50 free Love Boat trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Love Boat trivia questions with answers. The Love Boat sailed for nine seasons on ABC, and almost everything about it was real except the plots. The ship was a working Princess Cruises vessel, the company's logo appears on the crew's name tags, and the whole thing began with a memoir by a woman who had actually been a cruise director. This quiz covers the crew and the ship, then goes further: why one cast member missed the final specials while running for Congress, who sang the theme in each era, which guest star performed it inside an episode, why every episode carries three titles at once, and what happened to both ships when the cruise line was finished with them. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached, and difficulty runs from easy character questions to detail that will surprise anyone who watched it weekly.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which network did The Love Boat originally air?
ABC
It ran from September 1977 to May 1986 as part of a famous Saturday-night line-up.
Q 02Which other series shared that Saturday-night line-up until 1984?
Fantasy Island
Aaron Spelling was the executive producer behind both of them.
Q 03Who was the executive producer?
Aaron Spelling
He had been making television for ABC and Four Star since the 1960s.
Q 04Who played Captain Merrill Stubing?
Gavin MacLeod
He later became Princess Cruises' global ambassador, a role he held for over thirty years.
Q 05Which real ship was the show mainly set aboard?
Pacific Princess
Her sister ship stood in whenever the schedule clashed with real cruises or a drydocking.
Q 06Which cruise line owned that ship?
Princess Cruises
Its logo appears in establishing shots, on set backgrounds and even on crew name tags.
Q 07Which port was the ship based in?
Los Angeles
Its regular ports of call were Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco and Mazatlan.
Q 08Which book was the original pilot based on?
The Love Boats, a memoir
She had been a real cruise director, and was partly inspired by the German ship MV Aurora.
Q 09What job had that author actually done at sea?
Cruise director
She wrote up the experience as non-fiction, and a television movie followed in 1976.
Q 10How many TV movies aired before the regular series began?
Three
Four specials and another TV movie followed after the series ended in 1986.
Q 11Who played the ship's doctor?
Bernie Kopell
He had played a different doctor entirely in the second pilot film.
Q 12What is the bartender's name?
Isaac Washington
Ted Lange played him for all nine seasons and the four specials.
Q 13What is the purser Gopher's real first name?
Burl
Fred Grandy played him, rising from purser to chief purser in season seven.
Q 14Why did Fred Grandy miss the four post-series specials?
Q 21Who sang the theme for the first eight seasons?
Jack Jones
A different arrangement, sung by someone else, took over for the final season.
Q 22Who sang the theme in the last season and the four specials?
Dionne Warwick
Charo also recorded the song commercially and performed it in one of her guest appearances.
Q 23Which frequent guest star performed the theme song inside an episode?
Charo
She had released her own commercial recording of it as well.
Q 24How many Golden Globe nominations for Best Television Series did the show receive?
He was campaigning for Congress
He went on to serve four consecutive terms in the House of Representatives.
Q 15Who played Julie McCoy, the ship's entertainment chief?
Lauren Tewes
She and Gavin MacLeod both picked up Golden Globe nominations for the show.
Q 16Who is Vicki Stubing?
The captain's daughter
Jill Whelan played her from season three onwards after a guest appearance in season two.
Q 17Which character did Ted McGinley play from season seven?
The ship's photographer
Ashley 'Ace' Covington Evans later became yeoman purser in the four specials.
Q 18Which three cast members appeared in every episode, special and final movie?
MacLeod, Kopell and Lange
Fred Grandy managed every episode of the series itself but missed the later specials.
Q 19Who composed the show's theme song?
Charles Fox
Paul Williams wrote the lyrics that went over it.
Q 20Who wrote the lyrics to that theme?
Paul Williams
A crooner sang it over the opening titles for the first eight seasons.
Four
They came in four consecutive years from 1978 to 1981, and it never won.
Q 25What happened to the ship that starred in the show?
It was scrapped in Turkey in 2013
Its sister ship went the same way in India two years later.
Q 26Where was the sister ship scrapped in 2015?
Alang, India
She had been renamed MV Discovery and could not find a buyer either.
Q 27Why do the episodes carry several titles at once?
Each storyline had its own writers
The first episode of season one is 'Captain & the Lady / Centerfold / One If by Land'.
Q 28Which earlier series had used the guest-star anthology format seven years before?
Love, American Style
This show simply did it so successfully that the format became a genre of its own.
Q 29Which two Brady Bunch stars appeared in separate segments of one episode?
Robert Reed and Florence Henderson
They bumped into each other at a buffet table, exchanged a look, shrugged and moved on.
Q 30What was the 1998 revival called?
Love Boat: The Next Wave
It ran on UPN for two seasons and twenty-five episodes.