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Summer of '99 And Beyond Lives On

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Spend time exploring Nassau's gorgeous beaches and charming pastel-colored architecture. Swim with the dolphins, snorkel with colorful fish, or find some of the best duty-free shopping on Bay Street.

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Creed released their last album as a group, ‘Full Circle’ in 2009 and stopped touring in 2012.

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Creed have officially announced their reunion and their first shows in twelve years – and they’ll sure be making a splash . The rock group’s return to the stage will be aboard the Summer Of ’99 cruise, which will travel from Miami to the Bahamas from April 18-22, 2024. Creed will headline the event, playing two shows. They’ll be joined by special guests 3 Doors Down , along with Buckcherry, Tonic, Fuel, Vertical Horizon, The Verve Pipe, Tantric, and Nine Days, among others.

Explore the best of Creed’s discography on vinyl and more.

The cruise is organized by Sixthman, who have hosted cruises with a wide range of artists, including Bon Jovi, Kesha, Paramore, and Pitbull, to name a few. Pre-sale signups are available now through July 26 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Pre-sale slots will be available July 25-27, and the first 500 cabins to book will get a cabin photo opportunity with Creed members Scott Stapp, Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall, and Scott Phillips. Public on-sale begins on July 28 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Beyond performances, the cruise is also set to feature a Q&A with Creed open to all guests, who can also enter lottery systems for basketball games with Stapp, karaoke and painting with Tremonti, and pick throwing with Marshall.

Creed released their last album as a group,  Full Circle  in 2009 and stopped touring in 2012. Since then, Stapp has released his second and third solo albums. In 2019, he spoke to Billboard , reflecting on the group’s meteoric rise. “The whole experience was flying by the seat of our pants,” he says. “It was just, take this young kid and put him out there… Being in that kind of situation, I thought we handled it extremely well looking back, you know what I mean? We knew what we wanted, we knew what our dreams were, we knew what our goal was, we knew what our passion was, and we were a unit. We were brothers.”

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By Popular Demand, Creed Announce Second Summer of ’99 Cruise (With One Big Lineup Change)

By popular demand, the reunited Creed have announced a second Summer of '99 cruise, dubbed Summer of '99 and Beyond, which will take place just a few days after the first at-sea excursion returns to port.

There are only a couple of differences between the first and second cruise (other than the dates), such as the departure location, a replacement for 3 Doors Down and a pair of newly added acts.

See all of the details below.

When + Where Are the "Summer of '99" Cruises Taking Place?

The first Summer of '99 cruise will be held from April 18-24 in 2024, departing from Miami, Florida for Nassau, Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship.

The Summer of '99 and Beyond cruise will be held on the Norwegian Jade cruise ship from April 27-May 1, departing from Port Canaveral in Florida, also venturing to the Bahamas.

What Other Bands Are Playing the "Summer of '99" Cruise?

In addition to Creed, performances on the first cruise will come from other notable late '90s acts:

3 Doors Down,  Buckcherry ,  Tonic , Vertical Horizon,  Fuel , The Verve Pipe,  Tantric , Dishwalla, Louise Post (of  Veruca Salt ) and  Nine Days  have all been booked for the festival cruise, which is presented by Sixthman.

On the second cruise, reasoning the "beyond" part of Summer of '99 and Beyond,  Daughtry will replace 3 Doors Down, while Jimmy's Chicken Shack and Sugar: The Nu-Metal Party have been added to the pre-existing lineup.

Who Is Hosting the "Summer of '99" Cruise?

Sirius XM DJ  Eddie Trunk  will co-host both cruises alongside the trio from AXS TV's  The Power Hour  show — Matt Pinfield, Caity Babs and Josh Bernstein.

READ MORE:  22 Legendary Bands With 5 or Fewer Studio Albums

When Do Tickets for the Second "Summer of '99" Cruise Go On Sale?

The first Summer of '99 cruise is officially sold out.

The public on-sale for the second cruise begins on Sept. 15 at 2PM ET.

Pre-sale signups are available now through Sept. 13 at 11:59PM ET and pre-sale Early Booking Times will be available from Sept. 8-15.

Deposits are as low as $200 per person through Oct. 1 while cabins last.

The first 500 cabins to be booked will also be presented with a photo opportunity with Creed.

For more ticketing information, head to the  Summer of 99 cruise website .

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Creed Announces Return to Performing With Summer of ’99 Cruise

Creed will return to live performance for the first time in more than a decade in 2024 with the Summer of '99 cruise. The event will take place from April 18-22 and travel from Miami to Nassau aboard Norwegian Pearl .

The band will perform two shows on the boat's Pool Deck stage. Tickets will be available beginning July 28, with more information on the event's website . (According to a press release, the first 500 cabins to book will secure a photo opportunity with Creed.)

Other guests on the cruise include 3 Doors Down, Buckcherry, Tonic, Vertical Horizon, Fuel, the Verve Pipe, Tantric, Dishwalla, Louise Post (of Veruca Salt) and Nine Days. There will be a live Q&A with Creed, activities with bands and podcast hosts, panels and autograph sessions.

Creed has been on hiatus since 2013. Singer Scott Stapp noted in an interview that year that the likelihood of the band recording together again was slim given the tension between himself and the rest of the group, particularly guitarist Mark Tremonti.

"I love those guys and I pray [for] them every day and wish them the best," Stapp said. "But until Creed gets back to a mutual respect between Mark and I - and not Mark telling me all these things I can and can't do or he's going to walk - it's not going to happen."

Stapp appeare d on the Dr. Oz show in 2015 and was asked about a potential Creed reunion. "I can tell you what, I sure hope so," he said. "I love the guys with all my heart, and if they're watching, 'Come on, guys, let's make a record.'" That same year, Creed released a compilation album, With Arms Wide Open: A Retrospective , as members continued to pursue solo careers.

In late 2020, drummer Scott Phillips hinted at the idea of a reunion, explaining that "there's no specific timetable for anything or no specific plans, but it's a possibility down the road."

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Creed Announces 2024 Reunion Tour: See the Dates

In addition to the North American trek, the band will headline the inaugural Summer of '99 and Beyond Festival.

By Jason Lipshutz

Jason Lipshutz

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In the middle of the tour, Creed will head to San Bernardino, Calif. to top the bill of the inaugural Summer of ’99 and Beyond Festival, which will corral the openers on various legs of the tour and welcome a few other special guests. 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Finger Eleven, Fuel, Vertical Horizon, The Verve Pipe will join Creed on Aug. 31 at San Bernardino’s Glen Helen Amphitheatre.

“Summer of ‘99 and Beyond Festival in San Bernardino is going to be so special for all of us,” says guitarist Mark Tremonti. “It is giving us a chance to bring performances from the cruises and tour together in one location. That show is going to be a highlight for us next year.”

In July, Creed announced their first shows together in 12 years as headliners of the Summer of ’99 cruise, setting sail from April 18-22, 2024. The band added a second cruise the following weekend, and both trips are sold out.

Stapp, Tremonti, Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips stopped touring together in 2012, after scoring smashes like “One,” “Higher,” “With Arms Wide Open” and “My Sacrifice”; their 1999 sophomore album, Human Clay , has sold 11.7 million copies to date, according to Luminate. In addition to the Creed reunion, Tremonti recently released a holiday album, Christmas Classics New & Old , and Stapp’s fourth solo album, Higher Power , will be released in March 2024.

Check out Creed’s North American tour dates below:

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With Arms Wide Open

How did creed, the most hated band of the 1990s, become so beloved—and even cool i sailed the seas with thousands of fellow lunatics to find out..

It’s high noon on a blazing April day, which is the ideal time to be sitting in an Irish pub aboard a cruise ship the size of a small asteroid. The bar is called O’Sheehan’s—yes, pronounced “oceans”—and it’s located deep within the belly of the boat, just above the teppanyaki joint, the sake bar, and the lustrous duty-free shops. This consciousness-altering diorama of infinite seas and cloying Guinness-themed paraphernalia is where I meet Colleen Sullivan, a 46-year-old woman with a beehive of curly red hair and arms encased by plastic wristbands. She wants to tell me how Creed changed her life.

A few moments earlier, Sullivan dropped one of those wristbands on my table—an invitation to talk. It’s lime-green and emblazoned with pink lettering that reads “Rock the Boat With Creed.” I slip it past my hand and sidle up to her booth. Sullivan uses one nuclear-yellow-painted fingernail to hook back the wristbands on her right arm. Underneath is the pinched autograph of Scott Stapp, the band’s mercurial lead singer, enshrined in tattoo ink. This, it seems, is not her first rodeo.

We are both here for “Summer of ’99,” a weekendlong cruise and concert festival for which Creed—as in the Christian-lite rock band that sold more than 28 million albums in the U.S. alone and yet may be the most widely disdained group in modern times—is reuniting for the first time in 12 years. Roughly 2,400 other Creed fans are along for the round-trip ride from Miami to the Bahamas, and the rest of the bill is occupied by the dregs of turn-of-the-millennium alt-rock stardom. Buckcherry is here. So are Vertical Horizon, Fuel, and 3 Doors Down, the latter of whom hasn’t released an album since 2016.

To celebrate, Sixthman, the booking agency responsible for this and many other cruises, has thoroughly Creed-ified every element of the ship. The band’s logo is printed on the napkins and scripted across the blackjack felt. The TV screens at the bar are tuned to a near-constant loop of Creed’s performance at Woodstock ’99. The onboard library has been converted to a merch store selling Creed hoodies and shot glasses. The stock music piped into the corridors has been swapped out for Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel,” Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy,” and 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite.” When I turn on the closed-circuit television in my cabin, a channel called New Movies plays Scream 3 and Can’t Hardly Wait . And four elevator doors in the boat’s central plaza are plastered with the words “Can You Take Me Higher or Lower?” Sixthman pulled similar stunts with 311’s “ Caribbean Cruise ,” Train’s “ Sail Across the Sun ” cruise, and Kid Rock’s notoriously debauched “ Chillin’ the Most ” cruise—the Kid Rock cruise also took place on the vessel I’m on, the Norwegian Pearl . The idea is to teleport a captive audience back into the dirtbags they once embodied and to a simpler time, when Scott Stapp controlled the universe.

Sullivan tells me that her relationship with Creed overlaps with her sobriety story. She first became a fan of the band in the late 1990s, when “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open” were soaring up the Billboard charts. Then, Sullivan started using, and her appreciation for the divine proportions of those songs faded in service of more corporeal needs. Years later, after Creed broke up and Sullivan got clean, she returned to the music and discovered a dogma of her own: Maybe she had been put on earth to love Stapp—and Creed—harder, and with more urgency, than anyone else in the world.

“He helped me grow with those old Creed songs,” she tells me. “When I saw Scott for the first time live, he had just gotten clean too. I’d go to the shows and there would be tears streaming down my face.” Her left arm contains another Stapp tattoo, with the words “His Love Was Thunder in the Sky” scrawled up to her elbow, surrounded by a constellation of quarter notes. It’s a lyric taken from a 2013 Stapp solo song called “Jesus Was a Rockstar.” The singer Sharpie’d it onto her body himself.

“Summer of ’99” is Creed’s second attempt to reunite, after it disbanded in both 2004 and 2012 amid clashing egos and substance issues. The band couldn’t have picked a better time to get back together. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of an extremely unlikely Creed renaissance, redeeming the most reviled—and, perhaps more damningly, most uncool —band in the world. For much of the past 20 years, hating Creed has been a natural extension of being a music fan: In 2013 Rolling Stone readers voted the group “the worst band of the 1990s,” beating out a murderers’ row of Hootie and the Blowfish, Nickelback, and Hanson. Entertainment Weekly, reviewing Human Clay , the band’s bestselling album and one of the highest-selling albums of all time, bemoaned the record’s “lunkheaded kegger rock” and “quasi-spiritual lyrics that have all the resonance of a self-help manual.” Meanwhile, Robert Christgau, the self-appointed dean of American rock critics, wrote Creed off as “God-fearing grunge babies,” comparing the group unfavorably with Limp Bizkit.

The disrespect was reflected more sharply by Stapp’s own contemporaries. In the early 2000s, Dexter Holland, the frontman of the Offspring, played shows wearing a T-shirt that read “Even Jesus Hates Creed.” After leaked images of a sex tape filmed in 1999 featuring Stapp and Kid Rock and a room full of groupies made it onto the internet, Kid Rock retorted by saying that his fans didn’t care about the pornography but were appalled that he was hanging out with someone like Stapp. The comedian David Cross, who embodies the archetype of the exact sort of coastal hipsters who became the band’s loudest hecklers, dedicated swaths of his stand-up material to bird-dogging the singer. (One choice punchline: “That guy hangs out outside a junior high school girls locker room and writes down poetry he overhears.”) Then, in 2002, after a disastrous show in Chicago at which a belligerently drunk Stapp forgot the words to his songs and stumbled off the stage for 10 minutes, four attendees unsuccessfully sued the band for $2 million. Holland’s shirt didn’t go far enough—at the group’s lowest, even Creed fans hated Creed.

All this acrimony plunged Stapp into several episodes of psychic distress. His dependence on alcohol and painkillers was well documented during the band’s initial brush with success, but after Creed’s short-lived reconciliation, Stapp spiraled into a truly cavernous nadir. In 2014 the singer started posting unsettling videos to Facebook, asserting that he had been victimized by a cascading financial scam and was living in a Holiday Inn. That same year, TMZ released 911 calls made by Stapp’s wife Jaclyn claiming that he had printed out reams of CIA documents and was threatening to kill Barack Obama. But these days, Stapp—who announced a bipolar diagnosis in 2015—appears to be on much firmer ground, and the band has reportedly patched up some of those long-gestating interpersonal wounds.

But with time comes wisdom, and in 2024 neither the critical slander nor the troubling reports about Stapp’s mental state are anywhere to be found. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Creed is good, a shift that, as Stapp told Esquire , “just started happening” around 2021. The new paradigm likely solidified the next year, when Creed’s mythically patriotic post-9/11 halftime show, played on Thanksgiving in 2001, began to accrue latter-day meme status. The set was ridiculous and immaculately lip-synced by Stapp and company. Yoked, shirtless angels spin through the air, and cheerleaders pump out pompom routines synchronized with “My Sacrifice,” all while the live broadcast is interspersed with grim footage from ground zero. It’s garishly, unapologetically American, issued just before the unsavory decline of the Bush administration clicked into place. Today both of those relics—Creed and the unified national optimism—are worth getting wistful about. “This is where we peaked as a nation,” wrote football commentator Mike Golic Jr., linking to the video.

Creed nostalgia has only proliferated further since the resurrection of that halftime show. The band’s guitarist, Mark Tremonti, told the hard-rock site Blabbermouth that he’d recently noticed athletes bumping Creed as their “ go-to battle music ,” and in November, an entire stadium of Texas Rangers fans belted out “Higher” to commemorate their team’s World Series victory . Earlier this year, a viral remix of “ One Last Breath ” even began pulsing through some of the hottest parties in New York. The band has clearly crossed some sort of inscrutable cultural Rubicon and thrown reality into flux—up is down, black is white, and, due to a sublime confluence of biting irony and prostrating sincerity, Creed fucking rocks .

All this means that the inaugural edition of the “Summer of ’99” cruise is buoyed by very high stakes. It has been 12 long years since Creed last played a show, and the cruise is intended to be the dry run for a mammoth comeback tour that is scheduled for 60 dates, through summer and autumn, in basketball arenas and hockey stadiums across North America. The only remaining question is whether the band can keep it together. I’m there in a commemorative Creed Super Bowl halftime T-shirt to find out.

Several flights of stairs above O’Sheehan’s, the day before I meet Sullivan, I find Sean Patrick, a giddily beer-buzzed 34-year-old from Nashville who is standing in awe of a Coachella-sized stage that looks downright sinister on the pool deck. Creed is playing two shows this weekend, and the first is set for the very minute the boat leaves port and escapes Miami for the horizon. This means that everyone who purchased a ticket to “Summer of ’99”—which ranges from $895 for a windowless hovel to $6,381 for a stateroom with a balcony—has ascended to the top of the ship, preparing for Creed’s rebirth in a wash of Coors Light tallboys.

As of two days ago, Patrick was unaware he would be attending this cruise. Everything changed when a friend, who was on the waitlist, received a call from Norwegian Cruise Line informing him that a cabin with his name on it had miraculously become available. Patrick was suddenly presented with the opportunity to spend a tremendous amount of cash, on very short notice, to witness this reunion amid the die-hards.

Unlike Sullivan, Patrick doesn’t possess one of those highly intimate histories with the band, flecked with tales of trauma and perseverance. Still, he fell in love with Creed—even if it was only by accident.

“I think it started as a joke. The songs were good, but there was definitely a feeling of, like, Yeah, Creed! ” he tells me. “But then, next thing you know, you find yourself in your car, alone, deciding to put on Creed.”

The majority of the passengers on the Pearl have never been burdened with Patrick’s hesitance. Their relationship with Creed is genuine and free—cleansed of even the faintest whiff of irony—and, unlike Patrick, they tend to be in their late 40s and early 50s. The woman standing ankle-deep in the wading pool with a Stewie Griffin tattoo on her shin unambiguously loves Creed, and the same is probably true of whoever was lounging on a deck chair with a book, written by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, titled Get It Together: Troubling Tales From the Liberal Fringe . Two brothers from Kentucky who work in steel mills, but not the same steel mill, tell me that loving Creed is practically a family tradition: Their eldest brother, not present on the boat, initially showed them the band’s records. Tina Smith, a 48-year-old home-care aide from Texas, crowned with a black tennis visor adorned with golden letters spelling out the name of her favorite band, loves Creed so much that she embarked on this trip all by herself. “This is my first cruise and my first vacation,” she says, proudly. (Smith is already planning her next vacation. It will coincide with another Creed show.)

Passengers I encounter that are a generation younger are clearly acquainted more with Creed the meme than Creed the band. These are the people who vibe with statements like “Born too late to own property, born just in time to be a crusader in the ‘Creed Isn’t Bad’ fight”—especially when they’re arranged as deep-fried blocks of text superimposed over the face of Keanu Reeves as Neo. If the establishment brokers of culture once settled on the position that Creed sucks, then it has been met with a youth-led insurgency that seems dead-set on shifting the consensus—if for no other reason than to savor the nectar of pure, uncut taboo.

Many members of this insurgency are aboard the Pearl , and they’re caked in emblems of internet miscellany that scream out to anyone in the know. Consider the young man, traveling with his father, who is draped in a T-shirt bearing the Creed logo below a beatific image of Nicolas Cage circa Con Air , or the many fans who wander around the innards of the Pearl in matching Scott Stapp–branded Dallas Cowboys jerseys, a reference to that halftime show. In fact, the best representatives of sardonic Creed-fandom colonists might be the youngest collection of friends that I’ve met on board. They are all in their 20s, most of them work in Boston’s medicine and science sectors, and each is dressed in a custom-ordered tropical button-down dotted with the angelic face of Scott Stapp in places where you’d expect to find coconuts and banana bunches. A week before “Summer of ’99” was announced, the four of them made a pact, via group text, that if Creed were ever to reunite, they would make it out to see the band play, no matter the cost. Their fate was sealed.

“I hated Creed. I thought they were terrible,” says Mike Hobey, who, at 28, is the oldest of the posse and therefore the one who possesses the clearest recollection of Creed’s long, strange journey toward absolution. “But then I started listening to them ironically. And I was like, Oh, shit, I like them now .”

His point is indicative of a strange tension in this new age of Creed: If “the worst band of the 1990s” is suddenly good, does that mean all music is good now? Is nothing tacky? Have the digitized music discovery apparatuses—the melting-pot TikTok algorithm, the self-replicating profusion of Spotify playlists—blurred the boundaries of good and bad taste? Am I, like Hobey, incapable of being a hater anymore?

This is what I found myself thinking about when Creed took the stage, right as the Miami skies began to mellow into a late-afternoon smolder, and put on what was, without a doubt, one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen. The scalloped penthouses of Miami’s gleaming hotel district passed overhead as the Pearl ’s rudder kicked into gear, and Scott Stapp—looking jacked and gorgeous, chain on neck and chain on belt, flexing toward God in a tight black shirt—launched into “Are You Ready?,” the first song of the afternoon, his baritone sounding, somehow, exactly like it did in 1999. “Who would’ve thought, after our last show in 2012, our next show would be 12 years later, on a boat?” Stapp said. He is risen, indeed.

I later hear from Creed’s PR agent that Tremonti, the guitarist, was more anxious than he was excited to get this first show in the books. I also gather, from Stapp’s representative, that photographers are mandated to shoot the lead singer during only the first two songs of the set, before he begins to “glisten” (her word) with sweat. But if nerves were fraying, Creed conquered them with ease. The members of the band were enveloped by an audience that had paid a lot of money to see them, and in that atmosphere, they could do no wrong. They blitzed through a variety of album cuts before arriving at the brawny triptych of “Higher,” “One Last Breath,” and “With Arms Wide Open,” pausing briefly to wish Tremonti, who was turning 50, a happy birthday. (Stapp wiped away tears afterward, a genuinely touching moment, considering that during their first breakup, Tremonti had compared his years collaborating with Stapp—who was then in the throes of addiction— with surviving Vietnam .) Given Creed’s historic proximity to the Kid Rock brand of red-state overindulgence, I half expected the concert to detonate with violent pits and acrobatic beer stunts, but nothing remotely close to mayhem occurred. This crowd was downright polite—chaste, even—as if it had been stunned by the grandeur of Creed.

“He tried to dance pogo ,” says a disappointed German woman, basking in the pool after the show, gesturing toward her husband. Both of them explain to me that pogoing is the German word for “moshing” and that, even more astonishingly, Creed is huge in their native hamlet, just outside Düsseldorf.

“It’s a reunion after 12 years!” says her husband. “Everyone should be dancing pogo .”

Nothing about Creed’s music has changed in the past decade, which is to say that many of the quirks that people like Hobey once used to mock the band for were on brilliant display during its first show back. But the truth is that little of the smug hatred for the group has ever had much to do with the music itself. Creed’s first record, 1997’s My Own Prison , was nearly identical to the down-tuned angst of Soundgarden or Alice in Chains, drawn well inside the lines of alt-rock radio. (It earned a tasteful 4/5 rating from the longtime consumer guide AllMusic.)

The problems arose only after the band started writing the celestial hooks of Human Clay , solidifying its superstar association with other groups chasing the same crunchy highs with machine-learning efficiency: Nickelback, Staind, Shinedown, and so on. Post-grunge was the term music journalists eventually bestowed on this generation, and in retrospect, that was the kiss of death. Creed was suddenly positioned as the inheritor of the legacy of Kurt Cobain, the godfather of grunge, who bristled at all associations with the mainstream music industry and hired the notoriously bellicose Steve Albini to make Nirvana’s third album as sour and uncommercial as possible. Stapp, meanwhile, has long called Bono—he of the flowing locks, billionaire best friends , and residencies in extravagant Las Vegas monoliths —his “ rock god .” Creed’s sole aspiration was to become the biggest rock band in the world, and for a few years there, the group actually pulled it off. Cobain’s grave got a little colder.

Post-grunge steamrolled the rock business, reducing its sonic palette to an all-consuming minor-chord dirge. Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” went quadruple platinum in 2001, eventually sparking a furious period of retaliation from the underground. (You could make the argument that the rise of the Strokes or the White Stripes or the indie-rock boom writ large is directly tied to the vise grip Creed once held on the genre.) Before long, music aesthetes adopted a new term, rather than post-grunge , to refer to the Creed phenotype: butt rock . In fact, by the late-2000s, the hatred of Creed had been so canonized that when Slate published a rebuttal —in which critic Jonah Weiner asserted that the band was “seriously underrated”—the essay was considered so “ridiculous” and contrarian as to single-handedly inspire the viral and enduring #slatepitches hashtag, instantly prompting parodies such as “ Star Wars I, II, & III, better than Star Wars IV, V, & VI .”

But, frankly, when I revisit Weiner’s piece, many of his arguments sound remarkably cogent to modern orthodoxies. “Creed seemed to irritate people precisely because its music was so unabashedly calibrated towards pleasure: Every surging riff, skyscraping chorus, and cathartic chord progression telegraphed the band’s intention to rock us, wow us, move us,” he writes. Yes, these easy gratifications might have been unpardonable sins in the summer of 1999, capping off a decade obsessively preoccupied with anxiety about all things commercial and phony. But now even LCD Soundsystem—once the standard-bearer of a certain kind of countercultural fashionability—is booking residencies sponsored by American Express. We have all become hedonists and proud sellouts, and with Creed back in vogue, it seems as if the band’s monumental intemperance has become a feature rather than a bug.

That does not mean Stapp no longer takes himself, or his art, seriously. The singer’s earnestness—some might say humorlessness—has always been a cornerstone of Creed’s brand, and there are millions of fans who will continue to meet him at his word. They brandish personal biographies that intersect with Creed’s records; they finds lines about places with “golden streets” “where blind men see” more inspiring than corny, and many of them are etched with the tattoos to prove it. But in the band’s contemporary afterlife, when all its old context evaporates, Stapp has also attracted a community eager to treat Creed like the party band it never aspired to be—the group of licentious pleasure seekers Weiner wrote about. They’re all here, sprinkled throughout the boat, ready to drink a couple of Coronas and shred their lungs to “My Sacrifice.”

After wrapping up the first night of the cruise, Creed, along with the rest of the bands on the bill, was scheduled to administer a few glad-handing sessions on the weekend itinerary. On Saturday, Tremonti chaperoned a low-key painting session while the Pearl floated into the Bahamas at a dock already crammed with other day-trippers. (Our boat was parked next to a Disney cruise, and when we disembarked, in direct earshot of all the young families, the PA blasted Puddle of Mudd’s “She Fucking Hates Me.”) Tremonti keeps busy: The previous evening, he had judged a karaoke tournament—on the main stage—alongside 3 Doors Down lead singer Brad Arnold. Toward the end of the competition, Tremonti grabbed the microphone for a rousing cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” which I’d like to think served as a tribute to Creed’s own tenaciousness.

Stapp, on the other hand, is slated for exactly one appointment mingling with the masses: He’ll be shooting hoops with some of the more athletically oriented Creed adherents on a helipad that doubles as a basketball court near the rear of the boat. Stapp is, by far, the most famous person on board, evidenced by the security detail that stands guard on the concrete. So I take my seat on the bleachers and watch him casually drain 10 free throws in a row in mesh shorts under the piercing Atlantic sun with the distinct tang of contractually obligated restraint. Afterward, Stapp slips back into the mysterious alcoves of the ship, while an awed buzz of fans—hoping for a selfie, an autograph, or a split second of euphoric surrender—tail him until they are sealed off for good. It is the one and only time I see him cameoing anywhere but the stage, drawing a stark contrast to the other musicians on board, who flit between the casinos, restaurants, and watering holes in the guts of the Pearl .

This makes some sort of cosmic sense. Stapp, to both his detriment and credit, has never embraced the flippancy that so many other people wanted to impose on Creed. “Sometimes I wish we weren’t so damn serious,” he said in a memorable Spin cover story from 2000, at the height of his mystique. “My agenda from the beginning was to write music that had meaning and was from the heart. You can’t force the hand of the muse.” If you’ll excuse the ostentation of the sentiment, you can maybe understand how someone like Stapp might not be able to feel like himself when he’s orchestrating photo-ops around a free-throw line with that same young man dressed in his Nic Cage–themed parody Creed shirt. He seems to find nothing trivial about Creed’s music. The threat of irrelevance shall never tame him. You cannot force the hand of the muse.

Unfortunately, Stapp’s remoteness is also why Kelly Risch, a 58-year-old from Wisconsin with streaks of ringed, white-blond hair and glam-metal eye shadow, is currently fighting back tears in the Atrium, the ship’s lobby and central bar. Risch is sipping mimosas with her sister Shannon Crass, and, like so many of the others I have spoken to on this cruise, they each have matching Creed tattoos memorializing a personal catastrophe. Twenty years ago, Risch suffered a massive blood clot in her leg and almost died. Crass printed out the lyrics to the latter-day Creed ballad “Don’t Stop Dancing”—a song about finding dignity in the chaos of life—and pinned them in Crass’ intensive care unit during her recovery. Today the chorus is painted on their wrists, right above Scott Stapp’s initials.

The sisters were two of the first 500 customers to buy tickets to “Summer of ’99,” which guaranteed them a photo with the band at its cabin. This is why Risch is crying. The photo shoot came with strict rules, all of which she respected: no Sharpies, no hugs, and no cellphones. She’d hoped for a moment, though—after spending $5,000 and traveling all the way from the upper Midwest, after clinging to life with the help of Creed, and after waiting 12 long years to have the band back—to thank the singer for his comfort. But Stapp, even indoors, was wearing dark, face-obscuring sunglasses. She didn’t even get to make eye contact.

“He’s so great with the crowd. He’s so engaging onstage,” says Crass. “I think that’s why this is disappointing.”

The two sisters are determined to make the most of the rest of their vacation. The Pearl will be pulling into Miami tomorrow at 7 a.m., and there are plenty more mimosas left to drink. I tell them I’m going to speak with Stapp, and the rest of Creed, in an hour. Do they have anything they’d like me to ask?

“Tell him not to wear sunglasses during the photos,” they say.

Creed is finishing up the meet-and-greet obligations in a chilly rococo ballroom, paneled—somewhat inexplicably—with portraits of Russian royalty. The band members have been at this all morning, after a late night finishing off the second performance of their two comeback sets. A molasses churn of Creed fans, all sea-weathered and scalded with maroon sunburns, weaves through a bulwark of chairs and tables toward the pinned black curtains at the rear.

Creed has this down to an art. The band is capable of generating a photo every 30 seconds, and afterward, the fans exit back down the aisle, with beaming smiles, their brush with stardom consummated. Stapp chugs a bottle of Fiji water and holds out his hand for a fist bump after the last of those passengers disappear. A crucifix dangles above his navel, and an American flag is stitched to his T-shirt. He’s still wearing those sunglasses.

I am given just 15 minutes to ask questions, in a makeshift interview setup against the portside windows, under the watchful surveillance of the entire Creed apparatus—both PR reps, a few scurrying Sixthman operators, the photographer, and so on. I ask what their day-to-day life is like aboard the “Summer of ’99,” in this highly concentrated environment of super fans, with no obvious escape routes. Stapp says that he has spent most of the time on the cruise “resting and exercising,” while Brian Marshall, the band’s bassist, told me he executes his privilege of being one of the band’s secondary members by frequenting the sauna and steam room. Throughout the weekend, Marshall is hardly recognized.

Scott Phillips, Creed’s drummer, confirms my suspicions about the cruise’s demographics. The ticket data reveals that a good number of the passengers aboard are under 35 years old. I’m curious to know how the band members are adjusting to this new paradigm shift, and if they wish to settle common ground between the post-ironic millennials and the much more zealous Gen Xers, who bear Creed insignias on their calves and forearms.

“People are drawn to our music for different reasons,” Stapp says. “That’s probably why you have the guys you were talking about, who want to chill and drink light beer and scream ‘Creed rocks!’ and the others, who have a much deeper, emotional impact.”

“And maybe, at some point, with the light-beer guys, it does connect with them,” Phillips adds. Stapp agrees.

But, really, the reason I’m here is because I want to ask Stapp a question I’ve been curious about for the entirety of Creed’s career. The band’s bizarre odyssey, from its warm reception among youth groups across America to the bloodthirsty backlash that met its success to this current psychedelic revival, has all orbited around a single lasting question: Why is Scott Stapp so serious? Could he ever mellow out? Does he want to? Surely now is the time. If Stapp allocated some levity for himself, then so many of the bad things people have said about him would be easier to process. Who knows? Maybe he’d have an easier time getting his arms around the current state of Creed, a group that is now, without a doubt, simultaneously the coolest and lamest band in the world. Why must he make being in Creed so difficult?

“It’s just who I am,” he says. “It’s what inspires me. It’s where I come from. And it’s tough, because you have to live it. That’s the conundrum of it all. That’s the double-edged sword. If I started writing [lighter material], there would be a dramatic shift in my existence.”

There’s a break in the conversation, then Stapp asks me to identify the name of the new Taylor Swift album. The songwriter’s 11 th record has dropped like a nuclear bomb while we’ve all been out to sea, but data restrictions mean that nobody on board can access Spotify or any other streaming service. The Norwegian Pearl serves as a butt-rock pocket dimension: The biggest story in pop music simply can’t penetrate our airtight seal of Hinder, Staind, and so much Creed. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department ,” I reply. Outside of my fiancée, he is the only person on the entire cruise I will speak to about Taylor Swift.

“That’s what I feel,” he says, without a shred of artifice. “I connect with that title.”

Later that evening, I climb to the top of the Pearl for a final round of karaoke, where fans keep the spirit of 1999 alive for a few more hours. The bar is more hectic than it’s been all trip—everyone is willing to risk a hangover now that Monday is all that looms on the horizon. The host asks a guest if they intended to sing “Torn” by Creed or “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. “I assume Creed, but Natalie would be a fun surprise.”

The playlist is more diverse than I expected. We are treated to both Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’ ” and Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.” Brandon Smith, one of the very few people of color aboard the cruise, crushes Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.” A lanky kid from St. Louis unleashes a Slipknot death-growl into the microphone. A queer couple quietly slow-dances on the otherwise empty dance floor. And a 16-year-old, teeth tightened by braces, orders his last Sprite of the night. “Rockers are the most awesome people!” shouts one transcendently inebriated guest over the clamor of his Rolling Stones cover. “Creed is awesome!” On this one thing, at least, we can all agree.

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Creed Cruise Summer of '99 2024 Setlists

Date Thursday, April 18, 2024 - Monday, April 22, 2024

So far, there are setlists of 37 gigs in one venue .

Artists (A-Z)

• Norwegian Pearl, Miami, FL, USA

Thursday, April 18, 2024

8 attendees

2 attendees

3 attendees

Friday, April 19, 2024

1 attendees

5 attendees

4 attendees

Saturday, April 20, 2024

9 attendees

Sunday, April 21, 2024

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13 festival people went.

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CREED Announces 2024 ‘SUMMER OF ‘99’ Tour

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CREED Plays First Concert In 12 Years: Video, Photos

CREED played its first concert in 12 years earlier today (Thursday, April 18) as the headliners of the Summer Of '99 cruise.

The band's lineup of Scott Stapp , Mark Tremonti , Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips is performing two shows during the cruise, which is traveling from Miami to the Bahamas between April 18 and April 22. Presented by Sixthman , the "Summer Of '99" cruise lineup also includes performances by 3 DOORS DOWN , BUCKCHERRY , TONIC , FUEL , VERTICAL HORIZON , THE VERVE PIPE , TANTRIC and NINE DAYS , among others.

CREED 's performance on the deck stage of the Norwegian Pearl kicked off at 4:30 p.m. and consisted of 16 songs, beginning with "Are You Ready?" , the opening track from the band's second album, 1999's "Human Clay" .

CREED 's setlist was as follows:

01. Are You Ready? 02. Bullets 03. Torn 04. My Own Prison 05. What If 06. Never Die 07. Say I 08. Weathered 09. Overcome 10. Faceless Man 11. One 12. What's This Life For 13. With Arms Wide Open 14. Higher 15. One Last Breath 16. My Sacrifice

CREED will perform aboard a second cruise, the "Summer Of '99 And Beyond" , traveling from Florida's Port Canaveral to Nassau from April 27 to May 1. A full-fledged tour, also dubbed "Summer Of '99" tour, produced by Live Nation , will kick off on July 17 and will run through September 28.

In a recent interview with Ryan McCredden of the I-Rock 93.5 radio station, CREED frontman Scott Stapp spoke about the fact that younger generations of fans have discovered the group's music in the 12 years since he and his bandmates played their last concert. He said: "Yeah, a hundred percent. And the analytics don't lie. We've started seeing, in late 2020, CREED beginning to go viral on TikTok , Instagram and then Facebook . And then it just seemed like every two or three months… The first couple months in 2021, we went viral again, and it just kept happening every two or three months. And then you look at the analytics, and you realize that when you look at the numbers, it's three generations. And now it's gotten down into high school kids. And so, what a gift and what a blessing. And I do not take that for granted. I understand how rare that that is. And I think I can speak for all of CREED , because we've had these conversations in private, that it's something we definitely understand is a gift, it's rare and we're not taking it for granted and we're just so grateful and appreciative that this has happened. And I think we're in the nurture phase of this whole thing and not taking a single bit of it for granted and just want to just share how grateful we are and fortunate we are that all these years later [so many people are discovering our music."

Stapp went on to discuss the overwhelmingly positive response to the announcement of CREED 's first shows together in 12 years.

"I learned this from Mark [ Tremonti , CREED guitarist] the other day in a Guitar World interview that we did together," Scott said. "One thing about Mark , and I hope he doesn't get mad at me for sharing, but he's always in touch with our long-term agent from day one, Ken Fermaglich at UTA . He started with us when we were doing clubs and nobody was showing up, and he's still our agent today. And Mark checks in with him to get analytics and get numbers. And Ken shared with him that right now we are bigger in terms of sales and how things are moving than we were at our peak in 2001, 2002, which blows my mind. It still doesn't seem that way to me, but Mark made a comment. He goes, 'Oh, well, you'll see it when you step out and there's 25,000 people in front of you.' And I said, 'Don't scare me, man.' It's been a long time since I've stepped in front of an audience that big."

When McCredden suggested that "the social media world of TikTok and Instagram " played a huge part in generating interest in a CREED reunion tour, Stapp said: "I've learned in my journey in sobriety and in recovery that… I believe in God and I believe that God has a plan. And looking at this from a thousand-foot perspective, it just all just seems, to me, without a doubt that God's had a hand in it. And I'm just grateful that I'm included on the ride and I'm just not gonna take a moment for granted and [I'm gonna] try to deliver every night and give the fans what they're asking for."

Stapp , whose road to sobriety kicked off in 2014 after issues with drugs and drinking, along with thoughts of suicide, credited his recovery with providing him with the necessary tools to reach new heights with his CREED bandmates. "Absolutely," he said. "In my experience, that's the only way you really learn. And, really, you have no other option. You have to get back up, no matter what you do and deal with the consequences, of course, but learn from it and grow. And one thing I'm looking at when I reflect back on my career is it kind of happened in reverse. With CREED , it was instant. It was first single 'My Own Prison' , within 11 months, we're in arenas. But then there's been this 15-year drought for me where I went all the way back as a solo artist playing in small clubs and just duking it out, sweating it out in clubs and bars for over a decade. I mean, man, since 2005 or [2006]. So, I mean, we're talking 17, 18 years. So, it's happened in reverse, and I think that's how it needed to happen, because I think it really gave me a different perspective on how I wish I could have approached this from day one back in the day. But it is what it is, and I'm just gonna enjoy it now and be grateful for it."

CREED 's enormous success is largely due to the prolific writing team of Stapp and Tremonti , who founded the band together in 1993. Their winning combination of driving guitar riffs, rousing hooks and introspective lyrics earned them legions of loyal fans around the world. Following the release of their first two albums, the four-piece — which also included bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips — became the first band ever to have seven consecutive No. 1 singles on Billboard 's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks. CREED 's third album, "Weathered" (2001),also debuted at No. 1, and produced several popular singles, including Top Ten hits "My Sacrifice" and "One Last Breath" . Though CREED announced its breakup in 2004, the band briefly reunited in 2009 to release "Full Circle" . Heavier than their previous albums, "Full Circle" debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, proving the incredible staying power of the band.

CREED disbanded in 2004 but reunited five years later for the aforementioned "Full Circle" LP and an extensive tour. Stapp has since toured and recorded as a solo artist, although he suffered a drug-related mental breakdown in 2014 and spent several years recovering from that.

Creed on the summer of 99 Cruise first show in 12 years Posted by The Sound on Thursday, April 18, 2024

Summer of 99 Cruise with Creed! Posted by Kim Varner Brooks on  Thursday, April 18, 2024

We just saw Creed's first performance in twelve years on the Summer of '99 Cruise out of Miami! Posted by Michael Morton on  Thursday, April 18, 2024

#Creed #SummerOf99 Photo: Chuck Brueckmann Posted by Creed on  Thursday, April 18, 2024

Creed played their first show back. Here is the setlist. Posted by Jeremy Bellamy Music on  Thursday, April 18, 2024

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CREED To Reunite For SUMMER OF ’99 Cruise — Their First Public Live Performances In Over A Decade!

Legendary rockers Creed have announced their long-awaited return with SUMMER OF ’99 – an immersive rock ‘n’ roll celebration at sea highlighted by the GRAMMY® Award-winning band’s first public live performances in more than a decade.

Presented by Sixthman, the leader in festivals and music cruises for more than two decades, SUMMER OF ’99 sails April 18-22, 2024 from Miami, FL to Nassau, Bahamas aboard Norwegian Pearl. Pre-sale Signups are available now through July 26 at 11:59 pm (ET).

Pre-sales (Early Booking Times) will be available July 25-27, with some late signups available on the morning of July 28. The first 500 cabins to book will secure a cabin photo opportunity with Creed. Public On-Sales begin July 28 at 2:00 pm (ET), exclusively at summerof99cruise.com .

Three different payment options will be available, with Automated Monthly Billing allowing for a deposit as low as $200 per person through September 18 (while supplies last).

Heralded last week with a series of viral teasers that lit up social media, SUMMER OF ’99 CRUISE will see Creed – the band comprised of Scott Stapp, Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips – reuniting for the first time since 2012 for two unique live performances under the Caribbean stars on Norwegian Pearl’s Pool Deck stage. The once-in-a-lifetime festival cruise will further showcase an explosive lineup that includes Very Special Guest 3 Doors Down alongside a stacked all-star bill featuring Buckcherry, Tonic, Vertical Horizon, Fuel, The Verve Pipe, Tantric, Dishwalla, Louise Post (of Veruca Salt), Nine Days, and hosted by Eddie Trunk and the stars of AXS TV’s Power Hour (Matt Pinfield, Caity Babs, and Josh Bernstein). SUMMER OF ’99 CRUISE will also feature an exclusive live Q&A with Creed open to all guests, activities with bands and podcast hosts, panels, autograph sessions, and a very special Y2K Countdown theme party. As if that weren’t enough, all guests will receive an Autographed Commemorative Item signed by Creed prior to the event.

SUMMER OF ’99 CRUISE guests will enjoy all the incredible amenities available aboard Norwegian Pearl, including fully stocked bars at (almost) every corner, tasty dining options, the Pool Deck (with multiple hot tubs), the Pearl Club Casino, Mandara Spa, Body Waves Fitness Center, Sports Court, and much more.

Beyond the onboard experience, guests will have the chance to enjoy a shore excursion to Nassau, Bahamas – the ultimate vacationer’s paradise with its laid-back vibes and perfect white-sand beaches, palm trees covered in coconuts, and refreshing, crystal-clear waters. Please note: Shore excursions will not be available until 4-6 weeks prior to sailing. Cruisers will be able to book excursions upon receipt of their official booking number.

ABOUT CREED:

The GRAMMY® and American Music Award-winning CREED formed in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1994. The more than one billion streams between “Higher,” “My Sacrifice,” “One Last Breath,” “With Arms Wide Open,” and “My Own Prison” on Spotify alone is a testament to the band’s enduring power. Nearly 30 years after CREED’s formation, the ubiquitous anthems composed by singer Scott Stapp and guitarist Mark Tremonti , performed for millions of fans around the world together with drummer Scott Phillips and bassist Brian Marshall, are part of modern rock and alternative’s DNA. My Own Prison (1997) is one of the late 20th century’s biggest debuts. Human Clay (1999) and Weathered (2001) both entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1. Full Circle (2009), released after a hiatus, bowed at No. 1 on the Top Rock, Hard Rock, and Alternative charts and No. 2 on the Billboard 200. With more than 53 million albums sold worldwide, CREED stands alongside iconic bands like Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica as one of an elite few hard rock outfits to earn RIAA Diamond-certified status, for more than 11 million sales of Human Clay in the United States.

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There's truly a cruise style and ship for everyone, and that has never been more the case than in 2024, as vessels continue to come in an array of sizes – from riverboats and expedition vessels to the largest-ever mega ships. And it's not an exaggeration to say some are loaded with so many activities that you couldn't possibly enjoy them all in a single sailing.

Families will find plenty of options and activities onboard big ships, which have transformed cruising, making the vessels as exciting as the destinations themselves. The Caribbean is always a great option for families, offering lots of sunshine, great beaches and culture. Alaska, famous for its incredible vistas and abundant wildlife, is also a solid family cruise option. Consider cruise brands such as Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line, Disney Cruise Line, MSC Cruises and even Celebrity Cruises and Holland America Line for a great multi-generational voyage.

Or on the smaller side, by comparison, river cruising remains a hot ticket item this year, with exciting routes that send eager guests down the Danube or Rhine rivers in Europe or to lesser-frequented locations, like the Mekong River in Cambodia or Vietnam, or soon the Magdalena River in Colombia. Popular river cruises embark in timeless cities like Amsterdam, Budapest and Lisbon. River cruise lines to consider encompass Viking, AmaWaterways, Avalon Waterways, Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours, Emerald Cruises, Tauck, Uniworld Boutique River Cruises and Riverside Luxury Cruises, as well as American Cruise Lines for a domestic alternative.

If you're an adventurer at heart, an expedition cruise might be best for you. These voyages, often onboard small ships (only a few hundred passengers tops), offer an intimate experience that brings passengers right up next to glaciers, whales, penguins and iguanas. Ships visit tiny spots all over the world – from pole to pole – including the Arctic, Alaska, Australia, Greenland, the Galapagos and, of course, Antarctica. Passengers will spend their time zodiacing, kayaking, hiking, biking and exploring with expert guides and knowledgeable naturalists. Expedition travelers love cruise lines such as Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic, UnCruise Adventures, Silversea, HX (formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions), Ponant and Quark Expeditions, as well as an ever-expanding list that now even extends to Seabourn and Viking.

But for the most decadent form of travel, luxury cruises offer all-inclusive experiences onboard small to median-sized ships (usually under a thousand passengers) with perks like butlers, high-end amenities and personalized, intuitive service, not to mention the finest dining at sea. Ships often feature luxury touches like marble and crystal decor, intimate spaces and beautiful spas. Because luxury ships tend to be on the smaller size, they can often reach off-the-beaten-path destinations bigger ships simply cannot access -- ports like St. Tropez or Guadeloupe. If you're looking for a luxury cruise, consider Crystal, Seabourn, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Silversea, Explora Journeys, Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and upcoming Four Seasons Yachts.

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Endless cruise set to tour the world – and it'll always be summer

U nder a blazing blue sky in the legendary Harland & Wolff shipyard in Northern Ireland, where the Titanic was once built, the modestly sized Villa Vie Odyssey sits in dry dock, dwarfed by the huge 12-deck Caribbean party boat that looms beside it.

But when it sets sail on May 30, after intense refurbishment and cosmetic work, this 31-year-old ship will be one of the hottest new innovations in the cruise industry. It will be one of only two residential cruise ships in operation – and its world tour will have successfully launched where others have very dramatically failed.

Around 300 passengers – or "residents" – will be on board to start the voyage from Belfast which will visit 425 ports in 147 countries across all seven continents, circumnavigating the globe every three-and-a-half years.

For this is to be a cruise without end, where passengers can choose between pay-as-you-go and ownership options, spending as little as 35 days or the whole of their natural life on board, with the ship itself being replaced around every 15 years.

1,301 days of summer

The relatively small size of the 924-capacity vessel means it's capable of docking in the heart of destinations, with port stays ranging from a leisurely two to seven days, rather than the typical "hit and run" cruise ship approach. These long-term cruise residents do, after all, have all the time in the world.

The global itinerary , broken down into 16 "segments" over 1,301 days, has been carefully designed so that it catches the spring-summer seasons in both the northern and summer hemisphere. Residents, if they so choose, may never feel the winter chill again.

There's no commitment to stay on board for the full three and a half years, or to get off when that's over. Residents can pick and choose between segments as they like. South America is the most popular part and the transatlantic section the least, Villa Vie Residences CEO Mikael Petterson told the dry dock press tour Sunday.

Learning from the past

Takeup has been high. Of the 295 cabins available at launch, 270 have been sold, with some residents choosing to join later in the voyage. Petterson expects all cabins to be fully booked by the end of the Northern European segment, which ends in August, and more will be opened up during segment two, which is Greenland to Miami.

"We have a significant amount of people that want to come and see the ship themselves before committing, for obvious reasons," says Petterson. It's been a long journey to this upcoming launch and this is not the first venture of its kind.

In November 2023, Life at Sea Cruises canceled its three-year voyage shortly before departure, having not secured a ship, leaving passengers stranded and pursuing refunds of tens of thousands of dollars.

Villa Vie was started by Petterson and other former members of the Life at Sea executive team who quit when the original team split in May 2022. He says they've been able to learn from the mistakes of those who've gone before.

Conservative option

The ship now known as Villa Vie Odyssey was constructed in 1993 and – as the 495-cabin MS Braemar – was purchased from Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines last year for $13 million. A further $12 million has been spent on the refurb and getting it fully recertified and up to standard.

"At $25 million all in, it's less than half of what anyone else has been trying," says Pettersen. "The ship is much cheaper, the financing is in place, the equity's in place, the sales are more than twice what Life at Sea had, so we're just in a completely different position."

The reason the team chose this conservatively sized and priced vessel is "because we wanted to make sure we could pull it through," he says. "The challenge has all been with the technical and getting her from asleep to awake. We're largely there. We're moving onto the hotel and that's the easy bit," he laughs.

The boat is wearing its age well and it's not all been an uphill struggle. In 2009, it was enlarged during a refurb, and was renovated again in 2019, with many of the public areas getting a stylish new face.

"A lot of these spaces were only in service for four months since they were last revitalized, so we haven't had to do anything to them," explains Pettersen. There are plans to keep updating spaces after launch, too – like a lived-in home rather than an off-the-peg hotel.

Under $33,000 a year

As the Odyssey, the ship will have eight decks, a wraparound promenade and an enlarged pool – combining the Braemar's two, so that passengers can swim laps. And when that feels too energetic, there are two Jacuzzis to lounge in.

There will be three restaurants, five bars and lounges, a spa, a fitness center, a library and a medical center. Then there's the spacious business center with sea views, internet from Starlink and Viasat 3, and an "interactive culinary center" for those missing the kitchen, as well as for cooking classes.

There will also be a golf program with a simulator on board and outings to greens around the world.

It's also surprisingly affordable, as round-the-world cruise experiences go. Over on megayacht The World – the other residential cruise ship – prices start at $2 million a year. But on Villa Vie Odyssey, an annual rental works out at less than $32,485, while a three-year stint will set you back $97,455.

An inside cabin is $89 per person per day, outside cabins start at $119 per person per day, and balconies at $199. All food and soft drinks are included, plus alcohol at dinner, as well as Wi-Fi and medical visits (but not procedures or medicines). There'll also be 24/7 room service, weekly housekeeping and bi-weekly laundry service at no extra cost.

Endless Horizons

Meanwhile, buying entails paying outright for a cabin – starting at $99,000 for an internal one, $149,000 for an outdoor and $249,000 for a balcony. Owners must then pay monthly fees starting at $1,750 per person, $2,500 per person, or $4,000 per person respectively – or $21,000, $30,000 or $48,000 per year.

Owners can then rent it out to other people themselves (for no charge) or through Villa Vie for a fee.

Those buying a cabin will be guaranteed it for 15 years, which is the estimated life of the ship. And then there's the newly introduced Endless Horizons program, where residents make a one-time payment of ​​$299,000 for lifetime access to a cabin, transferring ships when the cruise does.

Prices are based on double occupancy. Solo travelers get discounts of 30% for an internal cabin, 20% for an outside one and 10% for a balcony.

There are also a lot more solo travelers than one might expect on a typical vacation cruise – 50% of this first takeup are single. In the under-40s range, there are a lot more single male travelers than female, but post-retirement age, there are more women. The average age of traveler is 58 and 80% are from the United States, with Canadians being the next biggest group.

Floating community

A few of them are on board during the dry dock tour, such as John and Melody Hennessee, flamboyantly coordinated in hats and vests. They've made headlines around the world for selling their worldly goods to live on cruise ships for the rest of their lives, and they were there Sunday to plan out their triple-cabin with the team.

As these are people's homes, there are generous customization options afforded to residents, with requests accommodated where possible. There are a small number of large suites available to the ritziest of passengers – the biggest has a price tag of $900,000.

New Zealand couple Mark and Katrina Howard, in hard hats to get their first look at their home for the next three and a half years, have no problem with the downsizing requiring to fit their belongings into a two-person cabin. "We've done motor-homing," says Katrina.

As for cruise ships, "we met on one in 1994, out of Auckland," she says, and now "we'll be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary on board" Villa Vie Odyssey.

It's just one of the many celebrations, landmark moments and life-changing events that are set to take place among this floating community of strangers who are about to become close and near-permanent neighbors. Whatever waves or storms lie ahead, the summer-led itinerary ensures the sun will largely be shining.

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Humboldt Bay Harbor Cruise celebrates 114 years of beloved traditions

by Ashley Harting

Thursday was the Humboldt Bay Harbor Cruise's (HBHC) 114th birthday!

Since 1910, HBHC has been a beloved tradition for Humboldt County residents as well as tourists.

The Madaket Cruise offers 3 different cruise options, an informative narrated cruise, an eco/wildlife cruise, and a cocktail cruise.

With prices continuing to rise in the Northcoast, the Madaket Cruise team is happy to say they have not raised prices for school field trips in decades.