Does Disney Cruise Line Have Plans to Purchase Abandoned Cruise Ship?

[jrapps]

Castaway Cay is technically undeveloped. Only 55 acres of the 1000 acres are currently being used. Compare that to Cococay that is 125 acres in total. You could also technically tender to the island with a bigger ship. Options are obviously there if Disney wanted them. And then of course we have no knowledge on what the plans are for Lighthouse Point. Its about 700 acres of land. I can see them going one of two ways. Making Lighthouse Point the smaller, more natural island and developing Castaway Cay for bigger ships. Or just making Lighthouse Point able to handle capacity of more guests. You could host multiple cruises or double the capacity at Lighthouse Point if you used only 1/7th of the island.

For Castaway, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the terms of the lease Disney has with the Bahamian government restricts their ability to develop more than 5-10% of the island or something like that. They are probably at max capacity which is why they went ahead and bought Lighthouse Point to begin with.

For Lighthouse, Disney committed to only develop 20% of the land, but that is still 140 acres so perhaps they are planning future capacity for more than 1 ship at a time.

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

I don't think there will be much, if any, significant development done to Castaway Cay. It is very close to the currently rising sea levels. They have a lot of issues with flooding, and the storms are becoming worse and more frequent.

This is an interesting point. I also think a lot of the core Disney cruisers would be furious at any major changes, so there’s less risk to just building the new island to handle bigger (multiple?) ships and turning CC into the premium/nostalgia island.

I have been to CC twice and love it, but it’s definitely more pleasant on Dream than Wish—I hope one day to visit it on Magic/Wonder. [editing to add that I have since been informed that Wish and Dream have similar passenger counts—I guess crowd levels just vary trip to trip]

 

[Kwami]

I have been to CC twice and love it, but it’s definitely more pleasant on Dream than Wish—I hope one day to visit it on Magic/Wonder.

Why would the Wish be worse? The number of rooms and maximum passenger count is almost the same.

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

Why would the Wish be worse? The number of rooms and maximum passenger count is almost the same.

Wow, I guess I just assumed Wish was much more populated based on our day in CC (we did not get off the Wish in Mexico). Maybe for whatever reason far fewer Dream guests decided to spent the day in Serenity bay—it was a holiday sailing, so maybe fewer adults?

 

[auntlynne]