the feeling of the wind in your hair, the lean of the vessel (known as the heel) as it's pushed by the wind and the sway from the waves (which is actually smoother than what you get on a motor ship).

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

In contrast to what you'll find on so many motor-powered ships, cruising on a masted ship is about the simple thrill of traveling across the sea and not about all the many attractions you'll find on board.

Only a handful of small cruise brands — so small that you might never have heard of them — offer trips on sailing ships. Here, we look at the three biggest players in this niche subset of the cruise industry.

Sea Cloud Cruises

If it's an authentic, old-style sailing experience you want, then Sea Cloud Cruises is the line for you. The Germany-based company operates three large sailing ships where the sails are unfurled by hand, just as they were on sailing ships centuries ago.

On the biggest of these three vessels, the 136-passenger Sea Cloud Spirit , 18 deckhands scurry high into the rigging on sea days to manually untie and prepare the sails, an amazing sight. Unveiled in 2021 , it's a full-rigged, three-masted sailing ship of the sort that hasn't been common on the world's oceans for more than a century.

Related: Why Sea Cloud Spirit is a sailing vessel you'll want to try

Sea Cloud Cruises' two other vessels — Sea Cloud 2 and Sea Cloud — are smaller but offer a similar show as the sails are set by hand the old-fashioned way. The former is a 23-year-old, three-masted barque propelled by 23 sails (five fewer than Sea Cloud Spirit); the latter is a 93-year-old, four-masted barque with 30 sails and a storied past.

Now configured to carry 64 paying passengers, Sea Cloud was originally the private yacht of Postum Cereals heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband, the famed financier E. F. Hutton. At the time, the vessel was the largest private yacht in the world. It later served the U.S. Navy as a weather ship during World War II, after which it became the presidential yacht for the Dominican Republic. It only began sailing as a cruise vessel in the 1980s.

If you have money to spare, you can still book Post's opulent private quarters on Sea Cloud, now its owner's suite. It'll set you back around $5,000 per day per couple. Her husband's slightly smaller quarters are also available to book at a similar rate.

Post, the wealthiest woman in the U.S. during her lifetime, notably also built Mar-a-Lago, the massive estate in Florida that is now the official residence of Donald Trump.

Sea Cloud Cruises is the most all-inclusive and upscale of the three brands listed in this story, with pricing to match. Expect to pay nearly $1,000 per person per day or more for many sailings.

Sea Cloud Cruises' three vessels offer a diverse array of sailings in the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, the Canary Islands and Morocco, the Caribbean or along the west coast of Central America.

Related: Cruising Costa Rica, Panama with Sea Cloud Cruises

Windstar Cruises

Founded in the 1980s, Windstar Cruises got its start as a sailing ship line. While it now operates traditional motor-powered ships, too, voyages on sailing ships are still a big part of its business.

Three of the Seattle-based brand's six vessels — Wind Spirit, Wind Star and Wind Surf — are sailing vessels, and they all offer a similar yacht-like, small-ship experience.

Two of the three vessels (Wind Spirit and Wind Star) are particularly intimate, measuring 5,407 tons and carrying just 148 passengers with every berth full.

Related: The 2 types of Windstar ships, explained

The line's third sailing vessel, Wind Surf, is nearly three times the size at 14,745 tons. It's one of the biggest sailing ships in the world (only a sister vessel that sails for Club Med is bigger). Wind Surf carries 342 people, an enormous number for a sailing ship.

Unlike on the vessels operated by Sea Cloud, the sails on Windstar's sailing ships aren't unfurled by hand in the old-fashioned way but by the push of a button from the bridge. It's a fully automated system that is much more modern, if less dramatic.

Still, the experience of slicing through the waves by the power of the wind alone on Windstar ships is as glorious and romantic as it is on the Sea Cloud ships.

Windstar Cruises is less all-inclusive and pricey than Sea Cloud but still offers a relatively upscale experience. Its dining program is done in partnership with the food-focused James Beard Foundation, which also brings James Beard Award-winning chefs to the ships regularly for food-themed itineraries.

For an extra $89 per person per day, passengers can also make the experience more all-inclusive with included Wi-Fi, unlimited beer, wine and cocktails, and gratuities (three things that aren't included in regular fares).

The line's three vessels typically spend nearly all of their time sailing in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or along the west coast of Central America.

Related: Read more about Windstar's itineraries

Star Clippers

Like Sea Cloud and Windstar, Star Clippers operates three sailing vessels that are among the biggest and most elegant sailing vessels in the world.

The belle of the ball at the line is Royal Clipper, a stunning five-masted ship that is billed as the largest square-rigged ship in the world. Its enormous array of 42 sails has a sail area of 56,000 square feet — significantly more than the sails atop any of the Sea Cloud or Windstar vessels. (Only Sea Cloud Spirit comes relatively close with a sail area of 44,100 square feet spread across 28 sails.)

Built to resemble Preussen, a legendary tall ship of the 19th century, the 24-year-old Royal Clipper shares the spotlight at Star Clippers with two smaller sister vessels, Star Flyer and Star Clipper.

Carrying 166 passengers apiece, the smaller vessels were designed to resemble the speedy clipper ships of the 19th century, which were known for their narrow profile and large sail area. Each vessel has a sail area of 36,000 square feet spread across 16 sails, a large amount for the size.

When it comes to the setting of sails, Star Clippers vessels offer a level of old-style authenticity that is in between the ships of Sea Cloud and Windstar. Like on Sea Cloud vessels, the sails are pulled into position by a team of deckhands using hand power and winches to tighten the "sheets," or ropes.

Unlike on Sea Cloud vessels, the deck hands don't climb high into the rigging to untie and prepare the sails for winching. That part is done automatically at the push of a button from the bridge, as it is on Windstar vessels.

In one key difference, though, Star Clippers lets passengers harness up and climb into the crow's nest of its vessels — a thrilling experience. Just be prepared for your knees to go a bit wobbly as you get to the top; it's way up there.

Star Clippers sailings are the most affordable option among the three sailing brands, in part because the onboard experience is less all-inclusive and upscale.

The three Star Clippers vessels mostly operate sailings in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean and along the west coast of Central America.

Bottom line

It's still possible to get a taste of what traveling the world's oceans was like in the days before motor power. Three small cruise companies — Sea Cloud Cruises, Windstar Cruises and Star Clippers — offer voyages on large sailing ships that are as majestic as anything that has sailed the seas in centuries past.

Planning a cruise? Start with these stories:

• The 5 most desirable cabin locations on any cruise ship
• A beginners guide to picking a cruise line
• The 8 worst cabin locations on any cruise ship
• The ultimate guide to what to pack for a cruise
• A quick guide to the most popular cruise lines
• 21 tips and tricks that will make your cruise go smoothly
• Top ways cruisers waste money
• The ultimate guide to choosing a cruise ship cabin

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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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I only book a Disney cruise if it's going to the company's private island, Castaway Cay

I've taken eight Disney cruises, and I always book a sailing that stops at  Castaway Cay .

Castaway Cay is the company's private island and I love its adults-only beach area.

You can buy exclusive merch on the island and see Disney characters in special themed costumes.

Cruise bookings are predicted to reach record highs this year, but not all itineraries are created equally — especially if you're looking to sail with Disney Cruise Line.

Over the past decade, I've taken eight Disney cruises with my family and friends. When I book, I always make sure Disney's private island in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay, is on the port of call.

Here's why you might want to do the same.

I love that the ship docks right at the island, so there are no tender ships involved

One of the biggest perks of Castaway Cay is that the ship docks right at the island.

Some other cruise line's private islands, like Norwegian's Great Stirrup Cay, don't have a dock, so cruisers must take tender ships (small boats) from the cruise ship to the island.

I hate taking tender ships, which can feel like a bit of a time sink, so this is a big bonus to me.

Getting around the island is easy with the complimentary tram

Castaway Cay is about 1,000 acres — though not all of it's developed — so it can take a while to talk to and from the ship to different spots on the island.

Fortunately, the island has a complimentary tram that I always use to get around the island.

The tram takes cruisers from a station near the ship to two other tram stops for the family beaches, and one tram stop at the adults-only beach .

This makes getting around the island with all of my beach gear easy.

Speaking of gear, at Castaway Cay, cruisegoers can borrow free towels as soon as they get off of the ship. There are plenty of towel-return stations around the island, so I also never have to carry wet, sandy towels back on the ship.

I always stop to see the Disney characters in their cute beachwear

I enjoy seeing the Disney characters on the ship, but love seeing Mickey and his pals even more at Castaway Cay.

Characters usually meet in the morning from around 9 a.m. until 11 a.m., but exact times can always be found on the Disney Cruise Line app.

The best part about seeing the characters is that the lines to take pictures with them are never long. On a recent sailing, I saw Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto all in 30 minutes. That would never happen in a Disney park.

And if you're a fellow character hunter like me, Mickey and the gang all have Castaway Cay exclusive outfits, which are adorable and make for great family photos.

I always take advantage of every chance to hang out at the adults-only beach

One thing I love about Disney Cruise Line and Castaway Cay is that there are plenty of adults-only spaces where kids are strictly not allowed. On the island, that spot is Serenity Bay Beach.

This peaceful chair-lined beach is a quiet spot away from the family beach, where I can sit back and enjoy the view or take a chair down to the water and let the waves crash over me.

Plus, just off Serenity Bay Beach is a fun beachside bar serving up drinks and snacks.

There's also the adults-only lunch spot where I always enjoy a beachside barbecue. My favorite things on the lunch menu are the ribs and macaroni salad .

Before returning to the ship, I send a postcard from the island and check out the special merchandise

I always make a point to stop in at the various shops near the family beach to see the Castaway Cay merchandise. On a recent trip, the shops had everything from spirit jerseys and T-shirts to Christmas ornaments and swimsuits.

And, before I head back to the ship, I stop at the Castaway Cay post office to send postcards back home.

The postcards I use can be found in the desk drawer of Disney Cruise Line staterooms, and are free to take. If you don't want to send the cute postcards off, you can also keep them as souvenirs.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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The Blink Mini 2 home security camera is 25 percent off in both colors — black and white — in a deal on Amazon, bringing the already budget-friendly system down to just $30. It can be used indoors or outdoors.