Last week, on May 21st, the City of Galveston and Board of Trustees of the Galveston Wharves held a joint meeting to discuss an updated master plan for the Port of Galveston.

According to Port Director & CEO, Rodger Rees, the port’s master plan is currently being updated and with a lot of projects up in the air, the port is looking to hold off a bit longer on the revision as the port is currently in the middle of construction and is considering future plans tied to 3 different non-disclosure agreements, two of which are with unnamed cruise lines and a third unnamed cruise line is interesting in expansion in their current space. In general, cruise lines are focusing on expansion with a focus on Galveston as space to expand at Port Canaveral and PortMiami is limited and PortEverglades is built out. The idea is to wait a bit longer to formulate a new master plan once the dust settles with current projects and pending contracts.

Rees feels that if port wants the business, it is available for the taking with additional cruise expansion, but needs a financial investment to grow the industry as cruise lines are investing more than $200 million in the Western Caribbean itineraries.

Around the 30-minute mark of the meeting, Rees stated, “DISNEY IS EXPANDING TO FULL-TIME HERE IN GALVESTON STARTING IN ’27.”

The cruise business is expanding exponentially down here in as Rees call it, “the Caribbean, Western Caribbean. They’re putting a lot of money into that, and because of that, Disney is expanding to full-time here in Galveston starting in ’27.”

When Rees was asked if the year round ship would be the Magic (it is unclear if this is a reference to DCL’s Magic Class, or specifically the Disney Magic.) he said, “I know I believe what they’re planning on doing is bringing in, there’s a new ship. I don’t know if you recall the news that they bought a ship out of bankruptcy, out of a cruise line in Europe [this is a reference to the Disney Adventure], and it’s a bigger ship. That’s what they’re talking about bringing here, is the bigger ship. 

Galveston has a a lot of interest in families coming to the port for cruises and MSC is changing its methods to add more family events on the ships and stuff. According to Rees, there’s another cruise line which will be complimentary to Disney, that he cannot say more at this stage of the process, but the port is hoping will be taking up spot at the port. They’ve already put in schedules for another 12 months, but are still aways away from signing a contract with the unnamed cruise line, but Rees says they are “fairly close for negotiating that term, that addition.” 

Currently, there is an expansion that’s desired at cruise terminal 10, which the port cannot afford. Cruise Terminal 10 is a land lease, and the port is seeking board approval to build another berth there and they would do the same plan where with a land lease. Rees put in for $100 million to build a new terminal. The demand for cruising far exceeded the demands estimated in the port’s 2019 master plan.

Many articles that have been published since the meeting are mentioning the Disney Adventure when referencing a “larger ship” than the Magic Class due to Rees’ statement. However, I suspect this is a reach as the Disney Adventure will homeport exclusively in Singapore for at least five years beginning in 2025 per the March 2023 partnership agreement between Disney Cruise Line and the Singapore Tourism Board. I suspect this is more likely one of the existing Wish Class ships, or the 2027 Wish Class ship announced in January.

The full 2 and a half hour of the meeting is available to watch on the City of Galveston’s website. Disney Cruise Line has NOT made any statement on this news from Galveston