A 9-Month Cruise Is TikTok’s Favorite New ‘Reality Show’

In recent months, Beth Fletcher, a 39-year-old photographer from Derbyshire, England, has built a small following on TikTok through the British reality show “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!” summarize and analyze. When the final season ended in early December, Ms. Fletcher ran out of content because, she said, “we won’t have another good reality TV show until the summer.”

Then the TikTok algorithm produced the following: a video by Brooklyn Schwetje, a graduate student and influencer, who shares a day in her life on the Ultimate world cruise, a nine-month trip around the world with Royal Caribbean. Mrs. Fletcher was immediately entranced. “I’ve never been on a cruise before, and the idea of ​​a nine-month cruise blew my mind,” she said. After finding more videos from other passengers on the cruise, something clicked: “Maybe this is our own reality TV show, but better.”

Since the ship launched from Miami on December 10, TikTok has been flooded with posts from land-based voyeurs, dissecting the videos shared by cruise passengers and speculating about the ship’s potential as a floating arena for high-level drama. Some are calling it a “Nine-month TikTok reality show,” with the passengers inadvertently becoming celebrities.

Videos with the hashtag #UltimateWorldCruise have been viewed more than 138 million times on the social media app.

This isn’t the first time TikTok creators — who compete for views with millions of other accounts — have mined videos posted by others to create their own genre of online reality TV. In 2021, the University of Alabama sorority rush became an internet fixation known as #BamaRush (and eventually a Max documentary). But just like on reality TV, the truth behind the content can seem irrelevant.

With a 274-night itinerary, the Ultimate World Cruise is the longest cruise ever offered by Royal Caribbean. Fares for the entire trip – which stops in 65 countries – start at $53,999 per person and range up to $117,599, before taxes and fees, according to Royal Caribbean’s website. The ship, called the Serenade of the seashas capacity for 2,476 guests, although a Royal Caribbean representative would not confirm how many are currently on board.

From England, Mrs. Fletcher started she posted videos talking about the cruise, introduced passengers she identified as “cast members” through their TikTok accounts, and shared tidbits about their lives aboard the ship gleaned from their videos.

More accounts dedicated to the cruise emerged: One creator calls herself the ‘sea tea’ director of TikTok and keeps her followers informed of ‘breaking news’ (claiming that someone left the cruiseand another had tested positive for the coronavirus). Another TikToker made one virtual bingo card with predictions such as ‘small neighbor drama’, ‘a wedding’, ‘stowaway’ and ‘takeover by pirates’. That bingo card video was viewed more than 300,000 times and received hundreds of comments like: “This is the new Hunger Games” and “It must be a social experiment.”

Ryan Holland, a 28 year old to post regularly about the cruise, says people are “curious how people pay for it” and “how people manage to be on a boat for so long.” She sees two possible outcomes for the trending fixation. Either “it will die out,” she said, “or it will change the future of reality TV.”

An unlikely star of #cruisetok is Joe Martucci, a 67-year-old recently retired from St. Cloud, Florida, who posts from the ship with the handle @spendingourkidsgeld. Mr. Martucci’s four children encouraged him to post video updates on TikTok, which he had never used before. His first video has been viewed almost half a million times.

“This is not us trying to be famous,” says Mr. Martucci, who now posts daily with his wife, calling himself “Cruise Mum & Dad” and opening each video with a cheeky: “Hello kids.”

Mr. Martucci, who now has more than 69,000 TikTok followers, says the attention has been largely positive, but he worries about fan accounts that focus on stirring up drama. “I think they’re trying to manufacture something,” he said. “They do it for the opinions and for the followers.”

Another passenger, Lindsay Wilson, a 32-year-old teacher from Phoenix, said the attention was “really, really weird.” She and several other passengers who have amassed new TikTok followers have since connected in person and discussed their overnight stardom via group chats.

Apart from some grumbling about passengers of different customer levels being treated unequally, few real dramas have yet to arise. One exception, however, was a video (currently 2.5 million views) posted on December 17 by Brandee Lake, a Black content creator and cruise passenger who said she was mistaken for a crew member, once by a passenger and another time by a staff member. Neither Ms. Lake nor Royal Caribbean have confirmed whether they have been contacted about the matter.

Despite TikTok’s fixation on the cruise (and hope for drama), most videos coming of the Serenade of the Seas was more mundane than poignant. Ms. Lake described a typical day at sea: Zumba class, breakfast, coffee at Café Latte-tudes and an activity such as doing a team puzzle or making gingerbread houses. After dinner she occasionally participates in evening programming, such as a silent disco, but usually she just retreats to her room. “I’m trying to figure out where this drama is happening,” Ms. Lake said. “What am I missing?”

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