royal caribbean cruise deck 2

• Royal Caribbean International

deck 2 good or bad

By adge_dave , May 8, 2009 in Royal Caribbean International

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We were just assigned a room on deck two in the middle of the ship. good or bad spot?

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Not sure. But I'm going to be in a cabin on deck 2, middle of the ship the first week of July. I've heard the middle of the ship is better. Is this true? I know that people have said that if you're on a low deck the elevator situation can get annoying, but I don't mind waiting or taking the stairs.

In the middle is better---less motion. I'd prefer a higher deck tho, just because being that low necessitates using an elevator to go most places! I mean, going from deck 2 to deck 11 (for the pool) will be a MAJOR climb via stairs!

We were on deck 2 for our first cruise. It wasn't bad, but like another poster pointed out - you are more dependent on the elevators.

Just remember, if you are on port side to close your curtains the night before you are to arrive in a port. :eek:

I've stayed several times on deck 2 of different ships. It's a fine location. :)

If the seas are rough, there is less movement on the lower, middle decks.

When returning to the ship, no need to wait for elevators, your room is up only one deck.

You are most likely to have other cabins above you so it is quiet. As opposed to a disco or other noisy venue.

It is usually the least expensive place for your cabin category.

I've stayed several times on deck 2 of different ships. It's a fine location. :)   If the seas are rough, there is less movement on the lower, middle decks.   When returning to the ship, no need to wait for elevators, your room is up only one deck.   You are most likely to have other cabins above you so it is quiet. As opposed to a disco or other noisy venue.   It is usually the least expensive place for your cabin category.   Enjoy!

The elevators always have room when they come to get you and it's nice & quiet with less cabins and fewer people in the halls. We never have had a problem with deck 2. Great location

Deck 2 is the same as any other oceanview or inside cabin. You only realize the difference when you go for an elevator. I have cruised on Deck 2 and have had cruises with a balcony. The cabin stewart service has always been excellent on every level. Have a great cruise.

I've done two lower decks and two higher decks. The rooms are the same as they are pre-fabricated. It does tend to be quieter on the lower decks. When you are in a port, the upper decks will give you a better view of the port and surrounding area. I like to feel the motion of the ship so I prefer to be in the front, and on a higher deck. If you're looking for a smooth ride, low and center is the way to go.

silentbob007

Sure you have to take elevators on lower decks ... but at least they are generally not already full (which is sometimes a PITA on higher decks, especially if you want to go somewhere very high like the VC lounge).

phoenix1181

Deck 2 midship is a very comfortable location for those of us that have issues with motion. It's also great when you're in port. no hassle getting off and you don't have to fight the crowd waiting for the elevators when you return.

Deck 2 will give you more exercise! :)You can use the stairs rather than the elevator if you're in a big hurry.

If you are prone to sea sickness, the lower deck has less motion. You will have a great time!

Like previous posters have said Deck 2 midship is a fine location-no elevator problems and not much waiting.-added advantage is the exercise if you decide to take the stairs. Prices are good so why not. We have met so many nice people on deck two. They tend to be folks who travel alot and the price helps them to travel even more!!:)

I failed to see where the OP stated they had an ocean view.

I'll be the dissenting vote with a no on deck 2. We've stayed in a deck 2 cabin (1 inside, 1 outside) and decided that we'd much rather pay a bit more for a higher cabin, no matter if it is inside or out.

If the ocean is rough enough to feel it on the upper decks, it will be felt on deck 2, midship as well. No matter how large a cruise ship is, it is just a dot on the ocean. Add to the fact we have never cared to stay in our cabin much if it is an inside or OV. We pretty much go out to other areas if we don't have a balcony.

However, you are on a cruise and cabin location is just fine, no matter where you are, so have a great time :)

vermontcruisers

In my opinion it doesn't matter where you are on a Freedom class ship,you will have a great time.We LOVED Liberty of the Seas!

Luv4dacruise

Actually, being on deck 2, the elevator situation is better. You may wait a minute or 2 longer for it to get to you, but you'll always be guaranteed space in it pretty much.

my only deck 2 was on the enchantment and we had high seas..1st time with waves hitting the window ..but it was fine :)

You didn't mention if yours was an inside or an oceanview. I had 2614 (oceanview) on Freedom in 08 and was not a problem. Really didn't feel any motion at all. My problem was I didn't have anywhere to relax by myself and enjoy the view, so now we always get a balcony. Well worth the extra bucks. (if you can afford it)

There is nothing wrong with the cabins on deck two. Just make sure everything is off the floor before high tide.

I agree with the rest that you'll probably take the elevators more often, but they'll be empty. I was recently on a B2B on the Majesty (running out of time where I can say "recently," haha). Cruise 1 was on deck 5 and cruise 2 was on deck 9.

I NEVER EVER take the elevator and man did I love switching to deck 9 after 4 nights at deck 5! The walk from deck five to eleven was for the birds! (But not enough to take the elevator...too impatient to wait and I needed to burn calories where I could!) :)

I have been on deck 2 or 3 a couple of times. Last time we were very close to the anchor and there was a lot of noise in the morning when the shipped docked....never again.

I've been on deck two. We chose it again for our upcoming cruise because oceanview is what was in the budget, and with four kids we insisted upon connecting cabins. Those don't exist up higher. I briefly toyed around with the idea of getting the Family Oceanview 8200 (the biggest, best of that category), but since it was essentially the same price as the two connecting rooms, the larger space and the two bathrooms won out.

I do enjoy being up on the higher decks because it's so convenient to run up one flight of steps to the buffet or the pool. My ultra-favorite rooms are the 10th floor corner aft cabins. If I were to book a plain side balcony room, I'd probably choose deck 6 to be closest to the water. Those are areas that have big positives.

Deck two has no real negatives -- it just doesn't have anything outstanding about it. It's average for a cruise ship cabin, which isn't half bad.

As for midship being "better"; well, "better" has many definitions. For some people it means more space, for others it means a balcony, or close to the pool, or any number of qualifiers. People who say midship is "better" tend to mean that it's more stable and you feel the movement of the ship less. My family has no problem with seasickness, and we all agree that we LIKE the movement of the ship.

Navigator of the Seas in December 2008, I was on deck 7 in a balcony'

room midship. The water was so rough and the stabilizers not working

properly -- you could feel every wave. The bed was moving, the hangers

in the clost clanking. They closed the entrance to the outdoor decks.

You could not go from one end of a deck to the other without holding on.

I say that no matter where you are its bad if its rough weather.

I am proof that midship high decks do not feel anything

croosieloosie

Been on deck 2 several times. Not a bad location. When you get in from a day in port, you only have 1 deck to climb to your floor. No waiting for a crowded elevator

We were on deck 2 on Liberty of the Seas last May. That was our first cruise and we were extremly happy with our room. Deck 2 was a plus on port days easy off and on the ship.

butrflynlambie

My wife and I have been on 2/3 decks for the three cruises we have done. All front of the boat. Deck 3 we had a night or two that we heard the crypt music and a few nights someone wanted to play shuffle board above us on the outer walk way (but was not horribly disturbing).

it is more exercise as you do need to go up one or two flights and then walk all the way to the back to dine. ice rink and studio B are in the way for these two decks.

At the back of the boat deck2 you may be under the dining room. Not sure if you hear any of that.

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Adventure of the Seas Deck 2

Royal caribbean.

Below, you’ll find Deck 2 on the Adventure of the Seas .

0 Restaurants

1 Activities

What does Adventure of the Seas Deck 2 offer in terms of “things to do?” Deck 2 features 1 activity 1 other feature for your enjoyment.

Above you’ll find the full layout for Deck 2 of the Adventure of the Seas.

The following activities can be found on Deck 2.

You may not expect to wrap up a sunny day with figure eights on the ice rink. But onboard, excitement like this comes standard— and the ice skating comes complimentary. Children and adults, from beginners to masters, are invited to strap on a pair of skates and show off their moves.

Other features that can be found on Deck 2.

Work hard, play hard, right? There's no better option for a business conference than on a cruise ship. The conference center is equipped with the cutting edge technology that your company needs to get things done. The conference room can be converted into smaller rooms if needed. Food and beverage options are available depending on your business' needs. There's a small setup fee associated with conferene center preparation. The business room is equipped with plasma screen televisions, AMF panels, high-tech sound and lighting, podiums, microphones and more.

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Utopia of the Seas guide: Everything we know about Royal Caribbean's newest Oasis Class cruise ship

Launching July 22, Utopia of the Seas is part of Royal Caribbean 's beloved Oasis Class series of ships. The fact that Royal Caribbean is launching an Oasis Class ship on the heels of the much-touted debut of Icon of the Seas — the bigger, newer Icon Class of ships — is a testament to the popularity of Oasis Class vessels.

Larger than its sister ship, Wonder of the Seas, Utopia will be the world's second-largest cruise ship (until the second Icon Class ship, Star of the Seas, steals that spot in 2025).

Royal Caribbean hopes to draw a new crowd of never-cruised-before travelers by focusing on short three- and four-night itineraries that allow folks to sample cruising without too much of a commitment. It's the first time the line has earmarked a new Oasis Class ship for short-cruise service from its beginning. When it debuts, Utopia of the Seas will be far bigger, newer and more amenity-packed than any other cruise ship sailing short itineraries in North America.

From new restaurants and bars to announced itineraries, here's everything we know so far about Utopia of the Seas.

For cruise news, reviews and tips, sign up for TPG's cruise newsletter .

Overview of Utopia of the Seas

The 237,000-ton Utopia of the Seas will be 18 decks high and is expected to carry up to 6,700 passengers in 2,830 cabins, placing it just behind Icon of the Seas as the world's second-biggest cruise ship.

Utopia of the Seas will be the sixth vessel in Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class of ships, which includes Oasis of the Seas, Wonder of the Seas , Allure of the Seas, Harmony of the Seas and Symphony of the Seas.

Related: The ultimate guide to Royal Caribbean cruise ships and itineraries

It will sail a series of three- to four-night cruises to the Bahamas from Florida's Port Canaveral (near Orlando). All of the Utopia of the Seas sailings will include a stop at Perfect Day at CocoCay , Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas. Fares for a three-night sailing start from $469 per person (excluding taxes and fees).

Like other Royal Caribbean vessels, Utopia of the Seas will teem with family-focused attractions like multiple pool areas, a kiddie splash zone, surfing simulators, a zip line and a two-story dry slide called the Ultimate Abyss. And that's just on the top decks.

Inside, you'll find an extensive selection of shops, as well as new and returning favorite restaurants and bars, a massive casino, an indoor ice-skating rink and theaters with Broadway-style shows. It will also feature a designated suite area with an exclusive lounge, restaurant and sun deck. With so much to do on board, your biggest challenge might be hitting all the activities on your to-do list on a three- or four-night sailing.

Related: The 7 classes of Royal Caribbean cruise ships, explained

Utopia of the Seas' design and layout will mirror the line's last new Oasis Class ship, Wonder of the Seas, launched in 2022. Like other Oasis Class vessels, the ship will feature individual "neighborhoods," each with its unique vibe. The Royal Promenade will be the ship's main thoroughfare, lined with shops, restaurants, cafes, nightclubs and bars. Also, leafy Central Park will be reprised on Utopia.

Entertainment venues like the casino and comedy club will be in the aptly named Entertainment Place, and the vessel will also feature the exclusive Suite Neighborhood for suite passengers.

Other neighborhoods include The Boardwalk — where you'll find the AquaTheater and Playmakers Sports Bar & Arcade — and the Pool & Sports Zone — complete with an expansive Caribbean-themed pool deck and a three-story Lime and Coconut bar. The Youth Zone (with a for-fee arcade and youth activity programming) and the Vitality Spa & Fitness area round out the list.

Utopia of the Seas cabins and suites

Utopia of the Seas will feature 2,830 cabins and suites, with more than 20 types of accommodations to suit every budget and group size. They include inside (windowless) cabins, ocean-view cabins and balcony cabins. Cruisers can choose from varied suite options, including the new posh Solarium Suites, exclusively on Utopia of the Seas.

The ship will also offer virtual balconies in select inside cabins. These accommodations will include 80-inch LED TVs that provide live views from outside the ship.

Royal Caribbean debuted the concept of interior-facing balconies with its Oasis Class vessels. On Utopia of the Seas, guests will also have the option to book a traditional balcony that faces the ocean or one overlooking the Boardwalk or Central Park.

The line's Royal Suite Class comprises three categories of suites — Star, Sky and Sea. All come with VIP perks such as a dedicated lounge area for suite guests, complimentary drinks and dining, personal concierge services via a Royal Genie, reserved pool deck seating and other amenities. Which perks you get depends on your suite tier.

Within the highest Star tier of suites (and exclusive to Utopia of the Seas), two expansive Solarium Suites will be perched above the ship's navigation bridge, providing spectacular 280-degree top-deck views. Each will feature a huge living room, a dining area and an infinite balcony. The infinite balcony technology, which Royal Caribbean debuted on Icon of the Seas, allows guests to lower a large window at the touch of a button to let fresh air into their room.

Other Royal Suite Class accommodations include the 1,500-square-foot, two-level Royal Loft Suite; it has a lofted master bedroom, a massive living room and a private balcony with an outdoor shower, hot tub, TV and minibar.

Additionally, the three-bedroom Ultimate Family Suite can accommodate up to 10 guests and features a slide from the upper level to the lower one. It has a private cinema and karaoke station, a balcony with a ping pong table and a private hot tub. The two-bedroom AquaTheater Suites allow guests to watch AquaTheater productions from their personal balconies.

Utopia of the Seas restaurants and bars

Utopia of the Seas will offer more than 20 restaurant and bar options, with a solid mix of included-in-fare and extra-fee specialty dining venues. Here is what you can expect on board.

Restaurants

The following dining options are included in your fare:

The Dining Room: The multilevel main dining space will serve multicourse meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Windjammer Cafe: As on other Royal Caribbean ships, the buffet-style restaurant will be the go-to for varied breakfast, lunch and dinner options.

Solarium Bistro: Passengers can opt for healthful, lighter fare like salads, soups and fresh fruit.

The Spare Tire: Debuting on Utopia of the Seas, this food truck-style eatery will be found poolside and feature sandwiches, flatbread and various desserts.

Coastal Kitchen: Suites guests and Royal Caribbean's top-tier Pinnacle loyalty program members will have exclusive access to this space, serving California and Mediterranean fusion dishes.

Sorrento's Pizza: Curb pie cravings day or night at Royal Caribbean's popular pizza parlor .

Other spots to fuel up for free will include El Loco Fresh for fast-casual Mexican fare; Sprinkles for serve-yourself ice cream; Boardwalk Dog House for hotdogs, sausages and brats; and Park Cafe for coffee, tea and pastries.

Here is a rundown of added-fee specialty dining available on Utopia of the Seas.

Royal Railway — Utopia Platform: While full details are still under wraps, the new Royal Railway — Utopia Station restaurant will use technology to virtually transport guests to different places and times. After enjoying pre-dinner drinks on the station platform, guests will "board" the train and enjoy a multicourse dinner.

150 Central Park: This upscale restaurant offers six- to eight-course tasting menus and is only on Oasis Class ships. Dishes here highlight locally sourced ingredients, some prepared tableside.

Chef's Table: This private, five-course wine pairing dinner is hosted by the executive chef and onboard sommelier.

Chops Grille & Trellis Bar: You'll find the same flavorful steaks, fresh seafood and extensive wine selection at this version of Royal Caribbean's marquee steakhouse. On Utopia, the venue will be attached to the signature Trellis Bar, perfect for a convenient pre-dinner cocktail.

Giovanni's Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar: As on other ships, this popular Italian eatery will feature homemade pasta and fresh seafood, as well as a solid selection of wines. New to Utopia, the venue will span two floors. Guests can opt to dine alfresco on the restaurant's outside terrace overlooking The Boardwalk at the line's first Gio's Terrazza.

Izumi Hibachi & Sushi and Izumi in the Park: Guests can opt for a multicourse meal and entertainment in a private dining setting or grab fresh sushi and Japanese-inspired sweets at Izumi in the Park's walk-up restaurant.

Hooked Seafood: Serving New England-style seafood, Hooked will be the spot for Maine lobster rolls, crabcakes, oysters and other fresh seafood.

Playmakers Sports Bar & Arcade : Like its predecessors on other Royal Caribbean vessels, this popular sports bar perfectly pairs pub grub with arcade games.

Related: Playmakers: Royal Caribbean's cruise ship sports bar (with menu)

The Mason Jar Southern Restaurant & Bar: This popular venue is a returning favorite for Southern comfort food and live music .

Johnny Rockets: This popular added-fee ($12.99) spot is worth its weight in golden french fries (and burgers , onion rings and milkshakes).

Vitality Cafe and Starbucks are other added-fee venues on board.

With more than 20 bars and lounges, passengers on board Utopia of the Seas will have plenty of ways to celebrate a long weekend at sea. Here are some to look forward to.

Pesky Parrot: This new Caribbean-themed bar will replace the Bionic Bar on the Royal Promenade. The low-key venue will serve frozen drinks and fruit-based cocktails.

The Lime and Coconut: This lively Caribbean-themed pool deck bar will expand to a three-deck-high venue.

The Vue: The Vue first debuted on Wonder of the Seas. Adjacent to the ship's solarium, the bar is unique because it's cantilevered over the ship's side.

Add to the list returning venues like the aforementioned Playmakers Sports Bar & Arcade for gameday bar favorites and drinks; Schooner Bar, the line's classic piano bar; the English pub, Bell and Barley; Boleros, the line's signature Latin bar where you can enjoy live salsa, samba and merengue music; and the romantic Giovanni's Wine Bar.

Related: Royal Caribbean drink packages: Everything you need to know

Utopia of the Seas activities

With several returning favorites and a few new or updated attractions, the newest Oasis Class vessel will be packed with onboard diversions.

Get your fill of fun in the sun with five onboard pools. Find the vibe you seek, with options ranging from the tranquil adults-only Solarium Pool to the bustling Lido Deck pool area with three pools and 11 whirlpools.

Younger cruisers will have a blast at the Splashaway Bay water park complete with slides, fountains, sprinklers and water cannons.

Out of the water, passengers can test their mettle on Utopia's 259-foot-long Ultimate Abyss slide. It's a Wonder of the Seas holdover — with an upgrade. The slide is 43 feet longer than previous iterations, making it the longest dry slide at sea.

The ship will also feature the signature FlowRider surf simulator, a 10-story-high zip line, a rock climbing wall and Utopia Playscape climbing structure and play area.

On Utopia of the Seas, passengers can choose to play at the main Casino Royale or a separate nonsmoking room. Casino Royale will offer about 30 table games and more than 370 slot machines.

The ship's Vitality Spa & Fitness will offer body- and soul-soothing treatments and ample opportunities to up your fitness game.

Related: How I had the busiest 2 days ever on Royal Caribbean's newest Oasis Class ship

Utopia of the Seas shows

Like on previous ships, the main Royal Theater will host Broadway-style stage productions, the AquaTheater will feature the line's iconic water and diving shows, and Studio B will feature ice-skating productions. Enjoy live music at various venues throughout the ship, including Boleros and Music Hall (or make your own music at Spotlight Karaoke). The Attic also returns as the go-to place for nightly comedy shows.

When will Utopia of the Seas set sail?

In 2024 and 2025, Utopia of the Seas will sail three- and four-night cruises from Port Canaveral, Florida (near Orlando) to Nassau, Bahamas, stopping at Royal Caribbean's private island, Perfect Day at CocoCay.

How much does it cost to sail Utopia of the Seas?

If you want a spot on the maiden voyage of Utopia of the Seas, fares for the four-night sailing start at $1,049 per person for an inside cabin and $1,180 per person for a balcony cabin (at the time of writing).

Rates for other itineraries start at the following prices:

• $399 per person for an inside cabin or $629 per person for a balcony cabin for a three-night Bahamas & Perfect Day cruise
• $496 per person for an inside cabin or $624 per person for a balcony cabin on four-night Bahamas & Perfect Day cruise
• $619 per person for an inside cabin or $739 per person for a balcony cabin for a three-night Bahamas & Perfect Day cruise

Bottom line

Utopia of the Seas will provide a dizzying array of dining venues, drink options and activities for Royal Caribbean cruisers. From brand-new experiences to evolving fan favorites from previous vessels, the ship offers both seasoned cruisers and new-to-cruising travelers plenty of ways to fill a long "Ultimate Weekend."

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Breaking news, vacation horror as ‘drunk’ son, 20, jumps from royal caribbean cruise in front of family.

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A cruise turned into a nightmare for people aboard Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas when a young man jumped overboard shortly after 4 a.m. Thursday.

The 18-story ship was sailing between Cuba and the Bahamas’ Grand Inagua Island when the as-yet-unidentified man jumped off one of the decks.

According to onlookers, his father and brother watched helplessly as he leaped over the side.

Some passengers said it appeared to be an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decision. 

“I had hung out with him and his brother in the hot tub until 3:30,” passenger Bryan Sims tells The Post. ” It was standing room only. He sat right beside me the whole time.”

“He was pretty drunk,” Sims continues.

“As we were walking from the hot tub back to the elevators, his dad and brother were walking towards us. His dad was fussing at him for being drunk, I guess.” “When we got to them, he said to his dad, ‘I’ll fix this right now.’ And he jumped out the window in front of us all.” 

“There was a lot of yelling, and the crew was alerted immediately,” another passenger,  Deborah Morrison, told The Post.

“His family was horrified. Just beside themselves. I can’t even begin to imagine what they’re going through.”

“It was insane,” says Sims. “It was just surreal.” 

In a statement to The Post, Royal Caribbean said its crew immediately sprang into action following the incident.

“The ship’s crew immediately launched a search and rescue effort alongside the US Coast Guard, who has taken over the search,” the statement reads.

“Our Care Team is providing support and assistance to the guest’s family during this difficult time. For the privacy of the guest and their family, we have no additional details to share.”

News of the apparent suicide attempt quickly spread among the guests — and many of them tried to help in any way they could.

“The early morning was definitely somber as so many people came out of their cabins to stare at the sea, hoping to be able to aid in finding the person,” said Amy Phelps Fouse, a passenger on the ship.

“Royal Caribbean has been excellent at communicating updates throughout the day,” Fouse continued. “They have asked that people act with compassion in light of the tragic situation.”

Overboard incidents on cruise ships are rare.

According to the Washington Post , about 386 people were reported to have gone overboard on the major cruise lines between 2000 to 2020.

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The incidents, whether accidental or intentional, are often deadly.

In the past few years, most cruise lines have enacted onboard safety measures and surveillance systems to help reduce the risk of overboard deaths.

The Coast Guard confirmed to The Post it is still conducting a search and rescue operation in the waters off Cuba. The man has not yet been found.

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to  SuicidePreventionLifeline.org .

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Authorities Identify Son Who Jumped Off Cruise Ship in Front of Family

Witnesses said he appeared drunk and was fighting with his dad, according to reports.

Josh Fiallo

Breaking News Reporter

Getty Images

A man who jumped to his death from a Royal Caribbean cruise last week was identified by media outlets Wednesday as Levion Parker, a 20-year-old Floridian who regularly posted about hunting and fishing.

Parker’s body was never found after his fatal leap on Thursday, which sparked a massive U.S. Coast Guard search between Cuba and the Bahamas’ Inagua islands in the eastern Caribbean .

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office identified Parker on Wednesday, the New York Post and Daily Mail reported , just a day after the Coast Guard officially called off their search for the previously unidentified man. Florida deputies did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation from The Daily Beast.

Loved ones reportedly witnessed Parker jump off the 11th deck of the Liberty of the Seas cruise liner in what appeared to be an “impulsive leap,” the Post reported last week, citing a witness.

Bryan Sims, a passenger who claimed he saw the incident unfold, told the paper he’d been hanging out with Parker and his brother in the hot tub.

Sims told the Post that Parker “appeared drunk,” and he spotted him arguing with his dad over the supposed drinking. Moments later, he said Parker leaped into the sea without a trace from an area that housed whirlpools and hot tubs.

“When we got to them, he said to his dad, ‘I’ll fix this right now.’ And he jumped out the window in front of us all,” Sims said.

Deborah Morrison, another passenger, told the Daily Mail that crew were “alerted immediately” by the “yelling” that erupted on deck after Parker’s leap.

In a statement, Royal Caribbean said it immediately halted the ship and dispatched boats to search for Parker, but had no luck. The ship continued on its voyage back to Fort Lauderdale shortly after, leaving the search up to the Coast Guard.

Most of the 4,000 passengers aboard reportedly weren’t alerted to the incident until later that morning, when the ship’s captain made an announcement while many ate breakfast.

Social media accounts for Parker showed that he was an outdoorsman who’d won a fishing tournament just weeks prior to his fatal leap. Posts showed he played football for North Port High School, in southwest Florida, and graduated from there in 2022, reported the Daily Mail .

The paper added that the man’s father, Francel Parker, said the family is consulting lawyers and is planning on putting out a statement.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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Vision of the Seas Deck 2 deck plan

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Cruisedeckplans provides full interactive deck plans for the Vision of the Seas Deck 2 deck. Just move your mouse over any cabin and a pop up will appear with detail information, including a full description and floor layout, and a link to pictures and/or videos. These are the newest deck plans for Vision of the Seas Deck 2 deck plan showing public venues and cabin numbers and locations.

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• Starts April 19, 2021

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Looking for deck 2 (deck) actual cabin pics and videos, sub categories on deck 2, click links below to view category info including cabin pics and videos for that category on the vision of the seas..

This tool will help you see what is on the deck above and the deck below your stateroom. Don't be surprised by loud chair scraping noise above you.

Accessible cabins on Deck 2

These cabins are on the Vision of the Seas

Cabin 2102 1N-2N Category Oceanview

Cabin 2602 1N-2N Category Oceanview

Vision of the Seas Deck 2 (deck) Cabin Guru

The cruise line separates the different categories (Inside, Oceanview, Balcony) into subcategories. The only difference in the subcategories is usually location on the ship. The detail above shows subcategory color, category name, and subcategory name. For detailed information, mouse over a cabin on the deck plans and a pop up window will appear. You will find diagrams, pictures and information about that cabin category including square footage and features. Royal Caribbean has the most complicted and most difficult to understand category coding of all the major cruise lines. Its complicated because some cabins can be classified many different ways, sometimes without rhymn or reason. In some cases they also use the same color to denote two different categories. They use a number followed by letter to denote the type of cabin. Cabins are ranked from the lowest number first to the highest number and also from the lowest letter first to the highest letter. Therefore a category that begins with 1 is consider a better cabin choice than one that begins with 3. The type of cabin is defined by the letter that appears after the number. Letter V defines a inside cabin. Letter T defines a promenade view stateroom. A Boardwalk view balcony uses the letters I,J. Oceanview cabins are defined by letter N. Spacious oceanview cabins by the letter M. Panoramic oceanview cabins are defined with the letters P and L. Letter S defines a boardwalk view cabin. Spacious balconies are defined by the letter B. Regular balcony cabins use the letter D.

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Family Oceanview

Type: Ultra Spacious Oceanview

Cabin is 233 ft 2

*Actual cabin size and layout may differ from size and diagram shown.

CDP Code: Family Oceanview

- Two twin beds that covert to queen-size (72.5 by 82 inches) - additional twin bed - sitting area with sofa and/or Pullman beds - private bath with shower - vanity area - television - safe - radio - phone - hairdryer

Interior (1V Quad - 2V Double)

Type: Interior

Cabin is 142 ft 2

Cabin size for deck 8 midship horizontial cabins is 174 square feet. Other inside cabins range from 135 to 151 square feet.

CDP Code: Interior

- Two twin beds that convert to queen-size (72.5 by 82 inches) - private bath with shower - vanity area - small sofa or chair - NO minibar - television - safe - radio - phone - hairdryer.

Interior (3V Quad - 4V Double)

Oceanview (1N Quad - 2N Double0

Type: Oceanview

Cabin is 151 ft 2

Note: PV staterooms 7082, 7084, 7086, 7088, 7582, 7584, 7586, 7588 do not have floor to ceiling windows. Category PV (new category 1M on decks 7 and 8) is 193 square feet.

CDP Code: Oceanview

- Two twin beds that convert to queen-size (72.5 by 82 inches) - window - private bath with shower - vanity area - small sofa or chair - NO minibar - television - safe - radio - phone - hairdryer - Staterooms 2010 to 2014,2510 to 2514,3000 to 3014,3500 to 3514 have two portholes instead of window - Category PV has floor to ceiling window and is approx. 193 square feet.

Oceanview (3N Quad - 4N Double)

Oceanview Connecting

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I sailed on Royal Caribbean's 2 largest cruise ships. They were shockingly similar for the $1,000 difference

• Royal Caribbean operates many of the cruise industry's biggest ships.
• Icon of the Seas  launched in January, dethroning its predecessor, Wonder of the Seas, as the world's largest.
• Here's how the two mega-ships compare in size, neighborhoods, amenities, dining, cabins, and costs.

Icon of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's new mega-cruise ship darling, was deemed a success before it was even built.

In January, the highly anticipated vessel — complete with more than 40 bars and restaurants, a six-slide waterpark, and a waterfall — set sail, dethroning its less than two-year-old precursor, the Wonder of the Seas , as the world's largest cruise ship.

Before its debut, Michael Bayley, the president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, had already repeatedly called Icon its "best-selling product" yet. The company experienced its largest booking day ever when reservations opened for Icon of the Seas more than a year before its launch, it said

Despite all of this fanfare, you might be surprised by how similar it is to its predecessor.

I've sailed on both ships. Let's see how Icon and Wonder compare in six categories: size, neighborhoods, amenities, dining, cabins, and costs.

Both ships stunt the size of their competitors.

Wonder of the Seas debuted in 2022 as the then-world's largest cruise liner, measuring 235,600 gross-tons, 1,188 feet-long, and 18 decks-tall. The ship can accommodate up to 9,288 people, including 2,204 crew.

Icon of the Seas is, comparatively, 13,063 gross-tons heavier, eight feet longer, and two decks taller. It can sail up to 9,950 people, including 2,350 crew, although it's 52 feet less wide than its predecessor.

Both vessels feel more like amusement parks than traditional cruise ships.

Royal Caribbean invited me on complimentary, non-revenue sailings on both ships: two nights on Wonder in late 2022 and three nights on Icon in January.

I spent most of my time lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted.

It's no surprise both ships are operating weeklong itineraries this year. Any less, and you might not have time to experience all the activities and restaurants on your list.

Like other Royal Caribbean ships, Wonder and Icon have eight 'neighborhoods' that serve separate purposes.

The new ship shares three of Wonder of the Seas' neighborhoods : Central Park, Royal Promenade, and Suite.

Icon's other five — Thrill Island , Surfside, Hideaway, Chill Island, and AquaDome — are a first for the cruise line.

Many of the ships' amenities overlap, but in differing quantities.

Wonder has three waterslides. Icon has a six-slide waterpark complete with rafting and racing options.

Both have increasingly popular cruise amenities like decks-long dry slides, mini-golf courses, rock climbing walls, and playgrounds.

But instead of Wonder of the Seas' zipline , Icon of the Seas has Crown's Edge, a thrilling agility course with a small zipline that leaves travelers dangling 154 feet above the ocean.

Wonder’s Boardwalk neighborhood was my go-to.

Boardwalk delivered exactly as it had promised: an open-air space grounded by wood-planked floors, a hot dog stand, a sweets store, and kitschy, colorful decor.

Icon of the Seas' Surfside , designed for families with young children, felt like its closest dupe.

Both neighborhoods had a carousel, an outdoor playground, and family-friendly dining. But Surfside was more toddler-friendly, as suggested by the children's water play area and nighttime story readings.

On to entertainment: Both mega-ships have ice skating performances and exciting multi-disciplinary shows at the AquaTheater.

But travelers who enjoy musicals at sea will want to stick to Icon.

Unlike its predecessor, the new ship shows a rendition of Broadway hit "The Wizard of Oz" — Munchkins, a puppet Toto, and a 16-piece live band included.

The layout of Icon's amenities were better than its cousin.

Some of Wonder of the Seas' enticing outdoor amenities — like the surf simulator, zipline, and mini-golf course — are clustered on the deck above and away from the pools and water slides.

This layout might be difficult for parents with children who bounce from one activity to the next. Wouldn't it be easier to have all of these outdoor extras near each other, or at least on the same deck, for parental supervision purposes?

This is where Icon of the Seas excelled: All its exciting open-air activities were adjacent.

The rows of pools flowed perfectly into Thrill Island's waterpark , rock climbing walls, mini-golf course, and Crown's Edge.

The best part? The adult-only Hideaway — which flexes an infinity pool club with a DJ — is right behind Thrill Island, creating a clear separation between parents and their children without being too far from each other.

'Free' options like the buffet and build-your-own tacos and burritos bar are available on both ships.

But you won't find the larger vessel's five-stall food hall or mini-golf-adjacent finger food stand on Wonder.

As expected, Icon of the Seas has more dining options than its predecessor, although there are some overlaps.

Wonder of the Seas has 11 bars and 21 dining venues (9 complimentary and 12 upcharged).

Icon of the Seas has eight more bars, four more complimentary restaurants, and three more specialty dining choices.

Nor will you find the new ship’s plush $200-a-person Empire Supper Club on any other cruise liner.

The multi-course dinner, paired with cocktails and live music, stunts the cost of either vessel's other dinner options.

But if you love Johnny Rockets, you’ll be disappointed by Icon of the Seas.

Restaurants like the popular burger chain and Southern comfort-inspired Mason Jar are only on Wonder of the Seas. Fine by me: My fried chicken at Mason Jar was as dry as a desert.

The younger ship doesn't have Wonder's robot bartender-armed bar either. It does, however, have new watering holes with dueling pianos and live jazz.

Surprisingly, Wonder of the Seas has 65 more cabins than its new cousin.

But several of Icon's 28 stateroom categories are a first for the cruise line.

This includes the new family infinite balcony cabin, which has a small bunk bed nook for children.

Royal Caribbean assigned me an ocean-view balcony stateroom on both ships.

My Wonder of the Seas' cabin was 20 square-feet smaller than the one on Icon. But my bathroom on the latter was so tiny, I accidentally elbowed the walls at almost every turn.

Sailing on the world's largest cruise ship doesn't mean you'll have the world's largest cabin after all.

Wonder and Icon are both operating seven-night roundtrip itineraries from Florida to the Caribbean.

In 2024, Wonder of the Seas is scheduled for year-round sailings from Port Canaveral to the Caribbean and Royal Caribbean's private island, Perfect Day at CocoCay , starting at $700 per person.

Icon of the Seas is spending its first year in service operating nearly identical itineraries but from Miami instead. The cheapest 2024 option is $1,786 per person.

That's a difference of more than $125 per person per day.

"Bookings and pricing for Icon of the Seas can only be described as 'iconic,'" Naftali Holtz, the CFO of Royal Caribbean Group, told analysts in February.

Icon of the Seas’ name speaks for itself.

If your family is looking for a jam-packed kid-friendly cruise with enough amenities to stay entertained for a week, both ships are a great option.

But if you're a seasoned mega-ship-cruiser looking to experience something new, Icon of the Seas is your best bet.

They may be similar, but no other behemoth cruise liner has a waterpark for children and a pool club for adults just dozens of feet from each other.

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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.