Today, the Walt Disney Company held their annual shareholders meeting. The live streamed event covered aspects across the company, including a brief mention of Disney Cruise Line’s next cruise ship, the Disney Wish, currently under construction in Papenburg, Germany. During a question and answer portion of the meeting, Bob Chapek responded to a shareholder’s question regarding the resumption of cruise with the following statement.
We are very anxious to get our Disney Cruise Line business back up and running. As you know, the cruise industry had been quite hit hard by COVID, and as of right now, we don’t have any definitive information in terms of when we will be able to open up our cruise lines.
Bob Chapek added to this by saying that maybe by this fall Disney Cruise Line might be able to have some limited resumption of cruise operations utilizing the same set of disciplined guidelines used for the reopening of the theme parks.
We are anticipating that with some luck and the increase in the number of vaccinations out there and the encouraging trends that we are seeing that maybe by this fall we might be able to have some limited operations of our cruise ships, but that’s all going to depend on the incidents of the virus and the vaccination of the general public. So, we look forward though when we do open up to using the very same disciplined guidelines we’ve used in our parks to safely reopen and use those same guidelines on the Disney Cruise Line.
Although cruise fans are eager to hear more about the ship that has been under construction for the better part of a year with steel cutting beginning last spring, no additional details were released about the Disney Wish.
The Disney Wish is expected to begin sailing Summer of 2022, and I feel we are closing in on an itinerary release detailing her inaugural voyages, but before Disney can sell the Wish they need to share details of the ship such as onboard offerings and a deck plan detailing the staterooms of which they would be selling.
During the 2016, Bob Iger revealed to the audience the Disney Cruise Line fleet would be expanding what at that time, two new ships before the Triton Class expanded to three ship orders from Meyer Werft. During the 2019 D23 Expo, Bob Chapek announced, the first of of the new class of cruise ship will be named the Disney Wish.