We’re 33 days into the Royal Caribbean’s 9-month cruise and — as you’d expect from a bunch of people living on a giant boat full time — there is no shortage of drama. The most recent update comes in the form of a TikToker named Marc Sebastian who has been sponsored to jump on board the now-viral Ultimate World Cruise to give people a sneak peek at what’s really going on behind the scenes.
What’s the deal with the Ultimate World Cruise?
In case you missed it, the Ultimate World Cruise is a 274-night experience which takes travellers around the globe, allowing tourists to tick off 65 countries from their bucket lists.
Immediately, travellers boarding the ship began documenting their experience on TikTok by taking us along with them as they did their laundry, got a snack at the buffet and went to the gym. Although these things are seemingly mundane, the whole experience became an instant curiosity, launching the posters to a surprising level of viral celebrity overnight.
With the viral spotlight on them, the group started to refer to themselves as the “Ultimate World Cruise Cast” and began hanging out and posting content together, turning the cruise into some at-sea Hype House kind of thing.
But after almost two weeks on the open seas, the drama began to bubble under the surface.
You see, some people — called the Pinnacle Members — are staying on board for the entire nine months, have paid upfront and have little pins they wear proudly to show for it. While others — referred to as “segmenters” — only stick around for certain legs of the trip which can be booked individually. It soon became apparent that there was a class divide between the segmenters and people doing the full trip and one between those who spent different amounts for the experience. According to The Cut, the full cruise price started at $59,999 USD per person and up to $117,599 USD for a fancy room experience.
Brandee Lake (@iambrandeelake) — who is a Black content creator on board the ship — has even alleged that she’d been mistaken for a crew member multiple times.
“Apparently it seemed far-fetched to some that a Black woman (and family) could be a guest on the once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she wrote alongside the TikTok video below.
Also, according to a married couple on the cruise named Mike and Nancy, the cruiseship is almost out of wine after an “unprecedented” amount had been slurped down by travellers.
If I was on this cruise, you better believe I’d be there with a glass of savvy b at all times.
Where does Marc come into this?
Marc’s journey to the Serenade of the Seas has been a wild ride. He first gained traction two days after the boat set sail, going viral on TikTok for suggesting that someone had to send a camera crew on the Ultimate World Cruise to document all the ~drama~.
“Bravo, where are you? I need eyes,” he pleaded.
“Put me on the cruise, I’ll go. I will cause chaos, I will wreak havoc, and I will film everything.”
Thankfully, after gaining over 7.7 million views, book publisher Atrica Books sponsored Marc to stay on board the ship for 18 nights to dish out the real story. Who would’ve thought a book publisher would be the hero we all needed?
Not long after he secured the funding, Marc joined the cruise on January 6, and immediately got stuck in doing the Lord’s work by going to a creator meetup on the ship. He met all the main characters including my personal favourites Little Rat Brain — who has made an incredibly complex spreadsheet monitoring the temperatures on board — and a sensual woman named Adita who many believed to be a swinger after she proudly displayed a pineapple (a known symbol for swingers when it’s upside down) on her cabin door.
On his sixth day on the cruise, Marc took us on a room tour of his $8,500 USD ocean room view. While many of the other tours had been fairly positive, Marc was pretty upfront.
“The lighting is torturous, I have no choice but to get ready super fast because being under this lighting takes one year off my life,” he said, captioning the video with: “For 18 nights? Fine. But for 9 months? no can do babe.”
Marc says that the intense lighting isn’t the only overstimulating feature of the boat. He claims that everywhere you go, there’s music playing at all times which truthfully sounds like my own personal hellscape.
“It is so fucking loud on the goddamn ship. It is so overstimulating,” he said.
“There is non-stop music being pumped into every room, every hall, every dining room that you enter.”
Marc has also questioned the living wage of the employees on the ship
Marc has also been going live, discussing the drama with TikToker users in detail. He’s live as I write this and let me tell ya, baby boy doesn’t hold back.
While he’s made friends with a bunch of the main stars of the cruise, he reports that he’s rubbed a few fellow cruise goers the wrong way. Especially the Pinnacle Members who don’t looooove that some guy who is copping the experience for free is talking shit about their beloved cruising lifestyle.
A TikTok user named Christine who goes by @dutchworld_americangirl stitched one of Marc’s videos, slamming him for his shit-stirring ways. But it’s important to note that she is not actually on the world cruise, but that she lives on a different cruise ship full-time as the wife of a staff chief cruise ship engineer.
“I’ve been [living on a ship] for the last 12 years of my life,” Christine said in the video.
“There is no drama or tea on a ship but he’s been put there to get drama and tea. And nothing frustrates me more than when someone gets on, knows nothing about the cruise industry and then starts talking about how my former colleagues don’t make money. The myth is that they don’t make a living wage.”
As a former cruise director, she claimed that the staff is all paid in US dollars and due to the conversion rate of the home countries of the employees, it worked out pretty well for them in the end.
Marc responded to her video, claiming that the average Royal Caribbean Cruise member’s salary is under $25,000 USD.
“If you think that $25,000 is a livable wage, you’re delusional,” he quipped.
“Allegedly, there are 100 countries that make up the employees on this boat, and not all of them have a great conversion rate. Yikes.”
According to indeed.com, the customer service staff typically earn around 2k per month depending on the role. If true, this would be less than Marc’s approximation.
So what next?
Marc and the passengers on the World Cruise are currently travelling through the treacherous waters of the Drake Passage which takes them between South America’s Cape Horn, Chile, Argentina and the South Shetland Islands as they head towards Antarctica.
Marc still has 12 days of his journey left and I can’t wait to see what else he uncovers.
The post A TikToker On Board The 9-Month Cruise Is Revealing How Shit The Reality Of The Experience Actually Is appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
