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AJVOYAGE Reviews
In the Women's Clothing Store category
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Reviews 3.9.
Most relevant
Avoid this company
Avoid this company. I ordered some sandals, which were of poor quality and too small so I returned them. Be warned they only have a 14 day returns policy which I wasn’t aware of. Unfortunately I returned after 14 days because I went on holiday for 10 days. I’ve explained this to them but they won’t give me a refund. Only a credit note which I’m not going to use because their products are overpriced and poor quality.
Date of experience : September 29, 2023
I found that the customer service was…
I found that the customer service was 2nd to none and I was kept informed about my order every step of the way. The quality of my boots is fantastic and sooo comfy even though they are big and chunky! Will definitely buy from AJVoyage again.
Date of experience : December 20, 2022
Reply from AJVOYAGE
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review, we really appreciate it x
Absolutely love my sandals they are the…
Absolutely love my sandals they are the most comfiest shoes I've ever had on my feet. Will definitely be buying more. I would say get next size up tho as small fitting.
Date of experience : June 30, 2023
I love AJ Voyage…
I love AJ Voyage…. Brought a few pair of shoes off them now and they are the best. My last two pairs of shoes were a pair of slippers and they are amazing who doesn’t love slippers they can wear outside and in. My next favourite shoes were a mini ugg type boot with a chunky sole and they are utterly amazing so comfy. You’d think that they were actually genuine UGG boots. And the best thing about this website is that they’ve always got money off codes who doesn’t love a bargain pair of shoes.
Date of experience : February 01, 2023
Great value
Shipping was so fast for cheap, and the boots I bought are very good quality, exactly what I was looking for, and just overall great for the price
Date of experience : December 02, 2023
The only place I’ll go for my boots and…
The only place I’ll go for my boots and sandals, I absolutely love the brand. I’ve only had one pair out of 7 fail on me which I think are pretty good odds. Over the years the price has gone up but if the quality is there then I don’t mind spending the extra money.
Date of experience : November 18, 2023
IMMI chunky gladiator sandles
So pleased with my purchase. The sandals are well made, sturdy and super comfortable. I am always abit unsure on sizing, as I have wide feet, and wide fit was not on option. I am a size 5 so ordered size 5 and they fit perfectly with extra room for comfort. Really quick delivery!
Date of experience : May 20, 2023
Very happy with service from Ajvoyage
Very happy with service from Ajvoyage. First purchase from them and wasn’t disappointed. Delivery was fast and sandals are great! Well made and very stylish. Definitely better than a pair off the high street!
Date of experience : May 17, 2022
Terrible company with terrible customer…
Terrible company with terrible customer service. Almost sarcastic and arrogant customer service. Paid next day for an item a week ago and still hasn’t arrived. Asked for my postage to be refunded as this is a joke and they made every excuse in the world and still haven’t refunded it. Still waiting for the items to be delivered. Absolute joke!!
Date of experience : August 25, 2022
Hey Sophie, thank you for your review. I've taken a look into this and can see your order was placed on Friday 26th August, this is one of the dates included in the Royal Mail strike action which is stated on our site We appreciate this may be frustrating however we are not able to control this, and they are nationwide strikes affecting all businesses and deliveries. Your order was placed on the Friday and there were no collections due to the strikes, it was then the weekend and a bank holiday so the first day Royal Mail were collecting from us again was yesterday (Tuesday 30th August) Your order was sent out with next day delivery and will be delivered on the next Royal Mail delivery date, which due to strike action is Thursday 1st September. We understand this is frustrating and we apologise for any inconvenience, we do state the Royal Mail strike dates on our site to make customers aware of these delays, which are unfortunately out of our control Thank you
Followed return procedure for 2 pairs…
Followed return procedure for 2 pairs of shoes, they received the return but didn’t refund my money. Thankfully I paid via PayPal and had to end up with raising a dispute through PayPal to get my money back This return was for a pair of boots and a pair of sandals and were returned 17/05 via royal mail, you received the return on 19/5
Date of experience : May 19, 2023
Hey Louise, apologies for the confusion we have now found the correct order you are referring to. Your order was placed on the 11th May and delivered on the 15th. Your return reached us on the 19th May however as you had already opended a PayPal case on the 17th before it reached us, we were unable to process the refund on our side in the normal way. Once a dispute is open it has to then go through the paypal dispute process. If there was no case openeded the refund would have regularly been processed within 48 hours, your refund was still processed via PayPal within a few days, which is still much sooner than many online retailers.
Great sandals at a decent price
I bought a pair of chunky soled sandals last summer and they have been a brilliant addition to my wardrobe. So easy to wear and great for so many looks. Loved them so much I purchased a similar pair this year. Easy to use website and delivery was on time.
Date of experience : June 19, 2023
Sole of my shoes completely fell apart…
Sole of my shoes completely fell apart after a few wears and the company were not interested because they were bought over 6 months ago. Have also read other reviews about this happening and I’m sure they will continue to ignore the problem
Date of experience : April 05, 2023
Funky chunky sandals
Super quick dispatch. Love my sandals and Aj voyage have soooo many to choose from,i swithered for ages but super happy with my choice. Will definitely be ordering another pair.
SCAM DO NOT ORDER
I keep getting ads for this website everywhere and it’s made me remember the absolute NIGHTMARE that I experienced with ordering clothes from them a while back. I made a big order and it never showed up, no customer service but a silly little email that they NEVER reply to. So that was money down the drain. DO NOT ORDER FROM THEM!
Date of experience : April 14, 2022
Hey Chloe, Please could you let us know your order number so I can look into this for you, I have searched your name on our system and no order or emails show up, Thank You x
FABULOUS BOOTS
From ordering, to arriving so easy i clan not fault! And when my boots arrived WOW they are gorgeous, so comfy! The material is fab, I honestly couldn't not fault them in the slightest I'm 100% going to be a returning customer I love the stock they have and to now have revived mine and there stunning I'm just so so happy, also customer service also fab can not fault and will not fault, brilliant experience from start to finish and once again, AMAZING QUALITY! and stunning to look at I think my next purchase will literally be today after receiving my first ever pair of boots from aj voyage, there fabulous there's not much more to say, I love love LOVE!
Date of experience : November 11, 2022
Love the sandals and boots
Love the sandals and boots. I loved the sandals so much I have 2 pairs. Was a bit apprehensive ordering as I have quite wide feet. They fit perfect and they are very comfy
Date of experience : December 22, 2023
Already seen my next purchase
I have purchased 3 pairs of sandals and 1 pair of boots and I am so pleased with them. They are stylish and so on trend, they are so comfortable the sandals are like walking on clouds. I would highly recommend. They also have a quick delivery time so no long wait when wanting to wear your new purchase
Date of experience : November 13, 2022
The company have great styles to do…
The company have great styles to do ffer. The ordering process was very good and delivery very prompt. Unfortunately the sandals were too big so had to be returned. However , that process was also very easy and quick. Would def use again
Date of experience : July 26, 2022
This company is an absolute disgrace
This company is an absolute disgrace. I ordered a pair of shoes, which never arrived. I have paid for these and the company are doing absolutely nothing about it. It’s 3 weeks since I ordered the shoes and still no update, been going around in circles the past week. Absolutely disgusting customer service. Do not rate at all! Would never shop here again
Date of experience : May 13, 2022
Hey Shannan, I have took a look into this and can see Royal Mail have successfully delivered your parcel to your address and attached an image to the tracking to show this as you have said you have not received this we are currently in the process of investigating this and will update you with the outcome, Thank You
Great footwear
I have purchased several pairs of sandals from this company, they are great prices and so comfortable. Delivery is super quick and the sandals look amazing on get lots of compliments. Great buy.
Date of experience : September 19, 2022
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Missmodaluxe.
AJVOYAGE Reviews
In the Ladies' clothes shop category
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Reviews 3.9.
Most relevant
Avoid this company
Avoid this company. I ordered some sandals, which were of poor quality and too small so I returned them. Be warned they only have a 14 day returns policy which I wasn’t aware of. Unfortunately I returned after 14 days because I went on holiday for 10 days. I’ve explained this to them but they won’t give me a refund. Only a credit note which I’m not going to use because their products are overpriced and poor quality.
Date of experience : 29 September 2023
I found that the customer service was…
I found that the customer service was 2nd to none and I was kept informed about my order every step of the way. The quality of my boots is fantastic and sooo comfy even though they are big and chunky! Will definitely buy from AJVoyage again.
Date of experience : 20 December 2022
Reply from AJVOYAGE
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review, we really appreciate it x
Absolutely love my sandals they are the…
Absolutely love my sandals they are the most comfiest shoes I've ever had on my feet. Will definitely be buying more. I would say get next size up tho as small fitting.
Date of experience : 30 June 2023
I love AJ Voyage…
I love AJ Voyage…. Brought a few pair of shoes off them now and they are the best. My last two pairs of shoes were a pair of slippers and they are amazing who doesn’t love slippers they can wear outside and in. My next favourite shoes were a mini ugg type boot with a chunky sole and they are utterly amazing so comfy. You’d think that they were actually genuine UGG boots. And the best thing about this website is that they’ve always got money off codes who doesn’t love a bargain pair of shoes.
Date of experience : 01 February 2023
Great value
Shipping was so fast for cheap, and the boots I bought are very good quality, exactly what I was looking for, and just overall great for the price
Date of experience : 02 December 2023
The only place I’ll go for my boots and…
The only place I’ll go for my boots and sandals, I absolutely love the brand. I’ve only had one pair out of 7 fail on me which I think are pretty good odds. Over the years the price has gone up but if the quality is there then I don’t mind spending the extra money.
Date of experience : 18 November 2023
IMMI chunky gladiator sandles
So pleased with my purchase. The sandals are well made, sturdy and super comfortable. I am always abit unsure on sizing, as I have wide feet, and wide fit was not on option. I am a size 5 so ordered size 5 and they fit perfectly with extra room for comfort. Really quick delivery!
Date of experience : 20 May 2023
Very happy with service from Ajvoyage
Very happy with service from Ajvoyage. First purchase from them and wasn’t disappointed. Delivery was fast and sandals are great! Well made and very stylish. Definitely better than a pair off the high street!
Date of experience : 17 May 2022
Terrible company with terrible customer…
Terrible company with terrible customer service. Almost sarcastic and arrogant customer service. Paid next day for an item a week ago and still hasn’t arrived. Asked for my postage to be refunded as this is a joke and they made every excuse in the world and still haven’t refunded it. Still waiting for the items to be delivered. Absolute joke!!
Date of experience : 25 August 2022
Hey Sophie, thank you for your review. I've taken a look into this and can see your order was placed on Friday 26th August, this is one of the dates included in the Royal Mail strike action which is stated on our site We appreciate this may be frustrating however we are not able to control this, and they are nationwide strikes affecting all businesses and deliveries. Your order was placed on the Friday and there were no collections due to the strikes, it was then the weekend and a bank holiday so the first day Royal Mail were collecting from us again was yesterday (Tuesday 30th August) Your order was sent out with next day delivery and will be delivered on the next Royal Mail delivery date, which due to strike action is Thursday 1st September. We understand this is frustrating and we apologise for any inconvenience, we do state the Royal Mail strike dates on our site to make customers aware of these delays, which are unfortunately out of our control Thank you
Followed return procedure for 2 pairs…
Followed return procedure for 2 pairs of shoes, they received the return but didn’t refund my money. Thankfully I paid via PayPal and had to end up with raising a dispute through PayPal to get my money back This return was for a pair of boots and a pair of sandals and were returned 17/05 via royal mail, you received the return on 19/5
Date of experience : 19 May 2023
Hey Louise, apologies for the confusion we have now found the correct order you are referring to. Your order was placed on the 11th May and delivered on the 15th. Your return reached us on the 19th May however as you had already opended a PayPal case on the 17th before it reached us, we were unable to process the refund on our side in the normal way. Once a dispute is open it has to then go through the paypal dispute process. If there was no case openeded the refund would have regularly been processed within 48 hours, your refund was still processed via PayPal within a few days, which is still much sooner than many online retailers.
Great sandals at a decent price
I bought a pair of chunky soled sandals last summer and they have been a brilliant addition to my wardrobe. So easy to wear and great for so many looks. Loved them so much I purchased a similar pair this year. Easy to use website and delivery was on time.
Date of experience : 19 June 2023
Sole of my shoes completely fell apart…
Sole of my shoes completely fell apart after a few wears and the company were not interested because they were bought over 6 months ago. Have also read other reviews about this happening and I’m sure they will continue to ignore the problem
Date of experience : 05 April 2023
Funky chunky sandals
Super quick dispatch. Love my sandals and Aj voyage have soooo many to choose from,i swithered for ages but super happy with my choice. Will definitely be ordering another pair.
SCAM DO NOT ORDER
I keep getting ads for this website everywhere and it’s made me remember the absolute NIGHTMARE that I experienced with ordering clothes from them a while back. I made a big order and it never showed up, no customer service but a silly little email that they NEVER reply to. So that was money down the drain. DO NOT ORDER FROM THEM!
Date of experience : 14 April 2022
Hey Chloe, Please could you let us know your order number so I can look into this for you, I have searched your name on our system and no order or emails show up, Thank You x
FABULOUS BOOTS
From ordering, to arriving so easy i clan not fault! And when my boots arrived WOW they are gorgeous, so comfy! The material is fab, I honestly couldn't not fault them in the slightest I'm 100% going to be a returning customer I love the stock they have and to now have revived mine and there stunning I'm just so so happy, also customer service also fab can not fault and will not fault, brilliant experience from start to finish and once again, AMAZING QUALITY! and stunning to look at I think my next purchase will literally be today after receiving my first ever pair of boots from aj voyage, there fabulous there's not much more to say, I love love LOVE!
Date of experience : 11 November 2022
Love the sandals and boots
Love the sandals and boots. I loved the sandals so much I have 2 pairs. Was a bit apprehensive ordering as I have quite wide feet. They fit perfect and they are very comfy
Date of experience : 22 December 2023
Already seen my next purchase
I have purchased 3 pairs of sandals and 1 pair of boots and I am so pleased with them. They are stylish and so on trend, they are so comfortable the sandals are like walking on clouds. I would highly recommend. They also have a quick delivery time so no long wait when wanting to wear your new purchase
Date of experience : 13 November 2022
The company have great styles to do…
The company have great styles to do ffer. The ordering process was very good and delivery very prompt. Unfortunately the sandals were too big so had to be returned. However , that process was also very easy and quick. Would def use again
Date of experience : 26 July 2022
This company is an absolute disgrace
This company is an absolute disgrace. I ordered a pair of shoes, which never arrived. I have paid for these and the company are doing absolutely nothing about it. It’s 3 weeks since I ordered the shoes and still no update, been going around in circles the past week. Absolutely disgusting customer service. Do not rate at all! Would never shop here again
Date of experience : 13 May 2022
Hey Shannan, I have took a look into this and can see Royal Mail have successfully delivered your parcel to your address and attached an image to the tracking to show this as you have said you have not received this we are currently in the process of investigating this and will update you with the outcome, Thank You
Great footwear
I have purchased several pairs of sandals from this company, they are great prices and so comfortable. Delivery is super quick and the sandals look amazing on get lots of compliments. Great buy.
Date of experience : 19 September 2022
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AJVOYAGE Reviews
In the Women's Clothing Store category
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Reviews 3.9.
Most relevant
Absolutely love!!
Absolutely love!!! Love everything about AJ Vogage! The website is so easy to use. I have ordered a sandals and boots from these guy both I love. I lived in my sandals in Ibiza the comfiest shoes to be dancing in. The boots are lovely and warm. All the material is just spot one! Definitely would recommend and If you need to change size etc the returns is also easy.
Date of experience : 10 June 2022
Order comes really fast
Order comes really fast, like 2 days max. Good quality, fashionable, I always get compliments and people asking me where I got them from 😎 definitely recommend!
Date of experience : 10 June 2023
Fantastic footwear
I’ve bought a number of shoes/boots from here and will continue to do so. Delivery is quick and in good condition and the quality is fantastic! I just love their style!
Date of experience : 18 September 2023
Pretty but rubbish quality
No longevity in the quality. I purchased 5 pairs of sandals from them altogether and only 2 are surviving one year later after only a handful of wears. On 3 pairs either the sole split, buckles just fell apart or straps popped from where they were attached to. Really crappy quality.
Date of experience : 07 June 2023
Really good shopping experience
Had a really good experience with Ajvoyage. Really good quality shoes and affordable prices. I've brought 2 items so far and will definitely be buying more! 5*
Date of experience : 23 May 2022
The sandals were nice looking but felt…
The sandals were nice looking but felt very hard, would take some softening and did not fit my feet quite right. I'd have not ordered in the first place if I'd realised I had to pay Klarna just short of £5 to return the sandals and also another £1.99 because apparently I didn't use the online label. Not sure what this means but I used the QR code, I don't have a printer so used the only option available. REPLY - thanks for your reply but that doesn't explain why I have a £4.94 bill to Klarna to pay in addition to this.
Date of experience : 26 April 2022
Reply from AJVOYAGE
Hey, thank you for taking the time to leave us a review, we're sorry to hear the sandals were not suitable for you. For your return query original postage is not refunded as has been paid to the courier get the item you, our returns label / QR code are the same, we state on our returns policy that £1.99 will be deducted off the refunded amount to cover the cost of the return https://ajvoyage.co.uk/pages/returns-exchanges Hope this helps, Thank You x
Incorrect shoes received and poor customer service
Ordered black leather sandals and received boots instead with the correct invoice inside the box. This was very devastating as ordered for holiday. Customer service said I need to return incorrect item and only then they can send the correct one. This would not get in time for a holiday. Although the company confirmed human error, they did not take any ownership or resolving the issue and sending me correct item taking into consideration my timing circumstances. Not a reliable company which sends boots instead of sandals and customer service which doesn’t care about customers but money. Will never order again as really upset about the holiday situation. In other circumstances I would be a lot more understanding and would wait which I have repeatedly explained to Ajvoyage.
Date of experience : 20 January 2024
Looks like you may need to check your…
Looks like you may need to check your supplier of those sandals then AJ V,! I’ve just read both your review partners posts and all the trust pilots posts! .. I think we’re all talking about the same style sandals ! No response from multiple emails which would have been dealt with two days ago with any top competitors such as koi etc🫢 when I found the fault in my lockdown chunky sandals with the same exact malfunction in each seperate customers pairs it’s probably about time you guys stopped trying defend your actions acting as if this had never happened before and demanding the shoes back first, (probably as you won’t get paid back for every pair of unreturned to manufacture’s) .. abit cheeky really as I bet they simply try to do a quick bodge job of just applying more glue to them instead of the proper process of redrafting the shoes 😢 Please respond to my emails asap .. I have a feeling this is the only way to grab your attention ;( Jess coates
Date of experience : 23 July 2022
I honestly can't say a bad word about…
I honestly can't say a bad word about this company or their products. I ordered a pair of the chunky gladiator sandals for the summer and have worn them so much, on holiday out clubbing with the girls, and to work - they are still going strong! I wanted another pair so ordered some that were slightly different and unfortunately there was a mix up with the address and RM returning the parcel to sender! I contacted AJ immediately and had a response within hours asking the correct address and telling me it would be sorted. The sandals arrived as promised a few days later - I didn't incur any extra delivery charges and I love the sandals. Quite frankly for the choice, price and quality that reflects that you can't go wrong with this company. I am a UK 8 which is almost always sold out EVERY time I like a pair of shoes - not with AJ! I am a very happy customer and will keep returning - Thanks AJ.
Date of experience : 03 September 2022
Still not delivered …
Ordered a pair of sandals about 10 days ago and still haven’t been delivered. I was emailed a tracking number and each time I try to track my delivery Royal Mail states that they are still waiting to receive the order form AJ Voyage. Shocking service
Date of experience : 19 August 2022
Hey, we are sorry to hear you have not received your order, usually our standard delivery is delivered within 3 days however we can definitely look into this for you with Royal Mail, please could you email our customer service team at [email protected] and they will look into this straight away for you. Thank You
Great service from start to finish
Great service from start to finish, very quick delivery and beautiful pair of sandals can't wait to get on holiday to wear them, highly recommended company....keep up the great work!!
Date of experience : 20 May 2022
Ordered sandels next day
Ordered sandels next day, didn't arrive for 4 days, when arrived they were faulty.Replacement pair ordered next day due to event.Contacted company to arrange return, numerous emails later they finally provided the returns label, sent back for full refund.Company then sent replacement pair in error, contacted and they arrangeda collection date, courier didn't turn up.Still with holding my refund even when the multitude of errors were made by the company, they haven't arranged another collection attempt, will not escalate as a complaint or refer to a manager, appalling company, do not order.
Date of experience : 09 August 2023
Terrible fit, bad advice from sales rep. Wouldnt use this place no more
Bought a pair after advice from a staff member saying that sizing up would be fine even though i have broad feet. Wore a little around the house and seemed ok but i wore them to a festival and they absolutely crippled my feet within 30 minutes. 4 blister on each foot! Ruined my whole day, couldn't walk or dance. Feel like they shouldn't advise sizing up just for a sale. Also no option to write review on Facebook. They said they sent an option afterwards which weeks later after purchase, i have not received so i am writing it on here to warn people that they are NOT suitable no matter what rubbish they spout saying they will be fine. They dont give two hoots once they have your money
Date of experience : 10 August 2022
Hey, thank you for your review Sorry to hear that your sandals were not suitable for you. Our menace sandals have been one of our most popular styles and we have had many customers with wide feet say the fitting was ok We can offer advice when ordering however everyone is different and once you receive the sandals the decision is entirely yours if the fitting is ok for you or if they're unsuitable and you wish to return. We would never offer advice just for a sale, our customer service team do their best to offer advice where they can. If there is anything else we can help with please let us know, thank you
I have ordered some lovely quality…
I have ordered some lovely quality sandals and boots from this company. The quality is excellent true to size and absolutely love . Fast delivery will definitely buy again.
Date of experience : 03 November 2022
I order some boots for next day delivery this company has never fail with delivery. Boots was so comfortable and so nice. You can't go wrong with Aj Voyage.
Date of experience : 29 October 2022
Happily surprised
Fast delivery and good quality products. Would highly recommend, they look better in real life than pictures and after a few wears, very comfy.
Quick delivery and great quality products for a fair price
Quick delivery, easy shopping process. Great quality products and fabulous selection on both on trend and classic shoes and bags.
Date of experience : 03 July 2023
Amazing sandals
Ordered a pair of sandals from here a few weeks ago and they arrived within 5 days ..absolutely love them . True to size and soooo comfy will defo be ordering from here again x
Date of experience : 19 May 2022
Avoid smelly boots and zero customer…
Avoid smelly boots and zero customer service! You can't call them and sending contact message means never get a reply. Bought a pair of boots for £45 and paid £5 for delivery, when they arrived, they were so smelly it was impossible to wear them. Smell of glue or plastic? My whole room smelt after I opened the box. I contacted them straight away to say I will return them, added note to return box and asked not to be charged for return. I have not heard anything back for more than a week and got refund email saying they are charging me £6 for return!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Date of experience : 18 November 2022
Hey Katarzyna, our customer service team respond promptly to customer emails, I can see you emailed at 8.14am this morning and we responded at 9.07am. Each email received since was replied to within 15 minutes. We do not refund outgoing postage costs as this has been paid to get the item to you, and as next day was selected this cost is £4.99, as you used our returns label to return the item to us Royal Mail charge £1.99 for the use of this service which is deducted from the total refund, unfortunately at this time we do not offer free returns. Our returns department has inspected the pair of boots you have returned to us and do not deem these to be faulty, newly manufactured footwear can have a smell when first opened however once they are taken out of the box this quickly subsides. We however have taken your comments on board and If there is anything further we can assist with please don’t hesitate to get in touch, thank you
Good service and delivery
Ordered some chunky black boots, was very impressed with communication, delivery time, price and then item. Would shop with them again.
Date of experience : 04 October 2022
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.
As Malaysia faces CEDAW review, women refugees continue to struggle
Continued lack of a legal framework for refugees leaves undocumented women vulnerable to arrest when they seek medical help.
Unlike the excitement felt by many women when they find out they are expecting a baby, Hanna* was filled with fear when she realised she was pregnant.
The Myanmar refugee who arrived in Malaysia in 2023 and is still waiting for her United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) card had many reasons to fear what was to come.
Keep reading
Refugees, migrants held in ‘violent, squalid’ malaysian detention centres, dozens of rohingya refugees flee malaysian immigration detention centre, in legal no-man’s land, refugees in malaysia struggle to eat, pay rent, malaysia charges four thais over mass graves, trafficking camps.
“I didn’t have money to go to a doctor, so I had to eat less for five months to save enough money to get a medical check,” she told Al Jazeera. Later, she was referred to a private clinic that provides antenatal care to refugees and asylum seekers for nominal prices. But the pains she endured during her pregnancy left Hannah with no choice but to seek help at a public hospital, where, as a refugee, she risked being reported to immigration for not having any documents.
Under Malaysia’s immigration laws, public health facilities are instructed to report undocumented patients to the authorities, putting them at risk of arrest, detention and deportation. This was reinforced by a directive from the Ministry of Health in 2001 that made it mandatory for public health workers to report undocumented patients.
Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 protocol relating to it. This means refugees are not recognised and they are deprived of basic human rights such as work, access to education and healthcare, and live under constant risk of arrest and detention .
Nora*, a refugee who works at the clinic, told Al Jazeera that Hanna was not the only refugee woman facing difficulties in her pregnancy due to the lack of access to healthcare and its cost.
“We offer help to over 22 refugees and asylum seekers. They can’t afford healthcare, it’s very expensive for them,” she said.
Refugees registered with the UNHCR get a 50 percent reduction on healthcare charges paid by foreigners, but the cost remains unaffordable for many, according to Nora. As for those who are undocumented like Hanna, the costs are not only expensive but full of risks.
Hanna ended up giving birth to her child in March at another public hospital. According to her, the doctors assured her safety and did not follow the order to report her to immigration, but the caesarean section that she needed cost her more than 6,000 Malaysian ringgit ($1,200).
“I saved only 3,000 ringgits over my pregnancy, so I had to borrow money from my friends to afford the procedure,” she said.
‘Changes have not happened’
Hanna’s story is one of many that highlight the challenges women face as asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia as a result of their precarious status.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) will convene on Wednesday to review Malaysia’s progress in implementing the recommendations of last year’s review, which highlighted the problems caused by the continued lack of a legal framework for refugees.
The committee presented a list of issues and questions to Malaysian officials, including a recommendation that the country adopt a “long-term legislative approach” to ensure women asylum seekers, refugees and migrants have access to health services and are exempt from paying higher fees than Malaysians.
The committee also asked Malaysia to repeal the order to report undocumented patients to immigration authorities and repeated previous recommendations to the National Security Council (NSC) to adopt a legal framework for refugees as a “priority”.
In its reply , the Malaysian government said the country provided unrestricted access to all ranges of health facilities in both public and private health sectors, but did not comment on the recommendation to exempt refugees and asylum seekers from higher fees than Malaysians.
As for the requirement to report undocumented migrants to the immigration authorities, Malaysia said it would continue.
“It is the prerogative of a sovereign State to detained [sic] and return any undocumented person staying illegally in the country,” the response read. “The detention of such [a] person allows the Government to determine the security nature or threat that the person may hold against the country.”
However, in its response, Malaysia also said it had amended National Security Directive Number 23 – Mechanisms for the Management of Illegal Immigrants that hold UNHCR Cards – to provide a policy for the management of asylum seekers and refugees, and that it included “major changes” that would grant asylum seekers and refugees access to employment, healthcare and education.
“In this regard, refugees and asylum seekers as defined in the Directive are allowed to remain or stay temporarily in Malaysia based on humanitarian grounds in the fulfilment of Malaysia’s international moral obligations,” it said.
Despite that, the situation on the ground has not changed, according to the refugee rights organisation Asylum Access Malaysia, which submitted a report to the CEDAW committee ahead of this year’s review.
Asylum Access noted that the details of the directive remained unknown and unpublished, and that it was uncertain how refugees and asylum seekers were defined in the directive or if it aligned with international definitions.
The “NSC directive significantly falls short of a legal framework as recommended by the CEDAW committee”, it said.
The organisation warned that the claimed amendments to the directive also lacked any clarity on data protection for refugees added to the national registration system or whether the data could be used as a surveillance tool or be shared with other governments.
The report criticised the adoption of such a directive in what it described as a “highly classified internal decision-making process” by the National Security Council without any form of public review or legal challenge.
Katrina Jorene Maliamauv, the executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia, said that despite the claims from the government that the situation had changed, the experience of refugee women and girls suggested otherwise.
“As refugees continue to be arrested, detained, remain at risk of indefinite detention and refoulement , are denied the right to safe, decent and sustainable livelihoods, remain in fear of accessing healthcare due to risks of arrest and detention and prohibitive costs, are denied the right to education, and a host of fundamental rights, it is clear that the changes that need to be made have not happened,” she said.
The National Security Council did not respond to questions from Al Jazeera regarding the directive and its implementation.
*Pseudonyms have been used to protect the refugees’ identities.
Screen Rant
Eric review: a fierce benedict cumberbatch & stellar supporting cast narrowly save overstuffed show.
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Young Sheldon Star Admits To Feeling Bad About Missy’s Ending Fate
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- The engaging missing persons story Eric struggles to balance its surreal puppet concept with its intertwining storylines.
- Stellar performances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Gaby Hoffman and McKinley Belcher III only somewhat keep the show's overstuffed plot afloat.
- The show addresses timely social issues like the rise in homelessness and police corruption, but much of it feels like a distraction from the central mystery driving the plot.
Crafting an engaging missing persons story is no easy feat, particularly one meant to extend across six hour-long episodes, as is the case with Netflix's Eric . That said, while the show seeks to subvert expectations of its central concept with a surreal manifestation of the titular puppet monster and an ensemble of intriguing characters, it finds itself a little too weighed down by these competing elements to make for a fully engrossing watch.
Eric follows Vincent, a talented puppeteer whose life is shattered by the mysterious disappearance of his son, Edgar. As Vincent spirals into a world of despair and obsession, he channels his anguish into his puppet, Eric.
- Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a superb manic performance.
- The supporting cast are just as engrossing in their roles, namely Gaby Hoffman and McKinley Belcher III.
- The show meaningfully parallels the modern rise in homelessness and troublesome police.
- The focus is too low on its central catalyst of the missing child.
- Some characters feel underdeveloped with unresolved arcs.
- The attempts to veer into levity feel out of place.
Hailing from Shame co-writer Abi Morgan, Eric primarily revolves around Benedict Cumberbatch's Vincent , the co-creator and star of a children's puppet TV show in the '80s. Vincent's home life is anything but bright as his narcissistic personality frequently conflicts with his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffman), and young son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), as well as his coworkers.
When his son goes missing, Vincent's worst traits become all the more prevalent, eventually manifesting into a delusional hallucination of the titular monster puppet created by his son whom he tries to get onto the show in the hopes of convincing him to come home. But with so many other characters and storylines happening, the show ultimately feels overstuffed.
Eric Never Finds The Right Balance Between Its Central Story & Characters
Despite having a roster of well-rounded characters, the focus feels too sporadic..
Beyond Vincent, Eric utilizes its six-episode story to explore a large roster of characters with their own individual narratives. Cassie only stays married to Cumberbatch's volatile character for her son; McKinley Belcher III's Detective Ledroit struggles between his reassignment to the Missing Persons unit and caring for his partner dying of AIDS; and Dan Fogler's Lennie is stuck between a rock and a hard place as he tries to comfort his best friend amid his son's disappearance, while also grappling with his endlessly toxic behavior and the strain it's putting on their show.
Though these intertwining plots do come to a head in the later chapters of the show, the overall build-up feels a little too sporadic for its pacing.
But even as Eric looks to explore these characters, it finds itself grappling with a variety of intertwining stories, including a rise in homelessness in New York at the time, political corruption masquerading as healthy growth for the city and the police sweeping some cases under the rug in favor of others. While these are all certainly compelling, they ultimately feel both out of place and a distraction from the main crux of the show.
Where shows like True Detective have thrived in slowly meting out answers to their central mystery while focusing on character development, Eric can't find the right rhythm to do that. In some episodes, the focus on other characters and stories is so prominent that the desire to find Edgar, or tell us who or what is behind his disappearance, is practically non-existent. Though these intertwining plots do come to a head in the later chapters of the show, the overall build-up feels a little too sporadic for its pacing.
Eric's Puppet-Based Concept Does Provide Some Unique (If Uneven) Twists
The cumberbatch-voiced monster works well for vincent's growth, but leads to odd tonal jumbles..
The biggest selling point for Eric — beyond Cumberbatch in the lead role — is that of the titular monster puppet, whom Vincent begins hallucinating as his desperation to find Edgar increases. In any other show, this concept would be utilized for a more comedic effect, leaning into surreal situations and awkward conversations of the human character having to explain away his seemingly unhinged conversations with a non-existent figure to those around him.
With the Netflix show , Morgan attempts to not only lean into the humorous possibilities of such a dynamic, but also uses Eric as a parallel for Vincent's overall growth. Though she certainly succeeds in both parts, it ultimately feels a bit too jumbled when it comes to Eric 's overall tonal balance. The majority of the series takes a definitively dark path with its story, showing the traumatic impact Vincent's behavior has left on his family and friends, as well as himself, as he deals with alcoholism and various drug addictions.
While the inclusion of Eric could be seen as a welcome reprieve from this darkness, and it offers moments of levity, it ultimately makes parts of the show feel a bit too uneven in their tone. Moments in which we want to feel energized by Vincent's steady change into a determined father searching for his son, or even a man nearing rock bottom with his vices, are more undermined than engaging as his goofy antics and foul-mouthed quips cut through these potentially moving moments rather than adding to them.
Eric (2024)
Eric's stellar cast & fierce timely themes narrowly save the show, it's one of cumberbatch's best performances to date and modern social parallels keep everything afloat..
In spite of some of its shortcomings, there are a few key factors that keep Eric from being a complete disappointment, with the cast being the biggest one. In his central turns as both Vincent and the titular monster puppet, Cumberbatch absolutely dominates his performance , believably tapping into the former's darker tendencies, while also making Eric feel like both a completely separate character and extension of his flawed protagonist. Hoffman and Belcher III similarly shine in their respective roles, layering them with their own unique emotional arcs that make them fascinating to watch.
Eric is a show with a lot to say and many characters it wants to explore, but lacks the benefit of time.
Another major benefit is the timely social commentary Morgan explores throughout the show's interweaving storylines. The government's shady handling of an increasing homeless population feels ripped right out of current headlines from major US cities, with local governments similarly struggling to find a meaningful solution, albeit the corrupt route the show takes is a little less reported on. Similarly, the show's frequent highlighting of news coverage for a missing white child being greater than that of one of color rings true as the Black Lives Matter movement remains just as prevalent as ever.
Ultimately, Eric is a show with a lot to say and many characters it wants to explore, but lacks the benefit of time. Though it could be argued that spreading a missing persons story across multiple seasons could lead to even further issues regarding proper narrative focus, it would have at least allowed Morgan more room to better explore the various themes and well-rounded characters. That said, thanks to the stellar performances of her incredible cast and some very powerful moments, the show does just narrowly avoid crumbling under the weight of its various plots.
Eric begins streaming on Netflix on May 30.
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Nora*, a refugee who works at the clinic, told Al Jazeera that Hanna was not the only refugee woman facing difficulties in her pregnancy due to the lack of access to healthcare and its cost. "We ...
Hailing from Shame co-writer Abi Morgan, Eric primarily revolves around Benedict Cumberbatch's Vincent, the co-creator and star of a children's puppet TV show in the '80s.Vincent's home life is anything but bright as his narcissistic personality frequently conflicts with his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffman), and young son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), as well as his coworkers.
EU 41 / US 10. Add to bag. £45.00. £54.00. WHY YOU'LL LOVE THEM. Level up your boot game this szn in Blizzard, these chunky ankle boots are the perfect addition to your Winter looks and are easy to pair with so many outfits. FEATURING. Chunky platform sole. High quality faux leather.
Read All AJ Voyage Reviews Gracia Duke I've ordered two mystery boxes on two different occasions and I absolutely love both boots I have received 10 months ago Related Photos & Videos AJ Voyage by Eniko Andrea Balogh ...