Everyone Worth Following on the 9-Month Cruise

Your new favorite reality show is on your TikTok feed.

If you spent your holiday break mindlessly scrolling through TikTok in order to avoid your mother’s questions about your job/romantic life/plans for the future, then you probably know about the nine-month cruise. If not, you’re in for a treat. Get ready to learn about a group of people whose dads have not explained the plot of The Wager to them.

What is the nine-month cruise?

Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. On the Royal Caribbean website, the cruise — officially called the Ultimate World Cruise — is advertised as “the most epic cruise to ever set sail.” (The Taylor Swift cruise would like a word.) The people who have booked the entire voyage will be on the ship for 274 nights and travel to over 60 countries including Antarctica. If spending most of the year on a boat eating buffet food doesn’t sound appealing, you can just go for one of the trip’s “segments,” which still entails being on the ship for months at a time. Wrapping your head around what you might do on a cruise for nine months can be hard, but thankfully there are plenty of “day in my life” videos that can help you out.

How much does a nine-month cruise cost?

It ain’t cheap, I’ll tell you that much. Assuming you’re going for the full cruise, the cheapest option is an interior stateroom that costs $59,999 per person. If you were to ball out for a junior suite, you’d be paying $117,599 per person. There is a loophole, though. You can get on the cruise for free if you go viral for saying you want to go on the cruise. So far, this has only happened to TikToker Marc Sebastian, who is going on the cruise for a couple weeks courtesy of a brand that has not yet been revealed. My guess is Dramamine.

Who should I be following?

There are two different ways you can go about this. You could either follow the people who are actually on the ship, or you could follow the people who are following all the people who are on the ship. Of the latter group, the most in-depth reportage is coming from @livingmy_bethlife, who has turned the cruise into a reality show that she’s calling “Ship Happens.”

There’s also @whimsysoul, who has created a bingo card for the cruise that already has more checked off than you might imagine.

My personal favorite is @yourdatingtipbestie, who has been doing weekly recaps of what’s happening on the cruise.

If you’re looking for a more boots-on-the-ground situation, you are in luck. A plethora of people on the cruise have realized that there is content to be made on the ship, and they’re starting to link up. The most prolific creator so far has been @amike_oosthuizen, a South African influencer with more than 200,000 followers.

If you are tired of well-produced, professional influencers and just want a boomer’s version of what the cruise is like, I must recommend Joe of @spendingourkidsmoney.

And if you’re looking for a kind of upstairs-downstairs flavor to your cruise content, you must follow the people who work on the cruise, such as @cooljul1.

So … is there drama?

God, everybody wishes. The closest thing to drama is that some people are saying that pinnacle members — people with the highest loyalty status with Royal Caribbean — are being treated better than the regular people onboard. This has not gotten much traction, presumably because that’s the point of a loyalty program.

There was briefly a moment where we thought there might be swingers on the ship, when a woman and her husband put a pineapple (a symbol used by swingers to flag other swingers) on their door. Unfortunately, the woman just “liked pineapples.” For what it’s worth, there are definitely swingers on the ship who just aren’t posting TikToks.

But fear not, we have many more months to go. The cruise is currently in the honeymoon phase, in which a Belgian waffle for breakfast every morning still sounds like a good idea and the crossing of the Drake Passage is yet to come. Give it a few months and I’m sure something wild will happen. I think I’ll be putting my money on “old couple splits up” or “mystery illness rips through the ship.” In any case, I will be tuned in.