Surprise: Disney Cruise Line has announced four more ships coming to the line in the coming years

The most shocking announcement at the Walt Disney Company’s D23 fan event last night in Anaheim, California, wasn’t about the park (although there was tons for those, too).

Instead, we now know that Disney Cruise Line’s recent rapid expansion, where it went from just four ships in operation for nearly 10 years to nine now in the water or under construction, was just the beginning.

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Disney Cruise Line will welcome you four more ships in its five operational fleets and four announced and under construction in the coming years, bringing its fleet size to 13 ships by 2031.

That ultimately more than triples the number of ships it has had in the water for many years, until the Disney Wish sets sail in June 2022.

Disney has announced that while the names of the ships and the plans for the four additional ships that were recently announced are still being developed, it will welcome them between 2027 and 2031.

For those keeping count at home, Disney Treasure will begin sailing later this year as the line’s sixth ship.

Then, in 2025, two ships will join the fleet. The Disney Destiny will sail from Florida’s Port Everglades. Disney Adventure, the 9,000-passenger flagship that Disney Cruise Line bought midway from Asia-based Dream Cruises, will depart from Singapore.

And then there is what we thought would be the ninth ship, the Tokyo-based ship, which was announced a few weeks ago and will start construction in Germany in 2025 and start in 2029.

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But with the newly announced timeline for four additional ships beginning in 2027, it sounds like at least one of those ships, if not more, will be ready before the previously announced Japan-based ship being built in partnership with Oriental Land. The holding company of Tokyo Disney.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about Disney Cruise Line’s four new ships, including their size, if they’ll use a new or existing route and where these additional ships will arrive and depart. There are currently a few US ports, such as Galveston, that the line only operates during part of the year.

However, Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences, perhaps gave a clue to the plans of at least some of the ships, saying, “Expanding our ships gives more people, in more parts of the world, the opportunity to experience a vacation at sea like only Disney can offer.” Perhaps hinting that the ships will serve some parts of the world that are new to Disney Cruise Line. For example, the line currently does not sail to or from South America, an important market for the company in many ways. In fact, the first D23 fan event to be held in Brazil will take place there in November.

Disney also shared that the current fleet is meeting high demand and high levels of satisfaction, reaching 97% occupancy in Q2 2024.

By comparison, Royal Caribbean currently has 28 ships. So, while the 13 ships will ultimately still be much smaller ships than Royal Caribbean, a line that also caters to families, it is putting it in a more similar position in terms of fleet size than when it was four ships a few years ago. .

In an investor call a few days ago, a Disney executive shared that cruise ships tend to “pay off very quickly,” and it’s clear that Disney is betting big on the ocean and its ability to attract ‘travelers’ to their ships. decades to come.

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