Michael Virgil was 35, in perfect health, and finally taking the cruise he and his fiancée Connie Aguilar had saved for over two years. On December 13, 2024, the family of eight, including their seven-year-old son walked up the gangway of Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas with matching sea-pass cards loaded with the Deluxe Beverage Package. Marketed as “the easiest way to say cheers,” the $109-per-day add-on promised unlimited premium liquor, cocktails, wine by the glass, and frozen drinks from the moment they stepped aboard until the moment they stepped off.

Less than 24 hours later, Michael was dead. Thirty-three drinks later, to be exact.

That’s the number Royal Caribbean’s own point-of-sale system logged to Virgil’s account between 11:47 a.m. and 6:52 p.m. on embarkation day: twenty beers, eight cocktails, five shots of tequila. Thirty-three alcoholic beverages in just over seven hours. The lawsuit filed by his family last week calls it “the most reckless overservice in modern cruise history.”

Crew members never cut him off. They never asked a supervisor. They never even slowed down.

Instead, bartenders reportedly joked with him about “getting his money’s worth,” high-fived him after shots, and kept the drinks flowing while his eyes turned glassy and his words slurred into nonsense. By 6 p.m. he was barefoot, shirtless, and lost on Deck 11, kicking random cabin doors and screaming that someone had stolen his little boy. Terrified passengers locked themselves inside and called security.

When security arrived, the situation detonated.

Body-cam and hallway surveillance footage (now sealed by the court) allegedly shows four Royal Caribbean officers tackling Virgil to the carpeted floor. One kneels on his back. Another plants a boot between his shoulder blades. A third deploys pepper spray directly into his eyes while he’s already pinned face-down. A ship nurse arrives and injects a sedative into his thigh without ever checking pulse or airway.

Within six minutes, Michael Virgil stopped breathing.

He was pronounced dead at 7:14 p.m., barely eight hours after the ship left the Port of Los Angeles.

The Orange County coroner ruled the death a homicide: “Positional asphyxia and restraint-related cardiac arrhythmia, complicated by acute alcohol intoxication.” Blood alcohol level: 0.39—nearly five times the legal driving limit in California.

Royal Caribbean’s official statement has been a single paragraph of corporate sorrow: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Mr. Virgil and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family.” Behind the scenes, sources say the company is quietly offering the family a seven-figure settlement in exchange for a gag order.

The family has refused. They want the video released. They want every passenger who ever buys the Deluxe Beverage Package to know what “unlimited” really means when no one is willing to say stop.

Because here’s the part that turns stomachs: Royal Caribbean’s internal policy manual explicitly states that crew “must refuse service to any guest who appears intoxicated.” It lists visible signs: slurred speech, inability to walk straight, aggressive behavior. Michael Virgil checked every box by drink number twenty. Yet the computer kept accepting his sea-pass card, and the bartenders kept pouring.

Why? Because the Deluxe Package is pure profit. Once purchased, every additional drink costs the cruise line pennies. The more you drink, the more they make. Former bartenders who worked the Navigator tell the same story off the record: management tracks who sells the most packages and rewards them with bonuses and better schedules. Cutting someone off hurts your numbers.

Michael’s last drink was a double tequila at the Lime & Coconut bar on Deck 12 at 6:52 p.m. The receipt shows the bartender added a smiling-face emoji next to the transaction.

Fourteen minutes later he was being restrained. Twenty-two minutes after that, he was gone.

His seven-year-old son still asks when Daddy is coming back from “the big boat.”

Connie Aguilar now sleeps with Michael’s boarding photo next to her bed—the one where he’s grinning ear-to-ear, arms around her and their little boy, the ocean sparkling behind them. She says the smile in that picture is the reason she’ll never settle.

“Royal Caribbean sold him death by the shot glass,” she told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Miami. “They marketed ‘unlimited’ like it was freedom. For Michael, it was a death sentence served with a lime wedge.”

The Navigator of the Seas is sailing again right now, somewhere off Catalina Island, music thumping, margaritas flowing, another group of excited families tapping their cards for the Deluxe Beverage Package.

Somewhere on that same ship, a bartender is probably telling someone, “Go ahead, man—get your money’s worth.”

Michael Virgil did.

And it killed him.