Outside the balcony window of Audrey and Joe Martucci’s cabin, the ocean waves are rolling, and the sun is hanging low in the sky.
It’s a picturesque scene, but with several hours to go until their cruise ship reaches the Chilean port of Valparaiso, the couple need to find some way to kill time.
And as their many fans on TikTok will know – 90,000 and counting follow their account @spendingourkidsmoney – that means sorting out their wardrobe: Joe has a lot of clothes, and Audrey wants them folded properly.
‘This is what your folding does,’ British-born Audrey remonstrates on camera, holding up a pair of woefully creased shorts. ‘It makes everything crumpled.’
The Martuccis are among guests who joined Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas in early December to embark on a 274 day-long cruise taking in seven continents and 150 different locations.
Billed as the ‘ultimate world cruise’, it’s got a price tag to match: an interior windowless cabin starts at £47,000 per person, rising to £92,000 for a junior suite,
New Yorker Marc Sebastian, 26, had his cruise paid for by a publishing company but he did not enjoy his stay – describing the ship as a ‘floating retirement home’
Audrey and Joe Martucci are documenting their blow-out cruise via their TikTok account @spendingourkidsmoney
Joe shares his mini-golf skills with the 90,000 followers his TikTok account has attracted
It’s a lot to pay for somewhere to tidy away your clothes but then the majestic glaciers of the Antarctic and access to the wonders of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu – all sights to behold during the trip – aren’t the reason the cruise has become an unexpected social media sensation.
Rather, the millions coming along for the ride virtually, courtesy of TikTok videos made by a growing number of passengers, are there for the minutiae of daily life on one of the first marathon cruises to take place since the global pandemic.
Against the backdrop of the hashtag ‘Cruise Tok’, those aboard – ranging from veteran cruisers to young influencers – have been chronicling everything from bickering over access to exclusive club member rooms to flooded cabins.
There have also been rumours ranging from an imminent red wine shortage to a passenger with Covid.
Marital fallouts are a popular theme, with talk of couples rowing in hallways and one woman so irritated by her husband’s mountain of washing that she dumped it on the floor of the ship’s laundry room.
Many passengers now even style themselves ‘cast members’, cementing the idea that they’re in a reality show and so invested are viewers that some have made bingo cards predicting future ‘storylines’, among them the discovery of a stowaway, an impromptu wedding, a pregnancy and an outbreak of a sexually transmitted infection.
One couple even found themselves at the centre of rumours that they are swingers, after a TikTok viewer spotted a pineapple on the door of their cabin in one of their films.
An upside down pineapple, it turns out, is said to be secret swinger code.
Luckily, Adita Larson, 63, and her husband Lee took it in good part. Adita took to TikTok, naturally, to refute the rumour.
Adita Larson has been at the centre of rumours sparked by followers of the hashtag Cruise Tok – and logged on to her app to deny that the upside down pineapple on her cabin door meant she was a swinger
Adita shares a shopping trip to a jeweller during her glamorous world cruise with her TikTok followers
‘Sorry to disappoint you, we are not swingers, but we do like pineapples,’ she posted on her TikTok handle @aditaml2759.
The Larsons are long-time Royal Caribbean ‘Pinnacle Club’ members, the highest tier in the company’s loyalty programme, meaning they have been on a lot of cruises. They say they have displayed the symbol on their cabin door for years.
‘Let me assure you I haven’t met a Pinnacle member who’s a swinger,’ Adita tells the Mail. ‘I thought it was hilarious.’
The rumour has inevitably boosted her social media profile; her TikTok account already has 60,000 followers.
‘It’s wild, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘I didn’t have a TikTok account before, but when I saw some of the girls doing it on board I thought, “Why the hell don’t I?”.’
Thankfully for the Martuccis, who live in Las Vegas, there’s been no sniff of scandal around them. They’re adamant they’re not having anything to do with any controversies.
‘I think when we started making TikTok videos about life onboard everyone was like “there’s going to be drama” but we do not engage with that,’ 59-year-old retired businesswoman Audrey says firmly, speaking to the Mail over a surprisingly efficient WiFi connection from somewhere in the South Atlantic.
‘We’re not interested… A lot of the drama is about gaining views, we’re about education and having fun.’
They’ve certainly acquired no shortage of fans: the duo only set up their account a month ago, ten days after the ship set sail from Miami on December 10 and are now close to getting 100,000 followers after their children from previous marriages – Angie has a grown up daughter, while Joe has two daughters and a son – suggested they go online so they could more easily share the experience with friends.
‘It’s unbelievable really,’ ruminates Joe, a cheerful retired finance executive.
Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas is on what the company has called ‘the ultimate world cruise’
The Serenade’s on-deck swimming pool lined with sun loungers also boasts a bar
The cruise ship’s Tropical Theatre provides entertainment for guests in the evenings
‘We did not know how to put them up, we don’t know how to edit, we’re learning as we go along, but I think we’ve hit a nerve with some of our followers as we’re like their mum and dad. Some people have told us we’ve become their substitute family.’
‘Luckily our children think it’s really funny,’ adds Audrey, who hails from Edinburgh, although she moved to the US in 2019.
The couple met in Las Vegas that same year – they have promised followers they will share the tale of how it happened once they reach that magic 100,000 number – and booked the trip two years ago as a way of setting a deadline for Joe’s retirement.
It was arguably a risky measure, as at that point Audrey had never been on a cruise before and the trip was non-refundable.
Luckily, she loved the two sample trips Joe took her on, although little wonder given that Joe booked a two-storey suite for the first one and a grand suite for the second.
‘Audrey said, “This is lovely, I can do this”, then I showed her the room on this ship, and she was “Where’s the rest of it?” So it was a bit of dirty trick,’ he grins. ‘Although we can’t complain. We have a nice balcony where we can sit when the sun is out.’
Undoubtedly, the older demographic is the larger contingent on the boat, but for a time one of the younger passengers was influencer Marc Sebastian, a 26-year-old New Yorker with a whopping 1.6 million followers on TikTok.
Marc had his ticket paid for by a publishing company who obviously saw the marketing potential of a man promising to ‘cause chaos’ during his 18-day stay.
While around 700 people booked for the full nine-months, shorter segments of the voyage were – and indeed still are – on sale for those who want to travel for a few weeks.
Within hours Marc was complaining via his channel of the ‘non-stop noise’ he claimed was being pumped into every inch of the ship – rooms, restaurants, hallways – before disclosing that he had been thrown out of a lounge that was reserved for Royal Caribbean’s most loyal members.
Then there were the ‘dirty looks’ he claimed to be receiving everywhere on board, with other passengers complaining online that he was ‘constantly filming’.
After departing when the boat docked in Valparaiso, he described his experience as akin to spending time in ‘a floating retirement home with a cheesecake factory attached’.
This is not the view of another younger passenger Amike Oosthuizen, however. The 26-year-old South African is on board not only with Gustav, her 26-year-old husband of five years, but her father and mother Renske Lammerding, a South African celebrity who starred in reality show The Real Housewives of Pretoria.
South African guest Amike Oosthuizen joined the ‘cast’ of the ship with her husband of five years and parents
Amike and Gustav pose for a selfie at Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro to share with their TikTok followers
Amike enjoys documenting the gourmet food on board, such as this chocolate fountain with fruit kebabs and mini-muffins
She insists that she has had nothing but good vibes from her time onboard, other than the occasional grizzle from passengers when inclement weather prevents them from docking at port (that’s happened three times so far).
‘I personally have nothing to complain about and we definitely haven’t experienced the drama that people are posting about,’ she says. ‘Everyone on the ship is so nice and kind.’
Oosthuizen spends much of her time on TikTok talking her 280,000 followers – she posts as @amika_oothuizen – through her gym routine and what she’s eating on board, with her most popular post raising 6.3 million views. ‘It’s insane to me that there are so many people enjoying this journey and watching our lives,’ she admits.
And it’s even more ‘insane’ for Audrey, who has discovered that she may even have a welcoming committee waiting for her at none other than Primark in Southampton when the ship docks at the port in July.
‘Joe had done a very detailed spreadsheet on the trip which we showed our followers,’ she says. ‘He had factored in a trip to Primark as I said by then we’ll need some new stuff. All these people honed in on it wanting to know more and we believe there’s going to be some people there waiting for us.’
Of course this may not satisfy those openly rooting for this opulent vacation to descend into entertaining chaos.
One British TikToker called Becky Fletcher has become such a devotee that she has developed a dedicated stream for her 65,000 followers under the tagline ‘Ship Happens’.
‘I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be crazy,”’ explains Becky of her unexpected obsession with what she calls the ‘unedited reality show that was never meant to be a reality show.’
Sadly for Becky and hundreds of thousands of other fans, all remains quiet on the Serenade as it navigates its way further up the coast of South America. But then, worse things (can) happen at sea.