Cruise Dreams

As Honor Hunter posted last night on his Blue Sky Disney blog, it looks like the Disney Wonder will be the first cruise ship to move to the west coast from Florida. 

As I’m sure most of you no doubt know, the Wonder has spent most of its life plying the waters of the Caribbean playing host to mostly the 3 and 4 day Bahamian cruises offered out of Port Canaveral.  This has left the Magic to work the longer 7 day and international cruises that Disney offers, including next summer’s trip to Europe.

The first of the new Disney Cruise ships will of course make its home in the Bahamas as do all of the other cruise ships in the Disney line I presume and it will be primarily embarking from the Port Canaveral facility.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Disney Dream and the Magic switch places, with the new ship doing the 7 days cruises and the overseas stints, while the Magic takes care of the 3 and 4 day package cruises. 

Disney has been pretty mum about the layout of the ship which isn’t all that unusual given that the hull is almost independent of what does inside (or more technically on top of) and the power plant is probably already mostly chosen.  That’s why construction has been able to begin on some of the steel.

My guess is that the Magic and the Wonder will become ‘entry’ cruises for short destination hops to give people a chance to try out a cruise without a 7 day commitment (for many folks a 4 day is plenty for the first time out after all).  I don’t know how successful they have been with the cruise/DisneyWorld hookup but anecdotal evidence from the number of buses at resort hotels is that it’s done well enough.  The Dream and the Fantasy will become the long haul cruisers because they can probably pack in more people for a smaller increment in operating cost, therefore making the long trips even more profitable if they book out at a decent occupancy rate. 

Cabins for certain won’t be any smaller and I’d bet there will be more variation at the top and maybe even in the middle classes.  Right now it can be difficult to book a comfortable trip for even a family of 4 in one cabin due to limited closet space, etc.  I’d especially expect the higher class cabin to be bigger than the current ones.  After all, the only major difference in general for the upper class room is if you have a veranda or not:  the room sizes and amenities are almost exactly the same.

So the Magic will no doubt go down for a big rehab before moving west (it’s due now in some instances from my observations of our trip last month), but they’ll likely only do what they have to in the next dry dock until a more formal period can be had.  My guess is the Dream will come on and then the Magic will go off to rehab before Disney does another sell out Panama Canal trip, as they’ve done every time they’ve made that journey that I’m aware of.  That leeway will let them do a more paced overhaul, but it will probably still be a butt buster like the last 14 day all out overhaul of the Magic (if you want to see that, make sure you catch the Travel Channel story about it . . . they did an amazing amount of work in that short time).

As for west coast itineraries, I’d say they’ll spend most of their LA time going to Mexico or Canada in general, with possible longer trips to Hawaii.  The Hawaii trips will be tricky though, since even most of the current trips are 12 night hops from LA that leave you in Hawaii.  So they’ll probably try to follow the European model they’ve established here and sell a 12 night out (5 days at sea, the others in the islands) and then spend a month or two doing 5-7 days cruises in the Hawaiian Islands before offering another 12 day back to the west coast.  They will also be able to offer 7 day cruises to Mexico and one way 7 days cruises to Vancouver via Alaska as several others do.  Given the current local market for Disneyland that isn’t likely to change until mid-next decade, I doubt they will try to mimic the park/cruise combo of the east coast for awhile. 

They will certainly NOT be making a Panama Canal run with the new ships anytime soon, since both of the new ships are what’s called ‘Post Panamax’ ships.  That means they are too wide to fit in the current Panama Canal.  The current expansion of the canal isn’t expected to be complete until 2014 at the earliest.  They could fit nicely in the Suez Canal, but I’m not certain there is enough of a reason to go that way at the moment to warrant wondering about it.  Certainly it would be nice if they offered some cruises to locations in the Southern Hemisphere, but we’ll have to wait and see.

It will be interesting to see what they do with the other big ship, the Fantasy.  I wonder if Disney will try to edge in on some of the longer 20+ day cruises that other high end lines currently offer?