On April 13, Twitch streamer Northernlion announced plans to hold a six-day “ultimate streamer cruise” that will give fans a chance to spend six days sailing with him on Royal Caribbean‘s Jewel of the Seas. With cabin prices starting at $1,800 (up to $2,159 for a premium “squad up” room), the cruise will take participants on a round trip from Tampa to Cozumel and Costa Maya.
But is it actually real? Skeptical fans abound on Northernlion’s Reddit community. Some believe it’s a bad idea. Some believe it’s not happening at all.
“Insane idea,” one commented. “Probably would be really fun if not for the part where you’re trapped on the open ocean with hundreds of twitch chatters.”
Northernlion (who has 993K followers on Twitch and 1.4 million subs on YouTube) later re-confirmed the trip is real, and we’re inclined to believe him based on Kotaku‘s digging. Its reporter Lewis Parker investigated the situation and pointed out that Northernlion’s close friend Dan Gheesling, a Big Brother winner and runner-up on The Traitors, made a guest appearance during the announcement stream.
Gheesling also said his mother, who’s “owned a travel agency for 50 years,” is one of the cruise’s organizers. Gheesling will apparently have a guest spot on the ship, along with streamers Squeex and Lovelymomo. Together with Northernlion, they’ll interact with fans throughout the cruise at a meet-and-greet cocktail party, Q&A sessions, and a “play with the pros” gaming moment for two fans.
We get the skepticism. It’s one thing to go from being behind the screen to meeting fans at a convention or pop-up. It’s another to go from being behind the screen and suddenly hosting a six-day cruise.
But Northernlion is far from the first creator to do this. TrovaTrip, which arranges group journeys, raised $15 million in 2022 to begin seriously courting creators during the post-COVID travel boom.
Its offer to them: “Get paid to travel with your community!” Creators who work with TrovaTrip can curate entire–often international–jaunts with small groups of attendees. Trips usually run in the $2,000-4,000 range for attendees; hosts end up making around $6,000 on average, TrovaTrip says. (That’s on top of getting comped their own travel costs and a plus one’s.) It’s arranged more than 1,800 trips so far.
Forget regular traveling, though. Northernlion isn’t even the first creator to host a fan meetup cruise.
In 2023, Dude Perfect ran a three-day “Cruise Perfect” from Miami to Nassau on Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Pearl. And Snake Discovery, a Minnesota reptile zoo with a sizable YouTube presence, began running fan cruises in 2025. Its first sail was a seven-day Caribbean trip, and it’s currently planning a second that will bring fans on the Carnival Mardi Gras for a week in early November 2026.
These trips are very high-lift ways for creators to meet their fans–but they’re also memorable, and bring in big chunks of cash from viewers. Do we see this becoming more of a thing? Maybe not with the economy and job market in their current states. But with more and more creators wanting to connect with fans IRL, we think they’ll look to make events more and more unique–and a cruise is certainly one way to do it.
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