VIDEO: Iger’s Comment on the Potential Future Outlook for Disney Cruise Line from TWDC’s Q1 FY2024 Earnings Results Q&A

During this week’s earnings results webcast, a caller asked about the incremental capacity at the parks and attractions, specifically about timing and location of such projects. Bob Iger replied with the following statement which specifically referenced Disney Cruise Line.

I’ll take the first one on parks, timing, and location, you know, we’re already hard at work at basically determining where we’re going to place our new investments and what they will be.

You can pretty much conclude that they’ll be all over, meaning every single one of our locations will be the beneficiary of increased investment and, thus, increased capacity, including on the high seas, where we’re currently building three more ships.

And in a business that is obviously extremely positive to us, we may look expansively, at least in the next decade in that direction.

I’m not going to really give you much more of a sense of timing, except that, you know, we’re hard at work at getting these things, you know, basically conceived and built.

And we’ve got a menu of things that will basically start opening in ’25, and there’ll be a cadence every year of additional, basically additional investment and increased capacity.

Previously in the earnings result webcast, Hugh Johnson, the Chief Financial Officer for The Walt Disney Company stated, “Record-setting results this quarter were primarily driven by our performance at Shanghai and Hong Kong theme parks, continued strength at Disney Cruise Line, and the success of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 at our games business.”

On the surface, Iger referenced the 3 new builds: Disney Treasure, Disney Adventure, and the third Wish Class vessel. Then, continued what I believe is a reference to the cruise line and a hint at a further fleet expansion in the next decade beyond the 3 ships currently announced.

And in a business that is obviously extremely positive to us, we may look expansively, at least in the next decade in that direction.

At some point, there will likely be new builds announced to eventually take over and expand on the current inventory offered by the Disney Magic and Disney Wonder which are currently in their 25th and 24th years of services respectively.

Did I take Iger’s statement out of context? Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell, but I wanted to put this out as something to keep an eye on. What do you think?

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