D23 2026: What Disney Thinks the Future of Travel Looks Like
D23 runs August 14 through 16 at the Anaheim Convention Center, with the Disney Experiences Showcase on Saturday night at the Honda Center. We are going to hear about new rides, new lands and, for the purposes of this channel, new ships. I am looking forward to all of it.
But there is a larger story going into this year's event, and most of the predictions coverage is going to skip past it. Disney is not only placing a bet on the future of the company. Disney is placing a bet on the future of travel, and the size of that bet has grown. Put what Disney is doing next to what Royal Caribbean and Carnival are doing at sea, and next to what a hotel company like Hyatt is doing on land, and a picture forms. Cruise ships have become genuine competition for land resorts, and Disney wants a share of it.
So instead of another wish list for the theme parks, I want to ask a different question. What does Disney think a vacation is going to look like ten years from now?
Disney's $60 billion bet on Disney Experiences
Follow the money.
In September 2023 Disney said it would roughly double capital spending over about ten years, to somewhere near $60 billion, across domestic parks, international parks and cruise line capacity. That was a large check to write and an easy promise to make three years out.
The spending has arrived. Disney's Experiences segment spent $6.4 billion in fiscal 2025 against $3.7 billion the year before, and the company pointed at cruise ship construction as the main driver, with new park attractions second. Total company capital spending went from $5.4 billion to $8 billion, and Disney has guided to roughly $9 billion for fiscal 2026.
You can see where it is going. Animal Kingdom is largely a construction site as Tropical Americas takes shape for a 2027 opening. Lakeshore Lodge, the 967-room Disney Vacation Club resort going up on Bay Lake where River Country used to sit, is targeted for summer 2027. Multiple ships are under construction.
The near term is settled. What I want out of D23 is a view at the longterm cruise market, through Disney’s strategy. Building a ship means reserving a slot at a yard years ahead of steel cutting, and if you want the price to work you commit even earlier. Every ship Disney orders this year is a wager on what demand looks like in 2032.
There is one more signal worth registering. Josh D'Amaro, who ran Disney Experiences through this entire buildout, became Disney's chief executive on March 18. The person who spent the last several years betting the company's capital on travel is now running the company.
Disney Cruise Line goes from four ships to thirteen
For most of its history Disney Cruise Line was tiny. Two ships at the start, the Magic and the Wonder. The Dream and the Fantasy arrived more than a decade later. Four ships was the entire operation for another ten years, and it worked fine.
The Wish class changed the trajectory, and it launched into the worst possible moment. When cruising restarted, it restarted hard, and the lines with large fleets were positioned to catch it. Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Norwegian could move hardware between home ports, chase demand into new markets and fill ships that were already built.
Disney is now running the same play at a smaller scale. Eight ships are in service today: Magic, Wonder, Dream, Fantasy, Wish, Treasure, Destiny since November 2025 and Adventure since March 2026. At the 2024 event Disney committed to 13 ships by 2031, which means five more on the way. Disney Believe arrives in 2027, the Japan ship in 2029, and three vessels of a new class sized between the Magic and Dream classes follow in 2029, 2030 and 2031.
For my clients, the practical effect has already shown up. Disney's pricing has softened at the margins, because there is simply more inventory to sell every week. That inventory has to be filled by loyal fans and by people who have never considered a Disney cruise. My guide to what a Disney cruise actually costs walks through where the money goes once you are on board.
The Disney Adventure and Disney's new audience in Asia
The Disney Adventure is the clearest statement of intent in the fleet.
Disney bought the unfinished hull of Genting's Global Dream out of bankruptcy, spent heavily to finish it to Disney standards at Meyer Werft, and put it in Singapore. At 208,108 gross tons it is the largest ship Disney has ever operated, carrying 4,222 guests at double occupancy and up to about 6,700 with every berth filled. It sails three- and four-night itineraries out of Marina Bay with no ports of call. The ship is the destination.
Disney has never operated a park in Singapore. It now operates a Disney vacation there, for an audience that never had to buy a long-haul ticket to reach one. More than 90 percent of guests booked on the early Adventure sailings had never sailed with Disney Cruise Line before.
Joe Schott, who runs Disney Signature Experiences, described the ship as a brand ambassador that lets Disney Cruise Line visit more people in more places. That is exactly what it is doing.
The Japan ship works on the same logic through a different structure. Oriental Land Company, which operates Tokyo Disney Resort, is paying for its own Wish-class vessel at Meyer Werft, roughly 140,000 gross tons and about 2,500 passengers, at a cost near $1.85 billion. Delivery is late 2028 with year-round service out of Tokyo starting in early 2029.
Both are the same idea. Rather than convincing a family in Osaka or Jakarta to buy four international plane tickets to Orlando, bring the Disney vacation to a port they can drive to.
Royal Caribbean is the real competition at Port Canaveral
Cruising came back larger than it was before. CLIA counted 37.2 million ocean passengers in 2025, a record, and forecasts 38.3 million this year. Disney wants a piece of that, and Josh D'Amaro has put Disney's share of the total cruise market at about 2.5 percent.
The competition is not sitting still, and it has parked itself on Disney's doorstep. Royal Caribbean put Star of the Seas into Port Canaveral in August 2025 on seven-night Caribbean rotations, carrying 5,610 guests at double occupancy and up to 7,600 full, with Perfect Day at CocoCay on every single sailing. That is a direct claim on the same Orlando-adjacent family that would otherwise spend the week at Walt Disney World.
The financial picture behind it is worth understanding. Royal Caribbean ran a 109.7 percent load factor across 2025 and 110.2 percent in the second quarter of 2026. Anything above 100 percent means third and fourth guests in cabins, because the industry counts capacity at two people per room. Full ships, full cabins, families rather than couples.
Royal Caribbean's chief executive has also said the company still prices its product at roughly a 15 percent discount to a comparable land vacation. A family looking at a Disney World week and a seven-night Caribbean sailing is making that comparison whether or not Disney wants them to. My Star of the Seas review covers what that ship actually delivers.
The private destination arms race across the Caribbean
The bigger competitive shift is the ecosystem, and this is territory Disney invented.
Capturing an entire week of vacation spending inside one resort complex is what Walt Disney World has done since the 1970s. Royal Caribbean is now building the seagoing version of it, and going further than Disney has at sea.
Perfect Day at CocoCay established the model. Royal Beach Club Paradise Island opened in Nassau in December 2025 as a ticketed shore experience, and Nassau appears on an enormous share of Caribbean itineraries. Every guest who buys that day is spending money with Royal Caribbean rather than an independent operator, and Royal Caribbean controls the experience end to end. A Cozumel club is targeted for later this year, and Perfect Day Mexico at Mahahual is aiming at fall 2027.
Carnival is doing the same thing on a budget-conscious footing. Celebration Key opened on Grand Bahama in July 2025 across 65 acres for $600 million, and a pier extension finished in June 2026 took it from two berths to four, allowing as many as 13,000 guests ashore in a day. RelaxAway at Half Moon Cay reopened in June with a 1,005-foot pier so the big ships can dock instead of tender. I have been to both this year and they are genuinely nice.
Neither one is Castaway Cay, which is the separation Disney still holds at sea, and Lookout Cay widened it. Where Carnival and Norwegian can win on price for a family of four, they cannot win on brand against Disney or Royal Caribbean, and they know it.
If any of this is making you want to book something, planning it is what we do at the agency. Our services cost you nothing on top of the fare, and you can request a free quote.
Hyatt is competing for the same traveler Disney wants
Now look at the land side, because the pressure is coming from there too.
Hyatt has spent five years buying its way into the all-inclusive resort business. Apple Leisure Group closed in November 2021 for $2.7 billion and brought Secrets, Dreams, Breathless, Zoëtry, Alua and Sunscape with it, roughly doubling Hyatt's global resort footprint. Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara have expanded across Mexico and the Caribbean. The Playa Hotels acquisition closed in June 2025 at about $2.6 billion, after which Hyatt sold off the real estate and kept 50-year management agreements on nearly all of it.
The result is a large, branded, points-earning all-inclusive network aimed at exactly the family that used to default to a week at a Disney resort. A Hyatt Ziva in Cancun and a week at the Grand Floridian are competing for the same budget.
Disney has spent the last decade moving upmarket, and the logic is straightforward. Fewer guests spending more produces better revenue and a less crowded park. But there is a ceiling on that, and Disney has found it before. Galactic Starcruiser ran from March 2022 to September 2023, nineteen months, at a price point that assumed a luxury traveler who did not show up in sufficient numbers. Other premium products have worked well, including the VIP tour business.
So the question I am carrying into D23 is what Disney does about the land side. Lakeshore Lodge and a deeper push into Disney Vacation Club is one answer. Whether there is a bolder one is what I am listening for.
What I am watching for at D23 2026
Not the ride announcements. Those will be good, and I want to hear more about what is already under construction, but they are not the story.
I want to know what Disney thinks a vacation looks like in 2035, because the capital being committed right now only pays off if that guess is close. Five more ships. A fleet deployed across ports on multiple continents. A resort portfolio being repositioned against all-inclusive operators that did not exist at this scale a decade ago. And a chief executive who came up through the division making those bets.
I will be at the convention on Friday. The Saturday showcase at the Honda Center sold out faster than I could book it, so I will be following that one the same way you are.
If you want the version of this with all my commentary, the full video is on my channel. Tell me in the comments what you think Disney announces.
