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Male Dancers Who Can Sing Wanted For Seabourn Cruise Contracts Starting October 2024

Male-identifying Dancers who can sing wanted to feature in all-new productions aboard the ultra-luxury fleet of Seabourn. Rehearsals in Portugal start in October 2024. Please apply via your profile for further information....

Male & Female Vocalists That Move Well, Dancers & Resident Choreographer For World Cruise Contracts

Lead Vocalists, Vocal Captain, Dancers & Resident Choreographer wanted onboard exciting new world cruise contracts! Auditions: London / Surrey UK Rehearsals: From July 1st Contract Duration: September 2024 - June 2025 (dates subject to change) Compensation: * Lead Vocalists: $5000 per month * Vocal Captain: $6000...

Headline Act Cruise Ship Contracts $1500 - $2500+ (£1000 - £2000+) Per Week

If you are a Singer, Musician (Solo / Multi Instrumentalist), Comedian, Stage Magician, Illusionist, Juggler, Pianist Singer, Ventriloquist, Speciality Act, Hypnotist, Tribute Act, Tribute Band or any other Act looking to perform as a Headline Act (performing your act in the main theatre), our team here at Entertainers...

General Performer/Musician Required For Ongoing Opportunities - Virtual Submissions Accepted

Seeking General Performers/Musicians for various opportunities - Resorts, Cruise Ships, Dance Company, Theme Parks, Corporate & Special Events & Workshops Would like to hear from any of the following: Singer who moves well Singer/Dancer Singer/Instrumentalist Dancer Dancer/Speciality Skills Dancer with Circus Sk...

Musicians & Singers Required For Cruise Ship And Theme Park Opportunities - Auditions in Dublin, 11 June 2024

Musicians and singers wanted for well-known cruise ship and theme park opportunities. For further information please apply using your profile....

Musicians & Singers Required For Cruise Ship And Theme Park Opportunities - Auditions in Galway, 10 June 2024

Male & Female Singers Required For Luxury Cruise Ship Opportunities - Auditions In Paris, 3 July 2024

Join our live audition for Singers in Paris, and take your career to the next level with a contract on a luxurious cruise liner. Register now to receive exact location and details via email....

Singers, Bands, Dancers, Musicians, DJs, Comedians, Magicians & Speciality Acts Wanted For Entertainment Agency

Singers, Bands, Dancers, Musicians, DJs, Comedians, Magicians, Speciality Acts and everything in between wanted for cruise ship opportunities. Please apply for further information....

Male & Female Singers Wanted For AIDA Cruises - Auditions In London 3 & 4 June 2024

AIDA Cruises are seeking lead soloist Singers with styles of pop/rock/modern musical theatre, with a talent for harmonies for production shows. The contracts begin with a rehearsal period of between 5 and 7 weeks in Hamburg or onboard, followed by up to 6 month contracts. Male/Female/Non-Binary performers encouraged ...

Male Production Singers Wanted For MSC Cruises - Online Submissions

Casting is underway for Male Production Singers with exceptional high tenor performing skills and strong movement ability for MSC Cruises. For further information, please apply using your profile....

Musicians & Singers Wanted For Cruise Ship Vacancies - Auditions In New York City - July 10th 2024

Musicians and Singers required for Rolling Stone Lounge on Holland America Line. Please apply for further details....

Piano Singers, Instrumental/Vocal Duos, Solo Instrumental/Vocal Musicians Wanted For Cruise Ship Lounge Bars

The Entertainment Consultancy has been supplying cruise lines worldwide for many years. We are seeking excellent lounge/lobby/bar entertainers. Must have large repertoire of material to entertain international passengers. Excellent English language skill is essential, as is good humour and the ability to really "ent...

Musicians And Vocalists Wanted For BB King's Blues Club Aboard Holland America Cruise Line

BB King's Blues Club are seeking Male & Female Vocalists, Guitar Players, Bass Players, Drummers, Keyboard Players, Tenor Sax Players, and Trumpet Players for contracts aboard Holland America Cruise Line. Please apply for more information....

Musicians Wanted For Individual & Group Musical Acts On Luxury Cruise Ships $2800+ Per Month

Seeking the following quality musicians to perform aboard luxury cruise lines: Guitarist/Vocalists; Piano Bar Entertainers; Jazz/Swing Trios and Quartets (with vocals); Duos (both vocal/instrumentalists); 5-6 piece Party Bands; We are also auditioning strong improvisers and sight-readers on the following instrume...

Male & Female Dancers & Guitarists Required For Cruise Ship Contracts

Male & Female Dancers and Guitarists wanted for renowned cruise ship company's brand-new productions! One year contracts September 2024 to September 2025. If you would like to find out more, please apply with your profile....

Entertainers Wanted For Talent Agency

Entertainment agency seeking Singers, Dancers, Musicians, Bands, Actors, Speciality Acts, Extreme Artists and everything in-between. For further information, please apply using your profile....

Entertainers Wanted For Entertainment Agency - Online Submissions

Entertainment agency seeking Singers, Dancers, Acrobats, Speciality Acts, Comedians, Models, and everything in between! A chance to travel the world and be part of existing productions or showcase your skills in one-off events for the most iconic venues and discerning clients. For further information, please use your...

Male Dancers, Male & Female Singers & Singer Dancers Wanted For Norwegian Cruise Line - Online Submissions

Norwegian Creative Studios are seeking Dancers, Singers, and Singers that Dance. - Male-Identifying Dancers - Male-Identifying Singer/Dancers - Female Identifying Singer/Dancers - Mezzo-Belter Vocalists - Tenor/Baritenor Vocalists Please apply for further information....

Female Soulful Singers That Can Dance Wanted

Female Singers that move well wanted for a fully staged floor show planned to appear as a theatre show, in concert, for international guest cruising, holiday parks, music festivals and for corporate and private parties. Seeking performers who can replicate the look and sound of groups like The Supremes, Martha Reeves ...

Male Singers Wanted For Cruise Ship Opportunities - 7 - 9 Month Contracts

Cruise ship contracts for Male Singers onboard a stunning fleet. For full details, please apply....

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Royal Caribbean Productions

Broadway shows. world-class performers., upcoming auditions.

Royal Caribbean Productions holds auditions year round in 66 cities throughout the world. We encourage you to attend one of our live auditions, but if you are not able to attend, we invite you to submit your information online by creating a profile. Registration will take place at the audition location so no pre-registration is required. Please note that you must be 18 years of age or older to be hired. Upcoming audition information and dates are always subject to change. The website will always have the most up to date information.

• All Shows Cats CATS and Touch the Sky Featured Singer and Lead Vocalists General Audition General Musical Audition Grease (Harmony of the Seas) Grease (Independence of the Seas) Hairspray Liberty of the Seas: Saturday Night Fever Mamma Mia! Oasis of the Seas: CATS Production Shows Royal Caribbean Broadway and West End Musicals Saturday Night Fever Signature Production Shows The Effectors THE WIZARD OF OZ We Will Rock You
• All Talents Artistic Swimmers Ballroom Couples Dancer/Vocalist Dancers Dancers Who Sing Divers Ensemble Featured Singer/Vocalists Featured Singers Featured Singers & Lead Vocalists Featured Singers and Lead Vocalists Featured Singers/Vocalists Female Dancers Hip Hop Dancers Male Commercial Dancers Male Dancers Musicians Pop Vocalists Principal Singer/Actor Principals Principals and Ensemble Principals and Ensemble Performers Showgirls Singers Vocal Directors Vocalists who Dance

cruise ship musicians

No agency fees. ever..

Your next gig could be ocean-sized

We hire cruise ship musicians from all over the planet—soloists, bands, instrumentalists and more. Hone your craft on board the world’s most luxurious cruise ships. You could be next. Apply now for free.

Do what you love

The view from the stage has never looked this good

See the world

Now booking cruise ship bands in Asia, Australia, the Caribbean and more

Live for free

Free food, free room, free travel… Save your money

Get paid to play

Earn top dollar alongside other professional musicians

Ready to Live the Cruise Ship Musician Life?

If you’re looking for an adventure, it’s the best-paid vacation you’ll ever have.

Here’s what just a few of our musicians have to say

"Working for Landau Music was a BLAST! I made memories that I will never forget. If you're wondering whether a position on board one of Landau Music's ships is for you, trust me, you'll be in great hands!"

“The last contract was even better than the first. The musicians were great, the people I worked with were fantastic, opportunities for creative expression abounded, and the itineraries were phenomenal."

"Landau Music and the cruising experience has truly changed my life forever and those who have the fortunate opportunity to audition and work with Landau Music will one day understand the enthusiasm that I cannot even express through words."

"I have worked on cruise ships for less than two years and have already seen half of the world and have had a great time doing it, meeting some great players and friends along the way. I'm glad to have found an agent who is as responsive and sympathetic to my goals as Landau Music."

"A typical day would be waking up, traveling to a beach to snorkel or go sight-seeing for 4 hours, then capping my night off doing what I love: playing music! Then wake up to do it all over again! Other musicians with other agencies told me how jealous they were of how good I had it with Landau."

"I can accurately say that Landau Music has definitely improved the quality of my life. The travel, the adventure, the money and most of all the people have improved the quality of my life more than I could have imagined. Thank you Michael and staff for all the work you've done for me and so many deserving musicians."

Only the Best Cruise Lines

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Welcome to My Office

Some of our cruise ship entertainers, hard at work

Is this for real?

You're not dreaming. We're placing qualified musicians on luxury cruises all around the world...right now! And when we say luxury, we're talking "floating Ritz Carlton". Picture the best room in Vegas...with the best view in the world.

And I really get paid?

Yes. You’re paid a competitive salary and you get to spend your down time in exotic locations around the world—beaches in the Caribbean, excursions in Alaska, and more…

But I have to pay to get there, right?

No. We fly you there and back—and if you’re interested, we can even make sure you’re lined up on another one before you come home.

Do I have to pay for anything?

The only thing you have to pay for is a pre-employment medical. (Oh, and maybe some fancy clothes for formal nights).

Wait… I can get off the ship?

Yes, that’s the best part. If your ship goes to Egypt, so do you. Thailand? Yep. Argentina? You got it. Aruba? For sure! When the passengers disembark, you’re welcome to do so too. Most musicians play at night, which means your days are free to explore the world.

How do I qualify?

There are only a few rules. You need to be 21. You need to commit to a continuous contract. You need a passport and possibly a visa. You need to pay for a pre-employment medical. Most of all, you need to be good.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a cruise ship entertainer? Apply now

Luxury cruise lines are looking for musicians and bands right now! Several lines will only work with Landau Music: to get to them, go through us. Get paid to play while you see the world… For free!

Jane McDonald — things you didn't know about the performer and TV presenter

Jane McDonald shot to fame singing on a cruise ship, but what else is there to know about her?

Jane McDonald has become a national treasure ever since singing her way into viewers' hearts over 20 years ago.

The entertainer was turned into an overnight celebrity after appearing on the 1998 BBC docusoap The Cruise and, as well as enjoying a successful music career, Jane has gone on to become an award-winning TV presenter, panelist, and author.

Yorkshire-born Jane is also the face of Channel 5 series Jane McDonald: My Yorkshire , as well as travelling further afield for T he Seychelles with Jane McDonald , Cape Verde with Jane McDonald , Jane McDonald's Magical Morocco and On Safari with Jane McDonald.

Most recently the star has also hosted The British Soap Awards 2023.

Jane's very proud of her roots, but what else is there to know about the singing sensation? Here are a few facts you may not know about the popular star...

Jane McDonald started out performing on the pub and club circuit

Born and bred in Wakefield, Jane began her singing career the way many aspiring artists do - by performing on the pub and club circuit. Accompanied by her dad Peter, she toured venues all over Northern England and had to provide her own equipment. 

After Peter passed away in 1993, Jane landed a job singing on the Zenith cruise ship, and later went to work on the Century. Her talent clearly impressed and she was promoted to the headline act on the Century's sister ship, the Galaxy. Then at the age of 35 came a call that changed Jane's life forever when producer Chris Terrill asked if she'd be interested in starring in his new BBC docusoap, The Cruise . 

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She was one of the first reality TV stars 

Episode one of The Cruise aired on Jan. 13 1998 and followed a group of staff on board the Galaxy as it made its maiden voyage to the Caribbean. Entertainer Jane instantly became the standout star of the fly-on-the-wall show and captured viewers with her down-to-earth personality and impressive vocals. The Cruise averaged an audience of 13 million for its 12-episode run and made Jane a household name. 

Now propelled into the world of celebrity, she was signed by independent record label Focus Music International, and released her self-titled debut album in June 1998. The album of classic covers went straight to Number One, remaining there for three weeks, and achieved platinum status by staying in the Top 10 chart for two months. 

She got married on TV 

1998 was certainly a year to remember for Jane, as she also got hitched to Danish fiancé Henrik Brixen. The couple met onboard the Galaxy, where Henrik was working as a plumbing engineer and began a whirlwind romance. Due to Jane's soaring popularity, their wedding was featured in a special spin-off episode, The Cruise Special: Jane Ties the Knot , and watched by millions. After becoming man and wife, Henrik jacked in his former occupation and started managing Jane's singing and primetime TV presenting career. 

However, the fairytale wasn't to be and four years later Jane and Henrik announced they'd gone their separate ways. In an interview with The Mirror in 2018, Jane revealed for the first time it was Henrik's decision to walk away from their marriage. Speaking about their split she said: "We’d come to a point where Henrik had made quite a few enemies and he said ‘If I don’t leave, you are never going to have a career.’ And this is why I never talk about Henrik in a bad light at all because he was the one that walked out of the marriage to save my career.” 

She found love again with her teenage sweetheart

A post shared by Jane McDonald (@thejanemcdonald) A photo posted by on

When Jane was a 17-year old barmaid she started dating Eddie Rothe, the former drummer of 60s band, The Searchers . The couple lived together for a brief period but split up due to Eddie's, whose real name is Walter, hectic rock and roll lifestyle. 

After 27 years apart and marriages to other people, Jane and Eddie, who was also a drummer in Liquid Gold, reconnected during a chance meeting when he was appearing on ITV's This Morning and she was filming in the same studios.

Jane recalled her happy reunion with Eddie in an interview with The Mirror : "My make-up artist Donna dragged me to the This Morning green room, and I just walked in and he picked me up and swung me around. And that was it." Having found their way back to one another, the soulmates set up home together in Wakefield and Eddie popped the question to Jane on Christmas Eve 2008. 

Tragically, Eddie passed away in April 2021 aged 67 after a short battle with lung cancer, and Jane nursed him during his illness. Speaking in an emotional interview on Loose Women , her first following Eddie's death, Jane expressed how grateful she was they had enjoyed thirteen blissful years together.

She had a close relationship with her parents

Jane's a grafter, and no doubt inherited her work ethic from her parents. While her mum, Jean ran a boarding house, her dad Peter worked as a miner and chimney sweep. After having to take early retirement due to injury, Peter then became his teenage daughter's roadie, driving Jane from gig to gig in his battered old van. 

In an interview with The Scotsman Jane remembered their adventures together: "I sat on my speakers in the back of my dad’s van, a rickety old Toyota covered in rust, driving for miles and hours up and down the M60 and M62. We did that for 15 years. It was great and we both loved it. That’s where the passion comes from." 

Sadly Peter, who originally hailed from Fife in Scotland, never got to see Jane become famous, but Jean was there to give their daughter encouragement. After living together until she was 45, Jane still popped back to her mum's every Sunday for a roast dinner and was heartbroken when Jean died in 2018.

She famously told off Gary Barlow

Jane is immensely proud of having been a cruise ship singer and doesn't take kindly to anyone criticizing her former career. Back in 2011, The X-Factor judge Gary Barlow found himself in Jane's firing line when he remarked contestant Sami Brookes' rendition of Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You , made her sound like a 'cruise ship singer'. 

Sami stuck up for herself by saying she loved cruise ship singers and would be delighted to do a duet with Jane McDonald. Later on the live Xtra-Factor show, Jane called in to speak to Sami and told her not to take any notice of Gary's snide comments. 

Reflecting on the exchange years later, Jane commented: "When I was on the cruise ships, that was a success for me. I was traveling the world, with a brilliant orchestra, costumes. That’s why I got a bit angry with Gary Barlow. The whole industry has a downer on cruise ship singing, but most X-Factor people wouldn’t get through a cruise ship audition!” All is clearly forgiven and forgotten as Jane joined Gary for a spectacular duet of A Million Dreams on #TheCroonerSessions! 

Her TV series won a Bafta 

Jane returned to the seas in 2017, fronting a new travel series, Cruising with Jane McDonald . The Channel 5 documentary saw Jane embark on a series of adventures onboard some of the world's largest and most luxurious ocean and river cruisers. 

Once again, Jane's warmth and humour was a hit with viewers, and the series went on to scoop the Best Features category at the 2018 BAFTAs, beating the likes of Antiques Roadshow and The Secret Life of the Zoo . When her name was read out, a clearly gobsmacked Jane jumped to her feet and looked around in a state of excitement and shock. Taking to the stage to collect her accolade, the presenter produced a piece of paper revealing someone else had written her acceptance speech because she was so convinced she wouldn't win. Jane's endearing reaction had her fans taking to social media, labelling her achievement as 'iconic'.

Jane's success story is still continuing

Following the huge sales of her debut album, Jane was signed by acclaimed label Universal Music and released two albums under them. In 2009 she released her first album under her own label, titled Jane , and it achieved silver status within six weeks. Other impressive achievements on Jane's career CV include having sell-out concerts at the London Palladium and Royal Albert Hall and performing to a full house at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. 

In 2015, she played the iconic role of Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS at Blackpool Opera House. The star marked 20 years in the spotlight with a 'Celebrate 20' tour, and in 2019 Jane reflected on her remarkable life in the release of her autobiography, Riding the Waves - My Story . 

Jane McDonald's fact file

Frequently asked questions about the singer and TV presenter...

How old is Jane McDonald?

Jane McDonald is 60, she was born on 4th April 1963.

Is Jane McDonald married?

Jane has been married twice. Her first marriage to a man named Paul was between 1987-88. She went on to wed plumbing engineer Henrik Brixen, but they split in 2002.

Does Jane McDonald have any children?

Jane McDonald does not have any children.

Where was Jane McDonald born?

Jane McDonald was born and raised in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

How tall is Jane McDonald?

Jane McDonald is five foot four.

Twitter: @thejanemcdonald

Instagram: @thejanemcdonald

We work hard to ensure that all information is correct. Facts that change over time, such as age, will be correct, to the best of our knowledge, at the time of the last article update.

Laura has been a journalist for over a decade, writing about soaps, TV entertainment, fashion, beauty, and food. After graduating from university, she started her career working at a national soap and TV magazine. During her seven-year stint there she joined the cast of Emmerdale for a tour around the famous village, partied with soap stars at awards bashes, interviewed her acting idol David Suchet, and sat in the front row of Strictly Come Dancing . 

Her heart lies with the soaps, and her all-time favourite character has to be EastEnders ' Pat Butcher - no one rocked a big earring quite like her. She's also a huge fan of detective crime dramas, particularly old school Inspector Morse, Endeavour, and adaptations of Agatha Christie's Marple and Poirot. When she's not writing, she loves a spot of second-hand shopping and going on adventures with her young son.

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I work as a performer on a cruise ship. Being away from home can be hard but it's allowed me to travel the world.

• Rachael Hudson has worked as a singer on major cruise liners since July 2009.
• The lack of home comforts can be hard, but the job also has many good points, she said.
• Hudson has had nine contracts with Royal Caribbean Cruises. She lives near Manchester, UK.

This is an as-told-to essay, based on a conversation with Rachael Hudson. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Insider has verified her employment details and the length of time she has worked in the industry.

As a singer on board a cruise ship, I'm well looked-after and stay in some very nice accommodation but being away from home for long periods has its ups and downs.

It's a very fun job, but cruise performers have to work hard to get to where we are. Over the years, working on a cruise ship has become work that's much more sought after.

Related stories

I auditioned for jobs in London's theatre district, but there wasn't very much work. I ended up working on cruise ships and I've been doing it for more than 13 years. I've done nine contracts over that period for Royal Caribbean, which have mainly been about eight to 10 months. I also did a short one, which was four months.

The main difference I've noticed over the years is how much connectivity has improved. It's much easier to keep in touch with people.

It was hard for me when I was starting out at 23. You had to book a time slot to speak to loved ones and make sure that you could fit it in with time-zone differences. Whereas now you've got your phone with you all the time and we can buy internet access. It's not always great when you're out at sea but you still have access all the time.

There are double, maybe even triple the number of ships there were back when I started. They are also much larger. In a way, it's good because there are more opportunities for people.

In the last few years, the industry has changed dramatically because of COVID-19. There are more restrictions in place for safety and health — it's highly important that everybody is healthy — but even just the changes that have happened in the past few years have been a big shift.

Obviously, it's nice to travel the world. I've been able to see lots of places that I probably wouldn't have without this job.

One of the things that I always find hard, though, is not being able to get home comforts. You have to come prepared and take everything you think you're going to want with you. That's because it's easy to forget that you can't always get the same things that you get at home.

I never want to completely draw a line under the job because it's been such a massive part of my life. I'm in a position where I'm happy to have a bit of time at home because my last contract was essentially a year. 

Making an official decision to say goodbye to the cruise industry would be hard. It's been a massive part of my life and it's got so many good points. My age is probably something that I'm getting more bothered about now — but I think singers have a little bit longer than some other cruise workers. I could essentially do this now until I was 50.

Watch: This is what it takes to be a cruise ship performer

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Guitar vocalists, piano bar entertainers, cocktail pianists, steel pan players, guitar/ piano intermissionist and also DJ’s. These soloists love interacting with an audience and are confident at creating high-energy memorable experiences, without the help of a band or backing tracks. If this sounds like you – we can help you get that dream job.

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Everything to Know About The Voice Season 25 Finalist Nathan Chester

Let's take a look back at the journey of the impressive Team Legend contestant.

Can you believe Season 25 of  The Voice  is almost over?! The final crop of singers includes the likes of Bryan Olesen (Team Legend), Josh Sanders (Team Reba), Asher HaVon (Team Reba), Karen Waldrup (Team Dan + Shay), and Nathan Chester (Team Legend). All Team Chance Artists were eliminated before the Finale. 

How to Watch

Watch  The Voice  on NBC and  Peacock.  

RELATED:  Why Nathan Chester & Bryan Olesen’s “A+++” Battle Made the Coaches Quote Gladiator

With the latest chapter of the hit competition series coming to a close,  NBC Insider  has assembled primers on each of the five finalists, chronicling their respective journeys across the season. Let's dig into the journey of Mr. Nathan Chester!

Everything to know about  The Voice  Season 25 contestant Nathan Chester

Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, Nathan Chester is a professional cruise ship singer alongside his girlfriend, Emily Viancourt , with whom he founded Em&N Productions . He also enjoys a good cheesecake every now and then.

Chester kicked off the second episode of the season with a stirring cover of Al Green's "Take Me to the River" for his Blind Audition, which scored two Chair Turns from John Legend and Dan + Shay . "I want to bring back James Brown-style Motown," explained Chester before choosing to board Team Legend.

"Oh, I love Nathan," the veteran Coach proclaimed. "What a soulful, powerful voice. I love that he's so committed to this throwback, soulful style. You can just tell he's not afraid of the moment. I think Nathan's gonna go far."

RELATED:  Every Blind Audition on  The Voice  Season 25

Chester subsequently won his Battle  against Bryan Olesen, though the latter was saved by a Playoff Pass. Legend decided the two contestants would sing a duet of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" because "they can belt, they're soulful, they're powerful," he explained. "This song has that power that I know these artists can deliver."

When it came to Knockouts , Chester beat out Val T. Webb with a cover of "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" by Elvin Bishop. "Nathan, it felt cinematic, the way you delivered the performance," Legend said. "It felt like we were in a movie about that era of music and you were playing this amazing character that you understood. Really powerful."

The singer showed off his physical prowess (and earned a spot in the Lives Shows) during the Playoffs when he performed a surprise split while belting out "Oh! Darling!" by The Beatles. Legend dubbed it Chester's "best performance yet," going on to add, "You do it with such conviction and enthusiasm and such great execution. It's not all tricks, it's not all splits, it's not all the outfit. You can sing, man. You made an emphatic statement about you deserving to be in the Live Shows."

Throughout the Live broadcasts, he has sung "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" by Jackie Wilson; "Try a Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding; and "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure (a three-way cover alongside Maddi Jane and Bryan Olesen).

Where did Nathan Chester finish on The Voice Season 25?

Nathan Chester made it to the Final Five contestants, but finished at No.4. The season was won by singer Asher Havon.

How to Watch The Voice Season 25 Finale

The Voice  Season 25 Finale is divided into two parts: Night 1 on Monday, May 20, which kicks off at 8/7c on NBC and will feature the Top 5 Artists singing one last time for America's vote. Night 2 takes place Tuesday, May 21, kicking off at 9/8c and will include the results plus memorable performances from the Coaches and your favorite superstar singers.  Stream it all on Peacock  the next day.

Will Nathan Chester bring ultimate victory to Team Legend? There's only one way to find out. Tune in to The Voice Finale, this coming Monday (May 20) and Tuesday (May 21) at 8 p.m. ET!

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Singers wishing to work on cruise ships require extensive previous experience in performing on stage.

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Live Audition for Singers in Paris

Male & Female Singers Required For Luxury Cruise Ship Opportunities - Auditions In Paris, 3 July 2024! Join our live audition...

3 June 2024 - Rising Stars Talents OU - English

The Entertainment Team helps ensure that our guests enjoy their stay on board as much as their time in port....

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Pianist Singer

Guitar Vocalist - Discover a career ‘beyond wonder'

Scenic Luxury Cruises and Emerald Cruises are searching for a Guitar Vocalist to join our Fleet.  Amazing People Creating Wonder, our...

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Hauptrolle Sänger (w/m/d) - Mein Schiff Flotte

Werde Teil der Mein Schiff Crew und bewirb dich jetzt um deinen Job bei sea chefs als:Hauptrolle Sänger (w/m/d) -...

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Cruise Ship Show Singer / Production Vocalist Jobs

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Production Lead Vocalist Job Description and Duties:

The duties and responsibilities of the Production Lead Vocalist / Show Singer aboard a cruise ship include, but are not limited to:

- Reports to the Cruise Director and the Cast Performing Manager

- Performs the required shows as approved by the Director of Entertainment in cruise line's home office or by the company producing the show (in case the show is not in-house production)

- Performs the Lead Vocalist roles in Production Shows specifically created by or for the cruise line as stated in the contract

- Arrive backstage minimum 15 minutes prior to rehearsals and 30 minutes prior to shows, providing sufficient time for getting dressed and warming up and getting fully prepared to perform on stage

- Attends regular rehearsals as scheduled by the Cast Performing Manager or the Vocal Captain including any additional rehearsals required for restaging of shows due to weather conditions, illness or replacement of a cast member

- Attends additional rehearsals with the Cast Performing Manager and/or the Vocal Captain each week to ensure all vocal material is kept up to the show’s original integrity

- Responsible for the proper care of all Production Shows costumes, wigs, hats etc. ensuring that they are stored immediately after a performance

- Responsible for maintenance and organizing the cast members dressing rooms and backstage area

- Due to the nature of the profession the Show Singer must maintain weight restrictions according to her/his contract

- Assist in teaching choreography or/and songs to new Show Singers

- May be required to perform as a understudy in any Production Show in the event a cast member is not able to participate.

- Depending on the cruise line and/or on the particular ship, the Show Singer may or may not be required to participate in emergency and safety drills and related activities

- Show Singers enjoy full deck privileges - free access to passenger facilities such as restaurants, bars, gym, disco, swimming pools etc.

Cruise Ship Show Singer Job Requirements:

Excellent, attractive and versatile singers with exceptional vocal abilities and qualities with the ability to sing Musical Theatre, Jazz, contemporary pop/rock and R&B styles. Training in classical opera singing is a plus, but not mandatory

Excellent acting skills and basic dancing abilities

Female Singers: Altos and Sopranos with strong legit (head) and Broadway/Pop Belt voices Male Singers: Baritones and Tenors with developed falsettos and a strong Broadway/Pop belt

Height requirements slightly vary between the different cruise lines and production show companies, but in general are:

Female Singers must be 5'3"-5'9" (162 cm - 180cm) in height Male Singers must be 5'8"-6'4" (177 cm - 195 cm) in height

Some show production companies and cruise lines do not have a particular height requirements

Age requirements - between 18 and 40 (just one show production company requires minimum age of 23 and and has an upper age limit of 35). Candidates can audition at age of 17, but can not start work before reaching 18.

There are two types of auditions - live auditions and video auditions. In most cases candidates should submit video materials in order to be selected for a live audition, in some cases candidates may be hired via video audition only

Video submissions:

Female Vocalists - please, record variety of vocal styles (at least one ballad and one up-tempo pieces from musical theater or opera, 50's - 60's, Pop, Pop/Rock) showing your belt and head voice. Please, show also some dance movement and a full body shot at some point in the talent footage.

Male vocalists - please, provide variety of vocal styles (at least one ballad and one up-tempo from musical theater or opera, 50's - 60's, Pop, Pop/Rock) showing your falsetto Please, show also some dance movement and a full body shot at some point in the talent footage

Show group footage can be accepted, however it should be known who you are very clearly

Along with the video candidates will need to supply a headshot, an updated resume that includes your performances, your height and present contact information including an email address

Some cruise lines and production show companies will accept YouTube or email video submissions, others will insist on hard copy (DVD) video, photograph and resume submissions mailed to their postal addresses.

Production Vocalist Salary Range:

$3,200 to $3,800 US per month depending on the cruise line and time served with the company. Possibilities for promotion to Production Vocal Captain position.

Passenger who jumped from world’s largest cruise ship fell 90 feet to his death: staffer

T he passenger who jumped from the world’s largest cruise ship on Sunday fell a staggering 90 feet to his death, sources said – and staff on board knew exactly what had happened practically before he hit the water.

The man, who has not been identified, jumped from the running track on the fifth level of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas on the first day of its week-long voyage, a security team member told The Post when the ship returned to Miami Saturday morning.

Each deck is about 20 feet high, so the man fell from approximately 90 feet, the staffer explained.

The man’s body was transported via van to the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office, according to crew members.

Cops also met the ship and took statements at the docks, and they retrieved a copy of the surveillance footage of the fatal incident.

When the man jumped on May 26, the overboard detection system was activated almost immediately – prompting onboard staff into action, the security team member continued.

“We knew what had happened literally seconds after he hit the water. The protocol is that we’re supposed to immediately make visual contact to see if we can spot him,” the source said, noting that one guard also saw the man jump on a security camera feed .

“It’s the captain’s call whether to stop and turn around, and he did,” he added.

Once the alert was sounded, the ship’s specialized security team prepared to take a rescue boat out to pick up the man.

The rest of the security team was stationed at predetermined lookout spots to do a 360-degree scan of the surrounding waters, while the Coast Guard was also briefed and immediately sent out an aircraft to the site, according to the crew member, who asked not to be named.

While the potential rescue got underway, the Icon of the Seas’ medical team was put on high alert.

The ship had paramedics, nurses, former ER doctors, and even a surgeon on board – as well as all the lifesaving medical equipment one typically finds in a small hospital, a member of the ship’s medical team told The Post.

The man was likely not alive when he was recovered from the water , the source added.

The doctor on board pronounced him dead once his body was transported to the medical bay, according to the crew member.

The passenger’s body was then stored in the on-board morgue, which is equipped with eight drawers.

There were no other fatalities on-board during the week-long voyage, which stopped in Honduras, Mexico and the Bahams, the medical team member said.

An onboard care team assisted the man’s family in the days after the incident, they explained to The Post.

The loved ones had the option of staying on the ship or flying home – though most bereaved families opt to stay with their relative’s body, the source noted.

The other passengers disembarking the massive ship – which holds up to 7,600 guests and 2,350 crew members – said they mostly went about their business for the rest of the cruise, though there was a prayer circle in the man’s honor.

“I didn’t know him but I felt horrible about it,” says Janine Pernell, a passenger from Atlanta.

Pernell was one of about 20 people who attended the small memorial that was held on the running deck.

“We just all held hands and prayed that the family would find comfort and peace. There were a lot of tears. We felt like it was all we could do,” she lamented.

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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The 9 best party cruises for 2024.

The best party cruises have something fun for everyone.

The Best Party Cruises

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You won't be bored on a party cruise.

The magic of a cruise vacation is created with culinary delights, exotic ports of call, comfortable accommodations, carefully curated spaces and, of course, parties. These onboard celebrations can take many forms: large dance parties and quiet lounges, family-friendly and adults-only, adrenaline-pumping and relaxing activities, elegant and come-as-you-are events, and entire ships transformed into themed cruises .

Prepare for fun times on the following ships hosting the best party cruises at sea.

Royal Caribbean: Oasis of the Seas

Courtesy of Royal Caribbean International

Explore the eastern and western Caribbean aboard Oasis of the Seas , one of the largest cruise ships in the world. On this 6,771-passenger vessel, 18 decks of fun and 2,109 crew members await your next voyage.

• Bionic Bar: For late-night parties where "mixology meets technology," order cocktails from unexpected bartenders: robots! These two specialized tech creations are well-versed in classic alcoholic and nonalcoholic cocktails, and they can also mix a bespoke drink designed by you.
• Adrenaline-pumping amenities: Get ready for day and night thrills at four separate venues. Ripcord by iFly is billed as the only skydiving simulator at sea; North Star allows cruisers to snap stunning photos from the tallest viewing deck found on any cruise ship; Sky Pad provides a virtual reality experience while patrons jump on a bungee trampoline; and the Ultimate Abyss, named the tallest slide at sea, plunges 10 stories down.
• Surprise events: Scattered throughout the ship are several surprise activities that pop up among the scheduled itinerary of events. Join a toga party; boogie at a disco brigade; dress for a masquerade party; or transport back in time at an '80s-inspired extravaganza.

Book a  Royal Caribbean cruise on GoToSea, a service of U.S. News.

Carnival: Liberty

Courtesy of Carnival Cruise Line

Cruise for two to 14 days through the Caribbean, Bahamas or Panama Canal on the 2,974-passenger Carnival Liberty . In addition to decks of party fun, cruisers can dine at eateries designed by famous chefs, watch live sports and movies under the stars, and enjoy activities with the kids.

• Sailaway Party/Mega Deck Party: Get the party started on launch day at the Sailaway Party, where all passengers can gather for music, dancing, drinks and smiles. Then, see everyone again at the open-air Mega Deck Party under the stars on the Lido Deck, complete with more dancing, games and giveaways.
• RedFrog Rum Bar and BlueIguana Tequila Bar: Taste the flavors of the tropics at these two popular venues for drinks, music and good times. Choose from a chill menu of cocktails and specialty beer while you stay cool by the pool.
• Fun and games: If parties with your friends include spirited competition, this is your ship. In addition to showing off your skills on the basketball court and obstacle-filled mini golf course, play cornhole, sign up for the scavenger hunt and compete in art games. Then, try your luck gambling in the casino, playing bingo, and joining the "Deal or No Deal" onboard game show.

Find a Carnival cruise on GoToSea.

Virgin Voyages: Scarlet Lady

Courtesy of Virgin Voyages

Bring your fabulous self aboard Scarlet Lady , the inaugural ship of Virgin Voyages , an adults-only cruise line . Fares include all food, essential drinks, Wi-Fi access, tips, group fitness classes, entertainment and more than 50 onboard events and activities for 2,770 sailors.

• Drag brunch and dance party: Join the ladies in the Razzle Dazzle restaurant for an early meal seasoned with glitz, glam, humor and style. Then, spend an evening in The Red Room, where drag queens bring the party to life with dances and banter.
• Scarlet Night Party: Wear your best scarlet attire and immerse yourself in the saga of a "mysterious goddess of the sea and the sailor who won her heart." The whole vessel becomes part of the story with games, tales, live music, pop-up performances, a red pool and a late-night dance party.
• The Manor: Bring your dancing shoes and enter this two-level nightclub through a hall of glittery mirrors. Inside are drinks, music and the Festival Stage Acts – a collection of rotating comedy acts that change every few weeks.
• Studio 72: Dance to the beats of the '70s and early '80s at this high-energy venue. Live music, light shows and surprises await.

Explore Virgin Voyages deals on GoToSea.

MSC Cruises: Divina

Courtesy of MSC Cruises

This 4,345-passenger ship combines modern comfort with eco-friendly tech in an atmosphere of Golden Age glamour. You'll enjoy lots of party venues on Divina 's two- and three-night cruises in the Caribbean.

• Bars and lounges: Spend time with friends in your choice of 17 themed spaces, including a cigar bar, a jazz bar, a sports bar, indoor/outdoor/poolside bars, Italian lounges and the casino. Then, try your talents at karaoke (available in multiple languages).
• High-tech spaces: A stocked video arcade, cyber cafe and full-size Formula 1 racecar simulator await.
• Get Together parties: Gather with likeminded cruisers from across the world during special events like the Veterans Get Together, Solo Guests Cocktail Party and LGBTQIAP+ Get Together.
• Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve: Book a cruise that includes a stop at this exclusive private island in The Bahamas. Step off the ship and head to the sand for a day of sun, fun and exploration with your shipmates. Scuba dive, climb the lighthouse, rent a cabana, have a spa treatment or sip your favorite beverage by the sea.

Compare MSC Cruises on GoToSea.

Norwegian Cruise Line: Breakaway

Courtesy of Norwegian Cruise Line

Take a transatlantic voyage or book a cruise in the Caribbean or Mediterranean on this 3,963-passenger ship. Refurbished in 2020, Breakaway offers a quarter-mile oceanfront promenade, unique entertainment venues, and a host of complimentary and specialty dining options.

• Spice H20: Pool party by day; dance party by night. This transformative space, inspired by Ibiza's beach parties, offers cruisers a refreshing dip in the pool, hot tubs and a waterfall when the sun is high. Return after dark to enjoy the venue's dance floor and large video screen.
• Skyy Vodka Ice Bar: Escape the heat in the coolest spot on the ship – a frozen bar. Sip specialty drinks in this adults-only spot inspired by Scandinavian ice hotels. The bar, tables, decor, seats and glasses are all made of ice.
• Syd Norman's Pour House: Step back in time at this classic rock 'n' roll venue built to look like the intimate, gritty clubs of days gone by. Performers bring to life all the top tunes of the '60s, '70s and '80s while the crowd sings along.
• Bliss Ultra Lounge: Stay out on the dance floor all night long at this high energy lounge. The distinctly nightclub vibe is created by DJs spinning up-tempo music, ultraviolet lights, plasma screens and a delicious selection of cocktails.

Book a  Norwegian Cruise Line cruise on GoToSea.

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Celebrity Cruises: Apex

Courtesy of Celebrity Cruises

Elevate your celebrations of important life events aboard the sleek Celebrity Apex . Work with a specialist to plan a luxury wedding, vow renewal or engagement party on a sailing through Europe or the Caribbean. Itineraries include the Norwegian Fjords, the Mediterranean, the Cayman Islands , the Bahamas and more.

• Magic Carpet: Gather with friends and family at this unique venue. The cantilevered, floating platform is perched out over the ocean on the starboard side and can move to different decks during the voyage. Room for 100 guests, a full bar, live music and views up to 13 stories above sea level create a memorable experience.
• Resort Deck: Enjoy multiple locations throughout this architecturally pleasing space decorated with various art installations. Intimate cabanas sit near the swimming pool, bar and two-story martini hot tubs, while the covered adults-only Solarium is a luxurious spot to unwind. Additionally, the Rooftop Garden offers cocktails, dining, comfy seating, live performances and games. This venue can accommodate up to 270 guests for day and night fun.
• Eden: Choose this glass-wrapped, three-story, 11,800-square-foot space for your next party. This popular venue features tranquil gardens, constantly shifting views, cozy seating, fresh air and an array of nightly events.

Find a Celebrity Cruises itinerary on GoToSea.

Disney Cruise Line: Disney Wish

Courtesy of Disney Cruise Line

Make memories on a multigenerational cruise packed with parties for all the ages aboard the 4,000-passenger Disney Wish . Discover a host of family-friendly sights and sounds to delight everyone on this new Disney Cruise Line ship.

• Oceaneer Club: Entertain cruisers ages 3 to 12 at five Disney-themed spaces: Marvel Super Hero Academy, Star Wars Cargo Bay, Mickey and Minnie Captain's Deck, Imagineering Lab, and Fairytale Hall. The fun includes training as a super hero recruit; an interactive creature challenge; nautical-themed games; hands-on activities; and arts and crafts.
• Edge/Vibe/The Hideaway: Hang out with friends at these three popular clubs for tweens and teens . Counselor-led activities and photo wall backdrops in the chic loft are perfect for cruisers ages 11 to 14. A funky, Parisian art loft awaits those ages 14 to 17, while young adults ages 18 to 20 can plan private parties at The Hideaway.
• Star Wars: Hyperspace Lounge/Keg & Compass: Enjoy some adults-only time at two venues created for grown-up gatherings. At night, the ship's Star Wars-themed lounge becomes a destination for signature cocktail tastings. Or, grab a craft beer and cheer on your favorite sports team in the pub space inspired by Viking ships.
• Pirate Night: Dress as your favorite buccaneer for a swashbuckling good time with the whole family. Shows, trivia, dancing with Disney characters, special effects and fireworks with Captain Jack Sparrow create a night to remember.

Explore Disney Cruise Line deals on GoToSea.

Royal Caribbean: Themed Cruises

Sailing on a themed cruise with Royal Caribbean International is a nonstop party. Pick your favorite pastime, hobby or passion and book an immersive experience on a ship full of fun folks who share your interests.

• Star Trek: The Cruise VII, Mariner of the Seas : Explore the Caribbean alongside an impressive list of stars from STNG, DS9, Voyager and more. Hang out in the Star Lounge, Studio B, pubs, bars and night clubs with your fellow Trekkies.
• The '80s Cruise, Mariner of the Seas: Step back in time and get ready to sing and dance on this seven-day, all-inclusive cruise . More than 50 concerts are planned for this voyage, including '80s music star performances by 38 Special, Debbie Gibson, Ray Parker Jr., Wang Chung, Sheena Easton and many more.
• The Old School Cruise 2024, Navigator of the Seas : Rock with the old school bands of the '60s, '70s and '80s on this cruise sailing from California. Kool & the Gang, Club Nouveau, Midnight Star and more provide the music for this retro dance party.
• Super Legends 2024, Navigator of the Seas: Take an epic musical cruise with the timeless legends of old school, Latin soul, freestyle and Tejano, all on one voyage. This three-night concert at sea sails roundtrip from Los Angeles.

Book a Royal Caribbean cruise on GoToSea.

Azamara: Journey

Revel in elegant merriment aboard this mid-sized luxury ship. If stylish celebrations are what you seek, the 690-passenger Azamara Journey is the perfect setting.

• Club Crooner: Enjoy the musical stylings of the great crooners from the past and present at this swanky onboard nightclub. Talented performers channel their inner Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole and others for an evening of songs and cocktails.
• And the Beat Goes On: Join in the songs and dances from the greatest hits through time via a musical journey across genres. Set lists include famous tunes by Madonna, Ricky Martin, Katy Perry, Journey and many more.
• Six Strings: Watch the singers and dancers at this venue of classic rock with an acoustic vibe. Reminisce with tunes from The Beatles, Pat Benatar, Aerosmith, Queen, The Rolling Stones and others.
• Onboard fun: For daytime fun, challenge your shipmates to tournaments in darts, table tennis and trivia. In the evenings, enjoy the tunes of pianists, a quartet, a five-piece band and a DJ spinning dance music – or make your own music with a night of karaoke. Be sure to bring white attire to wear at the signature White Night festivities, which include special food and drinks, live music, and dancing on the pool deck.

Compare Azamara cruises on GoToSea.

Why Trust U.S. News Travel

Angela Minor fell in love with cruising during her first voyage as a teenager aboard the SS Emerald Seas where she performed on the ship. Her voyages have taken her into the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Pacific and Alaska, where she once lived on an island. Minor used her extensive travel knowledge and research skills to write this article.

You might also be interested in:

• Cruise Packing List
• The Most Festive Christmas Cruises
• The Top Gay Cruises
• The Top Cruise Lines for Solo Travelers
• The Top 3-Day Cruise Itineraries

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Silver Nova Cruise Ship Review: What Silversea's All-Inclusive Luxury Cruising Is Like

June 3, 2024

Compared to mainstream cruises with their upcharges and theme-park-esque gimmicks, all-inclusive luxury cruises definitely have their charms. The staff knows your name and preferred choice of water (sparkling) as well as your nightly choice of pre-dinner cocktail. There are very few times when you’ll have to charge anything to your room or have to pay for extras because pretty much everything is covered in the (high) price of the cruise, including a selection of excursions in every port. (Note that meals at specialty restaurants do cost extra.)

Plus, there are fewer passengers on a luxury cruise than on the monster megaships, so not only is the service more attentive but also you may have a better chance of getting to know your fellow passengers.

Needless to say, the prices reflect all this indulgence. 

As passengers have come to expect from ultra-luxury cruise line Silversea, the company’s 11th ship, Silver Nova , is an elegant ship with excellent food and wine as well as nearly flawless service. 

Nonetheless, there are notable changes aboard the first of Silversea’s Nova class vessels. Silver Nova , which debuted in August 2023, is billed as one of the most spacious cruise ships ever built due to a design meant to give more elbow room per passenger. The crew-to-guest ratio, meanwhile, is nearly one-to-one, with butler service in every suite underscoring the sense of luxe, attentive comfort. 

I sailed on Silver Nova’s weeklong inaugural voyage (at the invitation of the cruise line) from Vancouver, Canada, to Seward, Alaska, in early May 2024. 

Read on to find out whether the ship’s refined and modern approach to luxury cruising is worth the splurge. 

Silver Nova  Quick Facts: Launched : August 2023 Passengers : 728 Crew : 544 Size : 54,700 gross tons, 801 feet long, 97 feet wide Booking : Silversea.com , 888/978-4070

The ship’s innovative design, open spaces, and unobstructed views

The uniquely outward-facing, asymmetrical design of Silver Nova creates abundant wide-open spaces indoors and outside on the expansive decks, including the pool deck (deck 10; pictured above), positioned on the ship’s starboard side (on your right when facing forward). The concept recalls a rooftop deck at an upscale hotel, with great destination views from the pool, pool bar, loungers, and cozy nooks.

The ship’s design situates all the suites on four decks (6–9) at the front of the vessel rather than the back, freeing up room for light-filled public spaces with higher ceilings and allowing for continuity with all the restaurants, bars, boutiques, and other venues, located on decks 3, 4, 5, and 10. (The sun deck and cliff whirlpool are on deck 11). 

Centered on the three-story atrium, which is the hub of the ship, are the Arts Café (deck 4), the Dolce Vita Lounge (deck 5), and the line’s new champagne bar, The Shelter , on deck 3. The two-story Venetian Lounge (decks 4 and 5) can seat 370 guests, and hosts live entertainment, enrichment programming, movies, and other activities.

The ship's layout and generous use of glass—more than 43,000 square feet of it, including floor-to-ceiling windows and glass-enclosed exterior elevators—make the ship feel airy and open, and bring guests closer to the sea and to the destinations the ship visits. All that glass doesn’t hurt when it comes to showing off the views, either. 

Even when I couldn’t be outside on the decks or on my veranda while we cruised along Hubbard Glacier in Alaska, I could see the scenery from the glass-enclosed space at S.A.L.T. Lab (deck 10) during my cooking class and when I was returning to my suite by way of the elevators. 

Spacious suites with verandas and butler service

The interior décor in Silver Nova ’s 364 all-suite staterooms (divided into 13 categories) channels quiet luxury with an understated color scheme of gray, cream, brown, and blue—though there are pops of color throughout, such as in the artwork and pillows.

Even the smallest accommodation, the classic Veranda Suite , is generous in size, with a total of 357 square feet large enough to encompass a queen-size bed and private teak veranda. Each of these suites has a walk-in closet and big marble bathroom; many units have full-size showers and tubs.

My accommodation for the sailing was a 527-square-foot Medallion Suite (pictured above).   This lovely stateroom includes a separate living and sleeping area, a bathroom with a double vanity, a walk-in closet, a full-size shower and tub, and a large veranda.

My butler was exceptional during the cruise, offering the line’s Roman-inspired Otium spa and wellness products (such as aromatherapy bath salts) for relaxing evening baths and showers, complete with music and candles (battery-operated to reduce fire hazards at sea). She also delivered indulgent nightly canapes, coordinated my schedule by confirming dining reservations and excursions, brought room service nearly every morning, and even offered to unpack and pack my luggage.

For further relaxation at sea, the Otium sleep experience includes luxurious custom-made bedding, exclusive Egyptian cotton linens made by Rivolta Carmignani, and a pillow menu.

Silver Nova features several new suite categories made possible by the design of the ship, such as the 1,324-square-foot Otium Suites . The plush accommodations have 270-degree views from a prime corner aft location, a 431-square-foot balcony with a private whirlpool, a spacious living area, a generous walk-in closet, a large bedroom, a walk-in shower, and other included perks such as Otium spa treatments, a complimentary dinner at a specialty venue, and more. 

Reimagined food-and-drink venues and a destination-specific culinary program

Silver Nova has an impressive number of indoor and outdoor dining venues, with three specialty options that come at an additional cost, including French and Japanese restaurants and an ambitious 11-course tasting menu at S.A.L.T. Chef’s Table on deck 10. On a 7-night cruise, you’ll have more restaurants to choose from than evenings to dine, especially if you opt for room service any night. Additionally, there are 10 bars and lounges.

For the classic cruise dining experience, head to Atlantide (deck 3) for signature dishes, an elegant ambience, and top-notch service. An evening at La Dame (deck 4) costs extra, but the price ($160 per person) seems reasonable, considering the French menu covers caviar, foie gras, lobster, Dover sole, a selection of fine cheeses, and wine pairings with every course (showcasing wines not available elsewhere on the ship).

Silver Note (deck 5; pictured above) offered another memorable evening. The swanky setting harks back to old-fashioned supper clubs with live music (a piano player and singer during my voyage). A tapas menu lets you sample perfect smaller dishes such as beautifully sautéed scallop medallions with champagne foam, citrus marinated lobster tail, and beef tenderloin tournedos. 

S.A.L.T. , an acronym for Sea and Land Taste, is the line’s immersive culinary program, created in partnership with the award-winning culinary journalist and magazine editor, Adam Sachs. The idea is to give cruisers a chance to experience the food culture of the destination they're visiting, via menus as well as hands-on activities. 

S.A.L.T. Kitchen , which sits next to Atlantide on deck 3, is the ship’s other main restaurant, but instead of sticking to a set menu, dinner options change throughout the week, inspired by the cruise’s itinerary. The Voyage menu is based on the best culinary inspiration throughout the cruise, while the Terrain menu is more specific to individual ports. 

Entertainment and activities

While the production shows can be hit or miss on a smaller ship like this, there are other appealing entertainment options such as stand-up comedy and live music. Team Trivia in the Panorama Lounge (deck 5) is a standing-room-only hit, and history buffs will enjoy the destination lectures.

I was also impressed with the hands-on, destination-focused cooking classes I took at the S.A.L.T. Lab . Host chef Drake Robertson has a great pedigree (including working with America’s Test Kitchen ), and the classroom space is bright and open with floor-to-ceiling windows. It was one of the largest and most attractive cooking venues I’ve seen on a ship. (The view from the back of the classroom is pictured above.)

The well-appointed spa, located next to the Venetian Lounge on deck 5, has eight treatment rooms, experiential showers, a relaxation pool, a steam room and sauna, a relaxation space, and other amenities inspired by ancient Roman baths. I didn’t have time to book a treatment, but I was certainly intrigued. 

Not much is lacking on Silver Nova . However . . . 

I love the design of The Marquee (pictured above),   the beautiful al fresco dining venue on deck 10 that features views of the ocean. The eatery serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and includes The Grill , where the Hot Rocks BBQ experience takes place in the evenings, and Spaccanapoli , where you’ll find freshly prepared Neapolitan pizza. As I quickly discovered, however, it was too chilly to dine outdoors during May in Alaska. 

Worse, The Marquee is the only place where you can get a late lunch after the other restaurants stop serving and the buffet closes at La Terrazza (deck 4). So if you come back on the ship later in the afternoon after an excursion or day in port and you're hungry for a full meal, eating outside or ordering room service are the only options. (Light snacks are available at the Arts Café until 6pm, but it’s not sit-down fare). 

Depending on the itinerary, having an open-air dining venue that relies on perfect weather to work well seems like an unwise choice.  

Unfortunately, due to the weather, I also missed dining at The Grill. I should have made reservations for the first night when we were leaving Vancouver and it was unseasonably warm. For most of the rest of the cruise, the wind, cool temperatures, and some rain dissuaded many of us from dining outdoors, even with blankets and overhead heaters.

When it’s warm and sunny and the ship is sailing in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, I’m sure this is a very popular spot. But there needs to be an alternative, preferably indoor dining venue for a late lunch when the weather isn’t cooperating. 

Silver Nova  and its crew deliver a well-honed luxury product with excellent—but not obtrusive—service, top-notch food and beverages, entertaining performances, and the extras you’d expect from an all-inclusive ultra-luxury line. The ship is beautiful and unique and offers a refreshing and modern take on luxury cruising that doesn’t feel stuffy at all. (In fact, you can leave your extra-fancy duds at home; the ship eschews formal evenings on 7-night cruises, where the suggested attire is “elegant casual” for the entire week.)

The price may be high, but in this case you do indeed get what you pay for. 

After cruising in Alaska this summer, Silver Nova will set sail for Tokyo. The ship will offer itineraries in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand over the winter, before returning to Alaska for the spring and summer season in 2025 . Go to Silversea.com for more information . 

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Passenger dies after jumping off world’s largest cruise ship as it sets sail from Florida

The passenger was pronounced dead some time after he was found and bought back to the giant vessel, article bookmarked.

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A passenger has died after jumping overboard from the world’s largest cruise ship after it set sail from Florida .

The male passenger, who has not been identified, reportedly jumped, according to the New York Post , from the 20-deck high Icon of the Seas after it left a Florida port on Sunday to embark on a seven-day cruise around the Caribbean , first stopping in Honduras.

The Coast Guard , which said it did not have much involvement in the incident beyond assisting in the search for the man, told the New York Post that “the cruise ship deployed one of their rescue boats, located the man, and brought him back aboard”.

The man has since been “pronounced deceased,” the Coast Guard added.

The world’s largest cruise experience was approximately 300 miles away from PortMiami, and around 30 to 40 miles north of Santa Lucia, Cuba, at the time of the incident, which occurred in the morning, according to Cruise Hive.

The Royal Caribbean, which operates the Icon of the Seas along with other groundbreakingly large cruise ships, told the outlet in a statement that their ship’s crew immediately notified the Coast Guard in the US and “launched a search and rescue operation”.

“Our care team is actively providing support and assistance to the guest’s loved ones during this difficult time,” the cruise company added. “For the privacy of the guest and their family, we have no additional details to share.“

The ship, which holds way over 5,000 guests and only made its maiden voyage in January of this year, had embarked on the cruise on Saturday, but after the incident on Sunday, the cruise halted and stayed put for around two hours while the search continued, the outlet said.

According to CruiseMapper tracking data, the Icon of the Seas is continuing with the cruise, with its next stop in Coco Cay in the Bahamas on Friday.

Zachary Normandian, 31, told The New York Post that the atmosphere on board the ship has been “dystopian” after people have been carrying on with their holiday aboard the ship after the tragedy.

“It just seemed like more people would have been like ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on,’ but no, people were just going about their day,” he said.

The passenger recalled the moment that the man who went overboard was brought back to the ship, after he claimed that the captain informed the ship that the missing person had been found.

“Everyone in the dining room clapped,” Mr Normandian told the outlet. “We assumed that the guy was fine.”

At that point, however, they did not know that he had passed away.

The incident comes over a month after a similar tragedy on another Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Liberty of the Seas when a 20-year-old man identified as Levion Parker is thought to have gone overboard during a trip around the Bahamas.

The cruise line immediately launched a search and rescue mission along with the US Coast Guard, but it was suspended after five days due to not being able to find him.

However, the cruise company has also witnessed some successful rescues in recent months, such as being able to recover a passenger who fell overboard from the Symphony of the Seas back in October.

The cruise, which had just left Barcelona at the time, said the guest was successfully brought back on board after falling shortly after it left the port.

The Independent has contacted Royal Caribbean for comment.

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