By Mark Seavy

As cruise lines navigate an ultra-competitive market, they are digging deeper into branded experiences.

And while the ships are a large part of the story—the 1,122-foot Disney Adventure launches in Singapore later this year with capacity for 7,000 passengers—it’s the on-board experiences that are expected to be the next chapter.

“They [cruise lines] are masters at creating experiences and there is a move to toward narratives on ships where everything is location-based entertainment and richer, deeper, and more thorough and thought through,” said Gary Pope, Co-Founder of the research and consulting firm Kids Industries, which has worked with Royal Caribbean. “It is not about the ship itself, but where licensing sits in the entire vacation.  Because of Disney, the other cruise lines need licensing. While the super fans may choose Disney, there is a bigger section that would be happy with a light intervention from licensing in terms of shows, experiences, and content.”

Disney Adventure will mark the media giant’s first home port in Southeast Asia and will have seven themed areas, including Marvel Landing, Toy Story Place, and Disney Imagination Garden.

“This will give us an opportunity to basically sell or float the Disney brand in all of its glory into a [Southeast Asia] region that we think has Disney brand affinity and it creates a huge opportunity for us,” CEO Bob Iger said during an earnings conference call with investors. “It’s a floating ambassador for the Disney brand because if you’ve been on any one of our ships, particularly the new ones, we effectively use our IP built into the entire experience.”

For its part, Royal Caribbean’s 1,196-foot Star of the Seas ship (with capacity for 5,610 passengers) launches August 31 from Port Canaveral, FL for a seven-day cruise replete with a Royal Production Co.’s musical adaption of the 1985 film Back to the Future that was written by the original co-screenwriter Bob Gale. That’s in addition to a new Surfside play area and an AquaDome section providing ocean views and entertainment.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ production subsidiary Sixthman has an agreement with the Hallmark Channel for a Hallmark Christmas Cruise (November 6-10) that departs from Miami, FL aboard the Norwegian Joy as well as a deal with the Savannah Bananas baseball team for “Bananaland at Sea” (February 9-13), which leaves from Tampa, FL.

This shift toward more immersive experiences aboard cruise ships is being coupled with the continued opening of aligned destination resorts. Carnival Corp. opened Celebration Key on Grand Bahama Island on July 19 with a ribbon cutting that featured NBA star and Carnival Chief Fun Officer Shaquille O’Neal. The resort has capacity for 5,000 guests and will eventually cover 376 acres, 68 of which opened as part of phase one of the development. The resorts are in addition to three ships outfitted with the 722-foot Bolt rollercoaster, the first of which opened in 2021.

Royal Caribbean is countering with the 17-acre Royal Beach Club Paradise Island, which opens in Nassau, Bahamas in December as the first of four facilities the cruise line plans to add through 2027. It previously had a licensing deal with DreamWorks for experiences, the agreement for which ended in 2019.

“It’s going to be about innovation step-by-step, responding to the guests that are being targeted,” Carnival Corp CEO Josh Weinstein said. “And it’s incremental things that make us have this improved profile on board.”