The Magic will be in dry dock. Each of the Disney ships goes into dry dock every other year. This year's dry dock for the Wonder was originally scheduled for the weeks of September 12 and 19. In late April/early May of last year, the dates were changed to the weeks of October 3 and 10. Thus, the move affected four weeks worth of sailings, two they had to move people off of and two that opened late.
Anyone booked on any of the displaced sailings was offered the opportunity to switch to ANY non-holiday sailing at the same rate at which they were originally booked. What would you say to THAT deal! Hopefully they'll do it again, although with the popularity of the California sailings, I would expect them to exclude those as well.
And why are they just now announcing next year's dry dock? Two possibilities come to mind. 1) Were they considering eliminating the dry dock altogether as another of the cost cutting measures we have recently seen at
DCL? 2) Did they think that rather than affecting four weeks of sailings as happened last year, they would delay an announcement until dates were firm, thereby affecting only two, rather than four weeks of sailings?
Whatever DCL was thinking, it's dry dock (and not a charter) that is causing these dates to be closed to booking. Those who are booked on these dates will be receiving calls beginning next week.