Disney sailed into the cruise business in 1998, moving it from “a little bit older clientele” to a family vacation juggernaut and now has six ships on the water with two more set to launch a month apart this fall — the Destiny out of Florida in November, and the Disney Adventure, the company’s biggest vessel yet, out of Singapore in December.
“I’m incredibly excited about the cruise space,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences, said at a MoffettNathanson Media Conference Wednesday, the day after hitting Disney’s Upfront presentation to advertisers in NYC. “They are one of the highest rated experiences we deliver.” He was recently back from visiting two German shipyards where construction of the last two liners are underway.
Parks are the cornerstone of Experiences but cruise ships are having a moment. with an increasingly higher profile in every conversation with Wall Street and big chunk of change splashing in from $60 billion in planned investment in the division over ten years. Disney has said it’s aiming to have 13 ships going by 2030.
“We knew that if we took our stories, our intellectual property, if we operated these cruise ships like a theme park, the same level of guest service that we’ve developed over all these years of operating theme parks, and we built elegant ships that were incredibly fun, that we could create a new space for us,” D’Amaro told investors. “And, in fact, that’s what happened.”
Demand is high, repeat bookings common, and the overall “ecosystem impact from the cruise ships is pretty phenomenal,” he said. The ships have “double digit rates of return.” They are “the best ambassadors for our brand that you can possibly think of. When we take one of our ships to a new port, there’s an immediate reaction.”
He said the Disney Adventure sold out three and a half months of inventory within a day and a half of going on sale. “This cruise business works exceptionally well for us.”
Theme parks are generating heat from no. 6, a new park coming in Abu Dhabi, tech-forward and rather dramatic looking from the renderings, that will unlock a whole region of the globe to Disney fans.
Meanwhile, rival Universal is set to open with great fanfare the first new theme park Stateside in decades with Epic Universe in Orlando later this month. Asked about potential impact on neighboring Walt Disney Word flagship, D’Amaro said bring it on.
“If something is built new in Central Florida, like Epic Universe, and if it brings in additional tourists, I can almost guarantee you that new tourists coming into the market is going to have to visit the Magic Kingdom. They’ve got to go on Tron. They’re not going to miss Star Wars at Hollywood Studios. They’re absolutely getting on Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot … And so that four-part ecosystem holds together very well … We have a very solid strategy in place, always on the offensive. And as you see our investment plan in the future, you’ll notice that that will continue.”
D’Amaro, in one of his first appearances at a Wall Street investor conference, noted that in July he’ll have been with Disney in various capacities for 27 years. The Experiences chief is currently in a bakeoff to replace Iger when the longtime, two-time, Disney chief executive’s term comes to a close at the end of 2026. The board led by James Gorman has said it will name a successor early that year.
Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, made her media conference debut in early March with Morgan Stanley, and sat down with CNBC’s Jim Cramer around the Disney Upfront. The Mad Money host was ecstatic about Disney’s share price, which has jumped more than 20% after quarterly earnings, and its turnaround to streaming profitability.
Walden focused on television and her co-chair Alan Bergman on film. They jointly oversee streaming.
D’Amaro and Bergman put on a big show at SXSW this year with the head of Imagineering showing how concepts are turned into costumes, special effects and new worlds across Disney and Marvel.
James Pitaro, chairman of ESPN and Sports Content, has also been in the mix with sports a crucial engine across media in growing advertising and engagement. Disney yesterday announced the name and pricing of its upcoming flagship ESPN streaming app, which it will bundle with Disney+ and Hulu.
