Everything You Need to Know About Concert Cruises

Concert cruises are a floating music festival at sea

Some aspects of the concert cruise experience were incredible and made the trip unforgettable despite the relationship stress I was going through at the time. Other parts disgusted me beyond belief, though these were mostly related to big-boat cruising itself and not so much the actual live music piece. Dozens of artists performed across five days on the 311 Caribbean Cruise. The ship and the island each had multiple venues, and there were often several bands playing at once. There were merchandise booths, meet-and-greet opportunities, and I even heard of some lucky passengers getting to go “backstage” into the artists-only portion of the ship to party with the bands. In essence, the experience is akin to attending a multi-day music festival – albeit one that floats and where you have a nice ship cabin to sleep in rather than a tent. This last bit is notably important because what music festivals generally lack is any sort of privacy. Being able to escape to your room at the end of the night, or at any point throughout the day, to recharge and refresh was very comforting.

Performances happened throughout the day and well into the night. The mood was always celebratory – drinks flowed freely, as did joints and pretty much anything else you could ingest. This bit surprised me because boarding the ship at port required passing your luggage through a scanner not unlike airport security.

Seeing your favorite bands play with the open ocean or a paradisiacal tropical island as the backdrop is nothing short of incredible. Doing so while lounging on an innertube in the sea, or chilling in a hot tub with a drink, is flat-out perfection. The experience was as memorable as the first time I saw a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and this euphoria seemed to penetrate everyone aboard – I never once encountered an upset person.

“When packing for a concert cruise, you should bring band merch, fan art/swag swap-type goodies to share with fellow fans, theme night costumes, a special piece of band memorabilia or keepsake to get signed during autograph sessions, and possibly your own instruments for jam sessions and immersive musical workshops,” says Laura Gilbert, Community Experience Specialist with Sixthman, the largest producer of concert cruises in the United States. “Concerts at sea are more intimate than most concerts in traditional music venues. There’s a surreal, “pinch me” feeling seeing your favorite artist live while surrounded by hundreds of miles of open water and 2,000 of your fellow super fans. Not only are you seeing a live show from your favorite bands, but you’re also on vacation with them. You get to see the artists around the ship, interacting with their own families and close friends, just being real people.”

How to check and see what concert cruises are happening

Production company Sixthman is the standard bearer in hosting concert cruises. The company parters with Norwegian Cruises, with many of its “festivals at sea” departing from Miami.  When traveling with Sixthman, you can expect a professional production experience with top-tier bands, sound specs, and performances.

Upcoming concert cruises:

• Lamb of God Headbanger’s Boat: October 28-November 1, 2024
• Rock the Belles Cruise: A Hip-Hop Experience: November 13-17, 2024
• The Rock Boat XXIV: January 26-31, 2025
• Emo’s Not Dead Cruise: Febraury 4-8, 2025

Planning and executing a concert cruise trip takes minimal effort

Much like any cruise, you don’t have to do a lot of planning to attend a concert cruise other than choosing and buying your cabin class and securing flights to the port of departure. It’s actually easier to plan than attending a multi-day music festival because you don’t have to stress about getting a good camping spot or having noisy neighbors in the next tent over. When boarding the ship, you’ll be given a wristband or other “digital key” that allows you access to everything from concerts to restaurants to other events. In our case, this was also how our bar tab was tracked.

Everything you can experience will be included in your cabin price, with the exception of certain add-on excursions (kayaking or snorkeling, for example) and likely, alcohol. If you’re not a drinker, you can get away with a concert cruise for about what you’d pay for an all-inclusive resort vacation. If you do imbibe, this is where they get to your wallet. My partner and I each spent $500 – about $100 per day, per person – on drinks. This was enough to drink to excess a couple times, and other times to leisurely have a drink or two at a show or by the pool. This significantly upped the cost of the trip, though we settled the bar tab after the cruise rather than when buying our interior cabin, therefore having a chance to save for the indulgence.

Like any large cruise, it’s easy to become overwhelmed

Before this trip, I’d never been on a cruise. Even besides all of the live music, I was amazed at the sheer volume of things to do. The casino was in full swing 24 hours a day. There was pub trivia in the bar, and mini-golf on the deck. Of course, there were multiple pools and hot tubs, and even what amounted to a small waterpark. Several restaurant concepts were open for lunch and dinner, and the breakfast buffet offered everything one could imagine for a hungover feast.

With so much to see and do, it’s easy to forget that rest is a necessity, especially when drinking throughout the day. It took me a couple days to realize this, and part of the third day my partner and I spent napping in our room, missing a couple bands’ performances because we’d gone too hard the nights before.

I found it important to consistently remind myself that it’s ok to take a few minutes alone. Concert cruising is a marathon rather than a sprint, and it’s important not to get sucked into groupthink, particularly when that groupthink encourages you to “go, go, go.” The music is the priority, and if that means skipping a couple of the ship’s amenities, so be it.

Concert cruises come with a four-figure price tag, meaning a lot of standard concert goers like teens, college-age kids, and many young professionals, are priced out. There were some families with younger kids on our trip, but it was predominantly kidless folks in their mid-to-upper-20s.

There’s a lot of needless waste

The concert cruise I took was onboard a large cruise ship with about 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew. As noted above, much of the action happened aboard the ship, plus two “day excursions” to a private island. In both settings, all food consumed was buffet-style, with the exception of one nicer sit-down restaurant and a couple grab-and-go cafes. Buffet meals for thousands of people must be among the most wasteful things possible. I was literally disgusted with myself every time I walked through the buffet line, just knowing how much of the food in front of me was going to get thrown away.

Furthermore, almost all drinks aboard the ship and on the island were served in disposable cups, often single-use plastic. Bottled water is also prevalent. I went through no less than a dozen disposable cups per day. The experience of the cruise was heavily tainted knowing that the cruise effectively added up to one giant shit on the environment, and that I was complacent in this happening and had even paid for it.

I reached out to Sixthman, the organizer of the cruise I went on, and the company assured me it and its cruise line partner are working to mitigate these issues. The company claims that, according to partner Norwegian Cruise Lines’ 2023 Sail & Sustain Report, about 48 percent of its waste is diverted from the landfill. Still, the report says nothing specifically about reducing single-use plastic.

Many music venues have begun offering reusable plastic cups that concertgoers can have refilled multiple times, and in some cases, can even bring them home and then back the next time to receive a discount on drinks at the bar. If I ever attend another concert cruise, I will inquire as to whether this process has been put in place. If not, I’ll stay home if the operator won’t let me bring a Hydroflask with me for drinks.

There are friends to be made, and just as many to be lost

In a weird sort of way the concert cruise was kind of like the freshman dorms. You don’t know anyone around you when you board, but making new friends is as easy as asking someone where they’re from. By the second day my partner and I had amassed a new “friend group” that all rallied together to watch bands, eat, grab drinks, or embark on island excursions like kayaking or beach volleyball.

Again, while this made the trip much more fun, it also contributed to us overdoing it the first couple days. At the top of this article I hyperlinked to a story I wrote years ago about the relationship I was in at the time — in short, it was on the rocks before the cruise, and this trip ended it. We broke up the day after arriving home. Concert cruises are a party, and that party doesn’t care about your problems — not that this should dissuage you from going, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Before disembarking the ship, we all exchanged numbers and social media follows, but of course, I never saw or even spoke with any of them again. Now and then I look through my photos from the trip and wonder whatever happened to them, and to the 3,000 other people I traveled with. I’ve long since moved, grown into a career, and even become a parent – not uncommon among them, I’m sure. But like any good trip, though the friendships may be fleeting, the memories never fade.