Love Boat Trivia
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47 free Love Boat trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 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 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which network did The Love Boat originally air?
ABC
ABC aired The Love Boat for nine seasons, and the show is credited with sparking a boom in cruise bookings.
Q 02Which series aired right after The Love Boat on Saturday nights until 1984?
Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island aired right after The Love Boat, and together the two shows made Saturday one of TV's most popular nights.
Q 03Who was an executive producer of The Love Boat?
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling wanted Gavin MacLeod as the captain, and MacLeod took the part even though his agent thought the script was bad.
Q 04Which future Hollywood star played Gopher's college friend on The Love Boat in 1980?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks played the friend, and Julie agreed to pose as Gopher's girlfriend to impress him.
Q 05Which Love Boat regular also directed episodes of the series?
Ted Lange
Ted Lange directed several episodes, then went on to direct sitcoms such as Moesha and Dharma & Greg.
Q 06Who played Vicki on The Love Boat?
Jill Whelan
Jill Whelan played Vicki, and working alongside the show's famous guest stars, she got to dance with Ginger Rogers.
Q 07Which city was The Love Boat's home port?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles was the home port, but most scenes were shot on studio replicas of the ship rather than at sea.
Q 08Which pop artist appeared as himself on The Love Boat in 1985?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol appeared in a storyline about a passenger who tries to avoid him because she once starred in one of his films.
Q 09What job did Jeraldine Saunders, whose memoir inspired The Love Boat, do at sea?
Cruise director
Cruise director was her job, after she first won a hostess post by claiming to speak foreign languages she didn't.
Q 10What preceded The Love Boat's weekly series?
TV movies
TV movies came first, and the first two cast different captains before Gavin MacLeod took over in the third.
Q 11Who played the ship's doctor on The Love Boat?
Bernie Kopell
Bernie Kopell played Dr. Adam Bricker, though Dick Van Patten had played the ship's doctor before the weekly series began.
Q 12What is the name of The Love Boat's bartender?
Isaac Washington
Isaac Washington was the bartender, a part Theodore Wilson played in the first TV movie before the regular cast took over.
Q 13What is Gopher's real first name on The Love Boat?
Burl
Burl was Gopher's real first name, and Fred Grandy, who played him, was badly burned in 1982 when balloons exploded during a location shoot.
Q 21Who sang The Love Boat theme for its first eight seasons?
Jack Jones
Jack Jones sang it, and he later poked fun at the song by performing it as a lounge singer in Airplane II.
Q 22In which film does Sandra Bullock's character play The Love Boat theme to set a romantic mood?
Demolition Man
Demolition Man was the film, and Bullock's character played the song as mood music before a virtual date with Sylvester Stallone's hero.
Q 23Which frequent guest star played the recurring role April on The Love Boat?
Charo
Charo played April Lopez, and away from the ship she recorded the show's theme song for her album Olé Olé.
Q 14Why did Fred Grandy miss the four post-series specials?
He was campaigning for Congress
Grandy was campaigning for Congress in Iowa while the specials were made; he won in November 1986 and served four terms in the House.
Q 15Who played Julie McCoy on The Love Boat?
Lauren Tewes
Lauren Tewes played Julie McCoy, winning the part over 100 other actresses after a producer saw her on Starsky & Hutch.
Q 16Who is Vicki on The Love Boat?
The captain's daughter
The captain's daughter Vicki was played by an actress who, while filming in Egypt, was held up at gunpoint with guest star Debbie Allen.
Q 17What was Ace's job when Ted McGinley joined The Love Boat in season seven?
Photographer
Photographer was Ace's first job, and in the later specials he took over Gopher's old post as yeoman purser.
Q 18Which three cast members appeared in every Love Boat episode, special and final TV movie?
MacLeod, Kopell and Lange
MacLeod, Kopell and Lange never missed an episode, special or TV movie, and 27 years after the series ended the cast reunited on The Talk.
Q 19Which country did The Love Boat cast travel to in 1983 to film special episodes?
China
China was the destination, and the cast shot special episodes on location in Shanghai and Beijing.
Q 20Who wrote the lyrics to The Love Boat theme song?
Paul Williams
Paul Williams wrote the words, and he later admitted he didn't expect a series about a cruise ship to last six weeks.
Q 24In which Golden Globe category was The Love Boat nominated four years running?
Comedy series
Comedy series was the category, and although critics scorned the show, it was nominated four straight years without winning.
Q 25What became of the cruise ship that starred in The Love Boat?
Scrapped in Turkey
Scrapped in Turkey was the ship's fate in 2013, and two workers died after inhaling toxic fumes while taking it apart.
Q 26Which Broadway legend played Gopher's mother on The Love Boat?
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman played Gopher's mother, and off camera the Broadway star became pen pals with the young actress who played Vicki.
Q 27Why do The Love Boat's episodes carry several titles at once?
Each storyline had its own writers
Each storyline had its own writers, since every episode was built to a formula of three separate stories: one romance, one comedy and one drama.
Q 28Which earlier series had already used The Love Boat's guest-star romantic-anthology format?
Love, American Style
Love, American Style used it first, and one of its segments, a recycled unsold pilot, later grew into Happy Days.
Q 29Which two Brady Bunch stars appeared in separate stories of one Love Boat episode?
Robert Reed and Florence Henderson
Robert Reed and Florence Henderson got unrelated stories, but their characters crossed paths once and traded a knowing double take.
Q 30What joint honor did The Love Boat's original cast receive in 2018?
A Walk of Fame star
A Walk of Fame star honored the cast jointly, and they first heard about it as a surprise, live on air, during a reunion on the Today show.