It's not the Magic that's supposed to be sailing out of Galveston in the fall of 2013 either so, I agree, that the Magic doesn't factor in this equation. The Wonder is the ship that is/was slated to sail Galveston (not sure when/if that will change) and it is the ship that is being moved to Miami.
Look at the parks blog announcing the 2014 itinerary partial release. 2 pictures. 1 of a ship at CC + 1 of the new Fantasyland rendering. The announcement was about all the wonderful places you can visit like
Castaway Cay...and WDW's new Fantasyland expansion. Pushing parks with a cruise line announcement. Sure feels like they're pushing parks with cruises to me.
Not arguing that it isn't smart business. There's so much we aren't privvy to. Like, for instance, maybe the cost to port out of Miami is substantially less than porting out of Galveston so if there's going to be a potential loss either way then it comes down to where the loss would be greater.
Another person mentioned that the attendance is strong this fall at WDW. I agree, there's no slow times like there was in years gone by. This time of year in particular. That's part of the reason I don't care for the parks so much anymore. I'm kinda tired of "working" to stay ahead of the herds. I'd rather go relax. But, let's put that "strong attendance" into perspective. They haven't & won't draw the same explosion with Fantasyland's expansion that Carsland did in California or WWoHP when it opened a few years back. Compare occupancy and turnstile growth percentages to WDW's competition and you'll see a big difference in numbers. The competition has big new things set for the next few years. Can't say the same for WDW. Could this be an attempt to bolster a little? I'm not so infatuated with all things Disney that I can't look at the bigger picture and wonder how the theme park "games" factor into what Disney decides to do with their cruise line.
I'm not a Disney hater so don't go toastin' my hiney over all this. I'm just trying to take off the pixie-dusted glasses and think objectively. The parks blog announcement for the partial 2014 itineraries really puzzled me more than anything.
To further this angle of thought, if all of 2014 had been released with more interesting ports and destinations to choose from where do you think people would've booked??? Prob'ly not the spring-time 4 ships in Florida. That's just a loooooot of staterooms to flood Florida with. It'll be interesting to see how well this tactic works.