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Those who chose the full trip, prices started at $53,999, according to the Royal Caribbean website. A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean Cruises did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment regarding the rumors, as well as the virality of the cruise itself. Whether you cruise multiple times per year or you're new to cruising, the goal of Royal Caribbean Blog is for it to be a useful resource for keeping up to date with what's new and exciting with Royal Caribbean. Started in 2010, Royal Caribbean Blog offers daily coverage of news and information related to the Royal Caribbean cruise line along with other relevant topics of cruising, such as entertainment, news, photo updates and more. Each week we’ll send you the very best from the Vox Culture team, plus a special internet culture edition by Rebecca Jennings on Wednesdays. "I think that it is surprising out there to people that there's so many on the younger side who are on the cruise," she explained.
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People are so charmed by Martucci that they’ve scheduled a meetup with him when the ship arrives at Southampton, England, on July 26 (after a TikTok of his itinerary revealed that he planned to shop at Primark that day, fans decided they would come along). This, obviously, is sort of an uncanny way to discuss regular people who are simply living their lives and going on a (yes, very extravagant) vacation. But it is an increasingly familiar one, as TikTok continues to determine what millions of people are looking at, and when. The Ultimate World Cruise’s closest relative might be the annual ritual of Bama Rush, where every August since 2021, first-year students at the University of Alabama show off their outfits on TikTok for different sorority recruitment events. After a handful of those videos went viral, the women in them became brief celebrities, as did the people commenting on the phenomenon.
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The interest began with passengers onboard sharing what it's like to live on a cruise ship for almost an entire year. A corner of TikTok has been closely tracking activity on the cruise ship, called Serenade of the Seas, with many users pointing out that so much can happen within the span that it’s at sea, including new relationships, falling outs, pregnancy, death and more. If several months at sea still seems too long, travelers can also join shorter legs of the Ultimate World Cruise ranging from nine to 29 nights, starting at over $1,760 per person.
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There have been round-the-world cruises before, the first almost exactly 100 years ago. For the most part, though, those who started posting about their journeys on the cruise watched their TikTok follower counts jump from basically zero to more than 100,000 in the span of a few weeks. On #cruisetok, the passengers are characters, the updates are “plot,” and the actual destinations are simply backgrounds on which to project the maximum amount of drama.
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In the corner behind the coffee table, there's a laundry hamper and Andrew's golf putter, so he does not have to sacrifice one of his favorite pastimes while abroad. The cruise will depart from Miami on Dec. 10, 2023, and last until Sept. 10, 2024. That should give you plenty of time to start pinching those pennies—tickets start at $61,000 for an interior stateroom and go up to $112,000 for a junior suite. The price covers business class airfare and accommodations at a five-star hotel before setting sail. Sisters Brandee and Shannon Lake, who are Black, said they’re sharing a cabin and said that quarantining together during the pandemic prepared them to live in close quarters on the ship for nine months. Some said they cannot fathom what being on the cruise, traveling to that many locations while eating and drinking the days away, would do to a person physically.
For the next several months, she'll work remotely and will be taking advantage of the various stops and sights the voyage will have to offer. The Lake sisters tell TODAY.com that other than this, they've yet to encounter any reality television-worthy bits of drama to mark on a Bingo card, but they do have a podcast where they plan on sharing their journey with followers. The sisters say they'll share the same cabin during their 9 months on the trip, and that they don't expect to butt heads too much with each other or their parents, since they're close and quarantined together during the Covid-19 pandemic. "We just kind of started running numbers and processing and thinking about it," Andrew Kenney adds.
Ticket rates are based on a range of 1,073 staterooms and the full 274-night trip ran from $53,999 per person to $117,599 per person. Inside cabins are commonplace on cruise ships, and while they aren't spacious, there are advantages to staying in them. She has put a lot of effort into her cabin decorating, but plenty of people do this sort of thing on any cruise. But in reading through the comments and looking at the videos, what we're basically seeing is people post about things that happen on any vacation when you have a lot of people together in one place. Your once-in-a-lifetime journey begins December 2023, embarking from in Miami on the first segment of the Ultimate World Cruise℠ — the Ultimate Americas Cruise. Go from postcard-perfect Caribbean shores—including the ABC islands —to viewing abundant wildlife like sea lions, penguins and whales roaming glacier-studded Antarctica as you round Cape Horn.
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The Ultimate World Cruise, a 274-night voyage aboard the Serenade of the Seas by Royal Caribbean Cruises, departed from Miami on Dec. 10. Ideally, crew members should be educated and trained both before and during such voyages — and certain behaviors should be unequivocally unacceptable. When Royal Caribbean unveiled the Ultimate World Cruise aboard its Serenade of the Seas craft in late 2021 and began bookings in early 2022, travel enthusiasts viewed it as a dream opportunity.
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Guests can choose from nearly 20 restaurants and bars, then enjoy the scenery from the ship's panoramic, multi-story windows. Like Maddox, many likened the cruise to the viral BamaRushTok — the time of year when sororities recruit new members at The University of Alabama, which is often shared by potential recruits on TikTok. Maddox, who has taught some of the women who became stars of the Bama Rush phenomenon, said she’s seen first-hand how real people being treated like figures on reality TV can be damaging and stressful. Finally, the last leg sees passengers touring Europe, with stops in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway over the final 63 nights.
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Royal Caribbean Confirms Death of Passenger on 9-Month World Cruise.
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For instance, she shares her stateroom with another crew member, who resides on the top bunk. Brandee Lake, 46, and sister Shannon, 42, are sharing a state room while on the trip with their retired parents. "We definitely are the youngest Black people on the boat," Brandee told TODAY.com.
If you read the comments made to the cabin tour video, there's people who can't believe little_rat_brain would stay in an inside room for 9-months. All sorts of videos started popping up, and when it was time to board the ship, even more videos got posted and there's been 9 million views on the platform. But before you share that article that there's drama on the world cruise, here's a reality check. Maybe it's the slow news cycle that occurs around the holidays, but a number of major media outlets have written about how TikTok blew up with so-called drama on the Ultimate World Cruise that will take 9-months and began a few weeks ago. "We're gonna be in this cabin for nine months, so, obviously, we had to spruce it up, so we weren't looking at the plain walls the entire time," she says at the beginning of the one-minute and nine-second video.
And after all that sailing toward Antarctica, the passengers weren't able to actually set foot on the icy continent. The first leg, the Ultimate Americas, ran from Dec. 10 until Feb. 11 and took passengers around North America, South America, the Caribbean and Antarctica. World wonders on the to-see list included the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and Machu Pichu.
Whether they were telling their own inside stories of Bama Rush, sharing which girls they were “rooting for,” or wondering how they ended up watching these videos to begin with, once the topic took off, more and more people started fighting for a sliver of that attention. The result was a media frenzy that lasted for about two weeks before the algorithm moved on. "So friendly, so kind so much energy," Brandee Lake says, quashing any drama that users have attempted to stir up so far. "Our people at dinner are like family already, you know, we have people who we don't even interact with normally (who) are like family already. And of course, the staff itself is quite diverse."
Some set sail on December 10 for a single segment or two, whereas others won't join until later in the cruise. That the social media spectacle of the Ultimate World Cruise has spilled offscreen and onto the actual boat is maybe more interesting than the understandable highs and lows of living at sea with hundreds of other people. Cruises are indeed getting longer, though mishaps can certainly occur — just ask the would-be passengers who are now suing the three-year cruise that was abruptly canceled mere days before it was scheduled to depart. It’s one thing to go on a cruise for four or five nights, but guests currently traveling on the Serenade of the Seas have committed themselves to sailing around the world for nine months straight. Royal Caribbean’s Ultimate World Cruise, which set sail on Dec. 10, has taken over TikTok — or CruiseTok — with users following those on board like they’re cast members in a reality show.
World cruises aren't new, but this is the first one that Royal Caribbean has done and being a mainstream cruise line, the attention it's generating may be related to the fact it's more approachable than on smaller lines. Serenade of the Seas will sail roundtrip from Miami on Dec. 10, 2023 and through Sept. 10, 2024. Royal Caribbean's Serenade of the Seas departed Miami to begin a 9-month Ultimate World Cruise on December 10, and TikTok has seen a flurry of interest for this kind of a cruise.
And, according to content creator Marc Sebastien, who spent 18 nights aboard during the first leg of the journey, the ship's godmother—"Did you guys know that ships have godmothers?"—is Whoopi Goldberg. And Sebastian, 33, ended up going aboard for an 18-day stretch in January courtesy of Simon & Schuster's Atria Books, which enlisted him to host a virtual book club. His trip included a choppy ride through the Drake Passage ("Drake's best work since hotline bling," he captioned a post), the body of water between South America's Cape Horn and Antarctica's South Shetland Islands. Well, free with the entry-level $53,999 price for passage aboard the Symphony of the Seas, which will reportedly carry 27,000 guests in total over the four legs of the trip, while more than 600 were booked for the entire itinerary. The all-encompassing itinerary is the main draw here, but guests should expect to have a pretty great time on the actual ship itself, Serenade of the Seas. According to the ship's website, onboard amenities include a mini-golf course, rock climbing wall, full-service spa, pool with a retractable glass roof, and a theater hosting everything from Broadway shows to stand-up comics.
