There’s one word you shouldn’t say on a cruise ship — I found out the hard way
Similar to how saying “fire” in a movie theater is frowned upon, there’s a word that’s “not allowed” on cruise ships.
TikToker Marc Sebastian has been sharing his experience on Royal Caribbean’s nine-month Ultimate World Cruise and took to the platform to share a list of things he learned about cruising during his 18 nights onboard.
The “number one” thing he learned the hard way was that there’s one word that won’t go over well when spoken on a cruise ship: “Titanic.”
“You’re not supposed to talk about the Titanic. Who knew that? I didn’t,” Sebastian said in the viral TikTok, which now has 4 million views.
“I brought up to an entire room of people having lunch that our ship was only 100 feet longer than Titanic,” he shared. “When I tell you that — utensils dropped, waiters gasped, it’s dead silent.”
Sebastian admitted that his cruise friend Nadine had to whisper and tell him not to talk about the Titanic.
“Well, it wasn’t like that was in the f–king handbook. Not that I read the handbook, clearly,” he added.
Sebastian joined the nine-month cruise on Jan. 5 after becoming obsessed with the drama onboard and going viral on TikTok for begging the cruise line to put a camera crew on the ship and make a reality show out of it, arguing that “there will be enough footage for at LEAST 3 season, 1 hr episodes.”
“Put me on the cruise — I’ll go,” he pleaded in the video, which has garnered 7.6 million views. “I will cause chaos, I will wreak havoc, and I will film everything.”
After the video went viral, a “very unexpected and cool brand” reached out to Sebastian and offered a partnership that would put him on the cruise to get all the tea on record.
Sebastian announced that he would be boarding the cruise in Antarctica in partnership with Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.
While he didn’t get to be on the cruise for the entire 274-day trip, Sebastian spent 18 nights on the boat recording his experience and spilling the hot gossip. According to his TikTok videos, his last day on board was Tuesday, Jan. 23.
Sebastian added in his video full of “departing knowledge” that cruise ships have godmothers — and the godmother of the cruise ship he was on, which he referred to as a “floating retirement home with a Cheesecake Factory attached,” is none other than Whoopi Goldberg.
“Whoopi, girl, you and I gotta talk. Because I have to let you know what’s going on on this ship,” he quipped about the people onboard the Serenade of the Seas. “As an EGOT winner, I just don’t feel like this is the right ship for you.”
He also mentioned an ongoing scavenger hunt for rubber ducks on the ship and that cruise ships fill their pools with seawater.
“I don’t know how in my head I thought they were filling them, but what I didn’t think they were doing was filling it with seawater,” he admitted.
