Space, for one. Open spaces everywhere, and very immersive feeling. You wander from one area to another and experience something different each place you go.
It really did seem quite similar in terms of layout design like a RCCL ship.
I don’t know, really. Both my wife and I, after we watched the walk-through, both said that is was a Disney ship we could see ourselves on.
At least on Fantasy, everything felt cramped and over crowded, other than the Casataway Cay day when we stayed on the ship to enjoy it when no one else was around.
Wish felt immersive to me. It was clearly a Disney experience everywhere. The details were so intertwined.
But yes. Not a lot of open spaces. The NCL, RCCL, bigger Carnival ships I have been on have all had a lot of open spaces. I prefer the smaller spaces myself, but I can see how that would be a turn off if open space was the preference. Honestly - I like smaller ships. So when a bigger ship feels like a smaller ship that works for me.
I love that there is such variety in cruising. Something for everyone.
Regarding the silly rides, I was super excited to see how the rides on the top of the ship worked but the “go carts” are so slow that they seem like only toddlers might enjoy them. Same with the “roller coaster” compared to what Carnival has. The spinner is ok. It’s all still very cute and promising but that’s a lot of deck space.
I think that is who they are intended for. Ben and David said as much in their video, but it was funny to see that the people actually riding it were adults. Perhaps that is because they don’t want to film kids for their videos.
Perhaps or perhaps things like that are “instagramable.” I guess if people will stand in front of a popsicle stick wall they might also take pics in tiny cars.
Idk. To each their own. (Maybe I’m feeling extra curmudgeon-y.)
Yes. I remind myself of this a lot. I happen to loathe the whole Avatar tie-in. As in - do NOT get it. BUT - it draws people who DO like it away from the things I want to do.
In 2024 D’Amaro announced a handful of new ships coming from 2027-2031. Of those that he announced, Believe is 1 of 5. It started being built with a keel-laying ceremony as soon as the Destiny was taken out of the hall for it’s first float-out.
There is also another Wish class ship being built as a joint OCL/DCL ship (OCL who manages the Tokyo Disney Parks) to be delivered by 2029, and that ship will be for the Japanese market. I don’t believe it has started the built process yet.
Then the remaining 3 ships are supposedly a size in between the original Magic/Wonder and the Dream & Wish class ships at 25% more passengers than that smaller class. No specific dates on any of those (and they haven’t started building any yet), but the original announcement for D’Amaro had set the target for 2031 for all these ships to be done & sailing.
Right now there are no announced plans for Magic or Wonder to be retired, but from my understanding the life of a cruise ship is 30 years and the Magic will be 28 this year, so I am emotionally preparing for the last 3 new ships mentioned above to take over (and expand upon) the Magic & Wonder’s routes.
I do think it seems like Disney expects them all to be a part their fleet for a time (the artwork released when they announced included 13 ships which is what the total count will be if none get retired), but the Magic will be 32 by the time the last of those 3 small ships is due, so I don’t know if it will be for very long.
I am SOOOO excited to see where else DCL will station ships with more of them. From what I’ve paid attention to; they have made arrangements with the port of Galveston to have a ship year-round and also arrangements with the city of Avalon to have a ship get preferential port times/days year-round for Catalina Island (out of San Diego sailings). So I am hoping they get a ship year-round to both of those places that definitely helps broaden options. I don’t know when the Galveston contract was set to start, but the Catalina Island contract started as soon as the city signed off on it which I think was last fall (but obviously DCL still doesn’t have any announced ships that are expected to be there year-round). But hopefully soon! We would in a heartbeat add a bunch of San Diego sailings and drive down!
Saw this elsewhere and thought the group might be interested. Kind of crazy to see the number of ships coming across various lines in the coming years.
There are certain destinations which necessitate smaller ships. Anything going through the Panama Canal, or certain Alaskan cruises (if they want to get close enough to certain glaciers), etc. I think this is a driving factor for why RCCL announced their Discovery class.
For what it’s worth, the rumor is that the Discovery line of new Royal Caribbean ships (after Icon and Oasis) will be smaller ships. I’m not sure about the others.
whoops. I read too fast and didn’t realize that @ryan1 had already mentioned this. Sorry for the repeat.
I went back to look at the details of the announcement and here are the exact details about the size from the full announcement.
Able to carry 3,000 Guests and measuring approximately 100,000 gross tons, they will be 20 percent larger than the Disney Magic class and smaller than the Disney Dream and Disney Wish classes,
I felt it was the opposite of more crowded. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
The NCL, RCCL, bigger Carnival ships I have been on have all had a lot of open spaces. I prefer the smaller spaces myself, but I can see how that would be a turn off if open space was the preference. Honestly - I like smaller ships. So when a bigger ship feels like a smaller ship that works for me.
right 
