Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Disney Wish class ship number four. Which to be. To be. I'm sure they have a name for it, but we don't obviously know the name yet.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: So I think we're going to find out the name next year. They did not tell me the name and like, when they opened things up for Q and A, they were like, we're opening it up for Q and A. But the one Q we are definitely not answering. Is anything about names?
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: Okay, then give us themes.
Welcome back, everybody, to this week's live episode or special live episode of the DCL Duo Podcast, brought to you by My Path Unwinding Travel and the amazing folks over at WDW magazine. One of them is joining us today, and that is our good friend, Stephanie. Hey, Stephanie.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Hey, how's it going?
[00:00:54] Speaker C: Good, how are you? Great.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: I'm good, thanks.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Hey, you guys, we've got like two small pieces of news. Well, I don't know if they're small pieces of news, kind of big pieces of news.
Before we dive into talking about the float out the steel cutting your entire visit to Papenburg, Germany, we've got two pieces of news. One that was announced earlier this week that we had heard lots of rumors and other folks on the on YouTube were reporting on it already based on the wonder disappearing off the Melbourne port schedules. But basically, we know now for sure, Disney has confirmed that they will not be sailing to Australia and New Zealand after this this coming season. So they'll be sailing again this fall through basically February and come back across the Pacific. But this will be the last season for some time. We don't know. That doesn't mean they'll never go back to Australia. New Zealand, they haven't said why. There's, you know, lots of spec out there. Some people are saying, you know, they had to do a lot of specials in order to fill the ships. Others are saying, oh, it's because folks in New Zealand and Australia are going to go to Singapore anyway because the adventure will be there and they want to get on a new ship. So there may be lots of different reasons. Disney is not saying why, but that's just one piece of news that came out this week. The other thing that just.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Well, I just want to say as a Grateful Dead fan, you know, I've heard fairly well many times from that band and they keep coming back. So, you know, this may not be the end end of Australia, but it is the end for now. So.
[00:02:28] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Well.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: And I have to say I think some west coast folks are maybe a little bit Happy about this because it makes it more likely that we will have a ship on the west coast all year round, because obviously the wonder was the ship that was going over to Australia and New Zealand. And prior to that, she had been spending significant portions of the year on the west coast. And so you know that.
So you take the good with the bad, I guess. The other piece of news that I wanted to just mention is that the Treasure, it's sailing next week has been changed from an Eastern Caribbean to a Western Caribbean itinerary due to the impacts that they're expecting from. I believe it's Hurricane Erin. It was just upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane. And in order to make sure to keep everybody safe and obviously to not put impacts on the port and on their resources, the Eastern Caribbean Porsche, they have switched. So they'll be going to Cozumel and, I believe, Grand Cayman instead of going to Tortola and to St. Thomas. And so they're gonna. They're still gonna go to Castaway Cay, of course. Cross your fingers for those folks on board because, you know, it's possible that they might have to pivot again if the storm changes, you know, its direction or its intensity or anything like that. But that's the news out there.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: And so, yeah, always a good opportunity to remind folks, travel insurance can be your friend in these moments. So, you know, I need the graphic of the. The more, you know.
So, yeah, good. We've had a couple folks reach out to us about travel insurance and, you know, wanting to talk about it. Unfortunately, it's hard for us to talk about on a show like this because it's very intricate. And also, there are some rules and restrictions around who can really, like, sell that product and who can, you know, talk about it. So we. While we're both licensed lawyers, we're not. We're not travel insurance salespeople. Yeah, we're not.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: We don't. We don't specialize in insurance. But also, it varies. These policies vary from even state to state, and of course, they vary from country to country. I mean, Stephanie's up in Canada. The policies that are available to her are going to be potentially widely different than the policies that are available to us. And even for folks in different states.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: We do often get asked, do we have travel insurance? The answer is yes. We do often get asked who we use. We use Allianz, and we have an annual insurance policy. And beyond that, it's kind of up to you, who you want to use, what you want to do, whether annual versus trip based. Makes sense. And then to Sam's point, you got to read the fine print. When we first bought our annual trip insurance policy here in Washington during COVID times, it turns out that Covid was not a covered reason in Washington state, although it was covered reason in many other places. So you have to really dig into the fine print on some of these. So that's, that's about all we can reasonably say on this topic, except for the normal PSA of travel insurance could be your friend.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: So anyway, yes, get travel insurance whether it's through the cruise line or elsewhere. Just get travel insurance. Yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Stephanie, before we dive into the fun topic today, which to preview for people as they're coming in, Stephanie got to attend the steel cutting float out extravaganza of the Disney Destiny. And we can't wait to hear all about what you got to see that she can share. We have heard there are some things that maybe they got to see that they can't share, but we're looking forward to hearing what can be shared.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: I think I can share everything. I just.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: All right.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: I want photos of everything.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah, There you go. There you go. I want to ask Stephanie before we dive into it though, did you get a chance to sail on the Australia New Zealand sailings or anything like that? No. Yeah. What are your thoughts and reactions on it?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I'm not that surprised by it at this point. Not only because, you know, we were hearing that, you know, maybe, maybe they were were not selling a lot. I mean, that can happen on the Castaway Key circuit too, right? Like just back and forth to Canaveral and Castaway Key. I always figured that this was like a test ground for where they might sail as their fleet grew or as the Singapore and Tokyo ships as they are released from their initial contracts and they can maybe go other places. Disney and lots of companies always like to test those markets. I do hope it comes back to the west coast.
But I also hope that they might use some of the year to test new locations like maybe in South America because I could see that being a great cruise destination when they have a larger fleet. So, you know, doing a few like test cruises or magic at sea cruises out of some ports around there would be great to see and see how the interest is.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: We did get some feedback from some folks in Australia saying, well, you know, the ships that we were on always felt like they were full.
I just caution and say you don't know if they were filled with like full freight passengers or if they were. There were lots of Discounts being offered to try and I think fill those sailings. And of course, once you start discounting them, then, you know, it gets into a game of how profitable is this really?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: So, yeah, he almost never does discounts or substantial ones on the cruises.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: So although we're seeing more and more of them now, which is also curious, but a topic for another day.
So, Stephanie, let's dive in. So you were part of a small group of folks who got flown out to Papenburg.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:43] Speaker C: And how long were you there? It was. Feels like it was just like a couple days.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: I was only in Papenburg for 26 hours, but I had a flight delay that got me in like literally moments before all of the events started. Everyone else got in about 24 hours before that. So they kind of had. They landed in Amsterdam, they got out to Papenburg, which is about a three hour drive. And then they had a day to settle in. Enjoy Papenburg. And then they were fresh for the next morning. I was fresh off the plane and ready to roll.
Yeah, for 26 hours. And then we went back to. At the end of the float out, we went back to Amsterdam. We had a evening just of free time before all of our flights the next day. So I was there for a very short amount of time.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: All right, well, whirlwind, Whirlwind, Whirlwind.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
First, first tell us, I want to hear a little bit about the. Well, the, the group of folks who were invited. So this is, I want to be very clear, this is a very exclusive group of invitees. These are, you know, media. There's a couple of influencers.
But tell us, like, who was amongst this elite.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Elite group, sure. So they haven't done one of these shipyard tours for media since. I don't remember if they said the dream or the fantasy, but one of those two, apparently they wanted to do it for the wish, but obviously with COVID they couldn't and they said they probably will not be doing this again until whatever that new class of ships starts happening. So, like, not only is this a very exclusive once in a lifetime opportunity, but like it's not really going to come around again.
So there were, I don't know who the European media were. There were kind of two contingents about the same size, six, seven people.
I'm not sure who the European outlets were, but I, I was there obviously representing WW magazine and DCL magazine.
Megan Dubois and Carly Car were both there and they, Megan sometimes writes for us, but she also, Carly, they write for all sorts of people. Business Insider, Yahoo, Pop, Sugar, Delish, all sorts of diff, Forbes, all sorts of different outlets.
Samantha Davis Friedman, who's with Travel Age west and sometimes she writes for Attractions magazine, Mice Chat, Scott Gustin, who's with NextStar Media and you know, the famous on Twitter and threads for all of this.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: I was texting with Scott that I was not at all jealous about his, his hard hat.
Scott was also asking us what questions do you have? And I'll make sure they get asked and then promptly message me later to say haven't gotten answers to any of those yet, but hopefully, yep, Blue Mongello.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Was there from WW Radio and also Adam Bankhurst who's with IGN and he also has a podcast that I'm pretty sure is called Talking Disney Magic.
I might be wrong about that, but it's Talking Disney something.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Nice. Nice.
So the first event that you all got to attend I think was, well, at least you because you were coming hot from the plane.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: But I, I was there for every single.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: All right, all right. So this was a steel cutting ceremony which I don't know if we knew was on the agenda or not, but they did their steel cutting for ship four.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a total surprise. So it's for the Wish Wish Class 4.
So the next ship, not the one that is going to be owned by olc, it is the next Disney ship and the final Disney ship in this Wish class.
And we had no idea it was happening. Everybody got into their like PPE equipment. I got my hard hat.
We got, we got, we were very official in yellow vests and steel toed boots and all of that stuff. And they took us into the factory and I don't know what everybody else thought that morning, but all I thought was I'm walking into the shipyard and we're gonna start this tour.
I never even thought to ask them. I was, I was so all over the place. But it was really great. They had Joe Schott, who is the president of Disney Signature Experiences, and Carly Scott who's going to be the inaugur cruise director on the Destiny, as well as I, I'm gonna not pronounce their names very well, but Burned and Dominic, who are respectively the CEO and the ship project manager at Meyer Werft. And so they were there. They all spoke very nicely. Then they brought Mickey out to hit a big red button to it like initiate the steel cutting. And we were explained that ste the cutting of the steel is really the first step in building the ship, which makes a Lot of sense. You need pieces of steel that are cut to the right size to start assembling things.
And at the ceremony, we got to look through a window because the lasers that they use to cut it will hurt your eyes, but it's a protective window. So hurt your eyes, hurt your camera. We got to actually see the. The steel getting cut. And all of the executives signed a. Oh, Philip Jeannote was also there from wdi.
They all signed one of these big steel ships. And then that was really co. We took photos and there was a bit of fireworks inside. And then they were like, okay, let's go start the tour.
It was great. I didn't think that much of it. That was the only thing that we were allowed to take photos of that day.
And then after the tour, they gave us some lunch, and we were having a different presentation with Claire Weiss and Philip, and they were like, by the way, guys, we know that the executives signed this. We actually have a second ship that we want you, the media to sign. And we're going to put it backstage on this ship like you'll never see it again. It'll be backstage on the ship forever and ever.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: We pinky promise. We pinky promise it will be there.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: I am just like Alpha Klempt, ready to cry.
It was very emotional. And to commemorate it, they gave us all this little steel ship.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: That's so cool.
[00:13:53] Speaker C: I gotta say, the one piece of swag I'm most jealous.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Can you just switch me so we can.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Oh, yes. Yeah. Let me make it bigger so people can see.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Signature is right there in the forward funnel.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Do you want to show that one one more time?
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Show that one more time.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: There you go. We're on the right view now. Oh, and here it is. It's the. The. Oh, show the one that you got, Stephanie. Yeah, show the one you got one more time. There you go. Yeah, there you go. Now you're bigger. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: That's so cool.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: Nice. So. So. And for folks at home, I'm. Stephanie is showing us the steel that she got to bring home. But she's also put together kind of a fun little presentation that is showing the folks who are on stage. And there's Mickey hitting the big red button. And this is presumably the steel cutting machine cutting steel for the. The fourth Wish class ship. And then here is the one. Is this on the media sign or is this the one that the.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: That's the one that the media signed. So, yeah, my signature is right on there.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: There you go.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: It lives in Perpetuity.
On Disney Wish class ship number four, which to be. To be. I'm sure they have a name for it, but we don't obviously know the name yet.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: So I think we're gonna find next year. They did not tell me the name. And like when they opened things up for Q A, they were like, we're opening it up for Q A. But the one Q we are definitely not answering. Is anything about names?
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Okay, then give us themes.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: I'm sure they didn't give you that either.
No.
It's the next Muppet ship. There we go. There you go.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: There you go. There we go.
So for folks at home, like, so steel cutting is a big deal. They have, they have all these like steps in the ship making process. We'll get to the sort of final ish step here in a second for the Destiny, which was float out. But you know, they have all of these maritime traditions. Stephanie, I think they gave you some background on like steel cuttings. One, they took us the whole laying.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it was amazing. I actually like, I know that probably everybody else was like being on board the ship was the best part and that was amazing. But seeing the whole factory set up and walking through every single step with so much detail from Philip was my favorite thing of all.
So we all have heard about the keel laying ceremony. That's a very ancient tradition where you put a coin under the keel of the ship. And it used to be that that was like literally the first thing because you would put that down and then you'd start to build the ship. That's not really how modern ships are built. Parts of them are coming together before that happens and then it's kind inserted before the welding of those front parts go together.
So that happened months and months ago as they were building the ship.
But basically you start with cutting the steel and they explain to us it's all really automated at this point in time because materials are so heavy. Now we have robots that can do things for us. And the thing that I really loved generally about Meyer work, they still have thousands and thousands and thousands of employees. They're not trying to get rid of the human connection here. They are using those employees to do all the specialist things, the value added things that only a human can do. You don't need to send guys to like 10 guys at once to lift a big piece of steel and turn it over. When you can have a machine do that more precisely, more safely, all faster, all of that. So this whole first part is really automated, comes from the steel cutting and it kind of goes through on these different rollers into this area where all the pieces are kind of stored until they're ready to get put together. Then Meyerwerft uses. And I think that they. They either pioneered this or they were very early to adopt this about 20 years ago. But they use something that's called laser hybrid welding. So usually when you are welding two pieces together, you put them together, you weld it on one side, you flip it over, you weld it on the other side, you're good to go. This laser does it super precisely, but in one swoop, it welds the whole thing together. You don't need to flip it. You don't need to do this twice. So, again, German efficienc. See at work here.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's also. If you've ever seen the other cool thing about the building of the ships is if you. I think on the Wish and the Treasure, they have the blocks. They have the actual model that's like. Because they call it block building, they basically build blocks and then add those, stack those blocks on top of each other to slowly put the ship together. So that's always really cool to see, too.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: So. And each of those blocks is made up of many sections. So as the steel comes out and then it gets welded together, that kind of goes into another room. And it's really interesting. They have all these different construction halls, and you kind of move up one, and then you kind of move into the next one and move down. And it's just all kind of a continuous flow keeping everything going. And so you could be working on multiple parts of the ship, multiple phases of the build, all at one time, because it just keeps trucking along.
When it gets out of this welding phase, it goes into this huge, huge room where they have all these rollers. And it's like. Like every section is a different type of roller. They didn't tell us why they're different if they're. I don't know. I don't know why they're different, but it's obviously as a. As the pieces are coming together. So this is where all the sections are built. So that's where they're creating all the. Not necessarily the individual state rooms, but all the individual little pockets that would fit inside each block. That could be state rooms, that could be this, like the theater, it could be the bars, whatever. But each of those little segments all comes together until you get one of those blocks. And I. They didn't actually talk about the blocks, but I remember from the Wish and the Treasure documentaries, there's around 100 blocks that make up the whole ship.
So then keeps rolling down. They keep doing different things. And what's really cool is they build the pieces upside down, because when you're thinking about H Vac and those sorts of things, it goes in the ceiling. Just like most, you know, buildings on land, that's harder to build upside down, so they build it on the floor. And then they have this huge machine that takes the pieces, and it turns them upside down so that it can slot them together.
And it goes into this room with lasers that line up everything very, very precisely. And that's when that final welding together happens. And then that makes up a block. And then depending on where the ship is in construction, that block might straight into this.
Where you're seeing the ship on the screen right now, if you're watching the YouTube video, this is the, like, assembly hall.
And also where it's the dry dock so they can fill it with water and then float the ships out.
There is water in there now because they were floating. They had begun to fill it that morning so it could float out the next day.
But those blocks might go straight there if there's room. And if not, they have storage. And outside, where there are some big blocks of ships waiting to come in. Now, these are not finished. They are still steel, bare bones kinds of things. It's not like your linens are getting moldy being outside or anything. But we actually saw several chunks of different ships in different stages of development. I guess they didn't tell us what they were. They were just like, yep, here's some more ship pieces.
And then, you know, brought us in to eventually see this hall. If you're looking at the screen and you can see all of these green, like, gantry cranes, they have a lot of them, and they. That. That's how they pick up all the pieces and move them into where they need to be. And I think that that also helps them get things on and off the ship, like, all the materials they need, flooring and.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Well, I think. I think with a. I think one of the coolest things is that the rooms are built intact. Like, they go in with the tv, the shelving, the bed, the mattress. Like, all of that stuff is in there.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: So we got to see inside the stateroom. And it's really cool because the rest of the ship. Well, maybe not 100%. The staterooms and the theater were basically done, but a lot of the other things, like Pride Lands was not done.
It didn't look like anything but a big bunch of wires. And they were like, we are super ahead. We're way ahead of where we were.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: I was gonna say don't. Don't anyone at home listening think that means the ship isn't done? Like, we actually watched. There's actually a great documentary about building one of the Regent. The Regent Seven Seas Explorer. And they were showing, like, the night before. People still, like, they're hanging the art they're putting some of the finishing touches on. So it's like these ships really do come down to, okay, it's time to sail, like, and we're ready to go. But, yes, everything we're hearing is they are way ahead of schedule on the Destiny.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, the actual construction of the ship is done. It's floating. It can sail, it has engines, it can do all these things. And it. I don't want to say it looked bad, but, like, it looked shocking going in and seeing wires hanging down or pipes not attached to things, or people welding things or painting or plywood all over the floor instead of the actual flooring. Now, some of that, the walls and the floor, some have been done, but they completely cover them to protect them as work continues. They don't actually take that covering off until right before sailing starts to happen.
And some of them may have not been done. We got to walk down the staircase in the grand hall, and it was all. It's all just steel right now. It doesn't have the carpet or anything on it.
But other places, like we were on some of the stateroom level staircases, and they had carpets and that was, like, covered in thick plastic so you wouldn't harm it. In the meantime.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: They need those parts of the ship finished to house the workers who are going to go with her on the crossing to finish the rest of the work.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah, crossing, absolutely. Yeah.
But it is. Yeah, it was shocking. But then when I started thinking about it, I was like, this doesn't look like it's a bigger scale. Obviously, it doesn't look that much worse than when I had my basement ripped out and totally redone. And if me and my tiny amount of money and my, like, four or six construction guys who came to my house for two weeks. Weeks could fix that.
Then the 2, 000 plus people who are on board the ship every day, who are professionals, who have unlimited Disney money, like, this is getting done. It's not. It's not a problem.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think people don't realize, like, all of the stuff is finishing stuff. Right? Like, like you said, floors, walls, even, of course, the structure of the walls are there or posts or whatnot. But like.
Yeah, walls and flooring and lighting and signage and all that stuff. That's just like, you know, that's like upholstery for, for like, if you think about it, like from the. If you compare it to like residential construction.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: That's like the, the same thing as upholstery. That's not the sh. The ship building that is being done is to, you know, or really finished is like you said, the engines, the, the fuel, the, the basically the. The command center, like all of the technology.
[00:25:06] Speaker C: Yeah. I just want to make sure people know, like, because the wish. The, the. The wish was an anomaly and was behind for a lot of reasons. But that was like the ship rolling into Port Canaveral in the state that the Destiny floated out. Right. Like that was. I think that the analogy would be. Yeah, yeah, the theater wasn't done until the cr.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Until during the crossing.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And. And the theater on this ship is already, as you said, pretty much done.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: We got to go in. There was still some plastic on the seats and stuff, but it's already. The tech booth was in there. They had the Frozen set pieces out. They were testing things like, ready to go. And I learned a really cool fact. So there's all these huge set pieces on a Disney ship, right. Because they do these full scale Broadway musicals, not all the other ships do. They've actually worked with Meyer Werf to figure out how to like where to put the big doors on the side of the ship that can swing open. They have one perfectly aligned with the stage so that they can get pieces in and out easily if they need to be fixed, if they need something new. Because think about. If you're trying to get, let's say that huge door that's in the, that first scene of Frozen. If you're trying to get that what, into the Grand Atrium and like shuffle it down a hallway to get in there. That's nuts. Not happening.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: That's crazy. That would be crazy. But that makes so much sense because if you think about it, well, while a brand new ship has brand new shows, the older ship, they might change. They have changed those shows. I mean, for example, Hercules, that's going to be on the Destiny. There was a Hercules the Musical previously on Disney Cruise Line. It is no longer. There was a Toy Story the Musical on Disney Cruise Line. It is no longer. Right. So they've had to change out sets when they've changed out a musical and you know, if they're going to do that, they're going to need to bring, you know, take new, take old sets out, bring new sets in, bring new costuming, bring new puppets, all of that kind of stuff. And they need, as we know from our, our chat with Danny just last week, you know, these things are very large. And as you mentioned, it would not be convenient to bring it across like a gangway and through the grand hall or the atrium and walk it down the hallway to a theater. That makes, that would make no sense. Yeah. This is brilliant.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Build a scaffold and then get it up and right into ship. Right into the ship, right where it needs to be. So, so that is very cool. We did, we saw the kitchen or one of the kitchens, and that one was done like you said, Sam, the staterooms are. They come in all completely done. They are built off site, totally prefabricated. The only thing that's not in there right now is sheets and towels. The mattresses in there still wrapped in plastic. The curtains are in everything. And they build these and then just slide them in like drawers. There are also. I, I, in my mind I thought meyer Wer built 100% of the ship, which is true of the ship. But many of the other components, like the big sign on the side that says destiny and lights up, they actually have a sign specialist who does that. And there are a lot of other components like that. So they said that almost everything that goes on the ship is created in Europe and 80% of that in Germany. But it's not all necessarily done at the Meyer Werft yard. Even like the little, like, little steel components that you use to like weld onto the ship, that will then maybe be a bracket for a light or something like that. Those are all assembled in Germany and then sent to Meyer Werft ready to go.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Yeah, they're doing, they're doing building and final assembly. Like that's, that's. Yeah, they're taking in component parts from all over the place and putting it all together. But they're responsible for the core of the ship.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, Claire used, Claire Weiss, who's from the Imagineering team, she used a terminology blanking on it now, but it's basically like owner commissioned property. That's not the term, but it's something like that. But that's all of the stuff that really has nothing to do with the ship that Disney needs to bring on. So that's those sets, that's the Black Panther statue, all of those kinds of special little things. Linens, dishes, all of that, that's Disney's responsibility, not Meyerworth's responsibility.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: And even the Stern character, right? You've got Spider man and the spider bots and that signage, you know, that was all done at, like, Walt Disney Imagineering. Right. So those things, those components are brought, you know, to. Brought to the ship. Yeah, but. And my understanding is that technically, Meyer Wurf currently still owns the ship, does.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Own the ship until sea trials are done and they hand it over, there's like, an ownership transfer. And at that time, they will. They are flying now the German and Meyer Wurf flags, and they'll take those down and put up the Bahamian and DCL flags. So that is very cool. We also learned that, like, a lot of Disney wants a lot more control of the ships than most other companies. Right. Because they have shock.
[00:30:01] Speaker C: I'm shocked.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Right. They have imagine this is not shocked face for all of those watching and listening.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: They have imagineers walking the ship, testing things out, checking things out, checking the progress, like, every single day. And now that we're getting to kind of like these end days, there's a lot of imagineers around because they are making sure all those final touches are pitch perfect.
But they have actually had to, like, change the workflow, work with Meyer Werft to say, like, hey, when can we get in here? When can we observe things? When can we take control of different spaces? So even though Disney doesn't own the ship yet, the theater has been handed over to them so they can do what they need to do in the theater.
So I thought that that was.
I mean, I'm not surprised that they want control. I'm also not surprised that they were able to work together to, you know, know, find a harmonious solution that works for both parties. But obviously, Meyerwerft is doing excellent work. And I have no, I'm. I was not surprised when Dizzy said, we're going to build a whole bunch more ships with them. But a lot of people ask me, like, oh, why aren't they, like, shopping us around and going? There's not a lot of places that do this, first of all.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: I mean, there's really, like, Fin Cancieri, who built the Magic and the Wonder, and Meyer Werft. These are like, the two. Two biggest, I think, in the world that build cruise ships. Or I think there's a couple of others.
But, you know, they've got a track record now with Meyer work since they. Since the dream. And so. And they've obviously been happy that they.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Can really collaborate and there was so much respect between the yard workers and the imagineers and like everyone was just getting along really well.
And you could tell just like how Philip was talking about, about giving like agency to the yard workers to figure out better ways to do things.
They really trust each other and respect each other through this whole process. And that is a great way to have a collaboration.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So just. Just to put a point on Sam's point, I little chatgpt here but the three biggies are Fincantieri and Merrewer and then Chantier. Chantier de lantique in France is also known as a big ship builder.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: We gotta point out we're looking at a picture of the. The san.
Tell us like were you able to see. I know they let you take the one. The picture of the sanctum. There's a picture of you in front of the. The. The eye or. But tell us like what kind of state was the sanctum in? And some of the other bar spaces as well.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: So the sanctum was fairly done. It was still like all the tables and chairs were still covered. I'm not 100% sure if everything was in place, but like the TV screens at the front that they used to announce things those were. Were on and operating.
All of the woodwork, that beautiful kind of lattice woodwork that separates the back and the front of those spaces, that was all in the floor was in. In this back segment and it looked beautiful.
The countertops were in like it was pretty well good to go. They didn't have the props in like the cloak wasn't there and all of the other kind of relics that they're going to bring in that's not installed yet. But this one was pretty close. We saw Haunted mansion parlor also.
None of the bar or furniture is in but the poster's paintings. The portraits were up and glowing.
But they didn't actually have the lights like the overhead lights commissioned to be turned on in there at the moment. So we kind of went in with like a flashlight and looked around, which is spooky and cool.
We saw inside of Devilles and that one was much less done than the sanctum.
The walls are red, the bar top area was installed and the platform where the piano will go is installed. But not those big like automotive details on the side of the stage.
Everything else was just covered in like dust and construction stuff. It was. It was not as easy to envision the final product as it was in the sanctum.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: And Sam, Linda is helpfully correcting you. It is the eye of Agamotto I didn't.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: I just said the Ey.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: I just said the I because I couldn't remember the name. I didn't say it wrong. I just didn't specify. I just said the I thingy.
[00:34:23] Speaker C: That's why we crowdsource. That's why we crowdsource.
[00:34:27] Speaker D: Are you listening to our show because you want to make the most out of your next vacation.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: Great news.
[00:34:31] Speaker D: The fabulous team over at My Path Unwinding Travel can help guide you so you don't miss a thing. Their team of professional travel advisors are caring, knowledgeable, and experienced. It's why we use them to book our own travel. MYP Path Unwinding Travel is an authorized Disney vacation planner, which means they are recognized by Disney for their expertise and service. They have sailed on all the Disney ships, including in concierge, visited the theme parks, adventured with Disney, relaxed at Aulani, and so much more. Whether it's a Disney cruise, a theme park vacation, or adventures by Disney, or if you are looking to expand beyond the mouse, My Path Unwinding Travel will elevate your next vacation planning experience. Even if you have already booked, reach out for a complimentary consultation. Consultation to make your vacation even more magical. Ready to talk to the experts? Head over to mypathunwinding.com DCLDUO or email DCLDUOMYPATHunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. Thanks My Path Unwinding for sponsoring today's show. Now back to the episode.
[00:35:26] Speaker C: Any other spaces you got to. To preview? Stephanie, we haven't talked about.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: We got to see the Grand Hall.
So again, I said that the staircase is all steel. Black Panther wasn't there there. The piano wasn't there. We couldn't see the marble that the piano will be on, but apparently that was installed. It was just covered up for protection.
But like, the grand hall is very close to being done.
The chandelier is not in. The lights that go around the atrium. Those were on. They were testing them. So we saw the white mode, not any of the colored modes, but they looked amazing. I also didn't realize from the concept art, so as you look around, there's all of that texture around.
I don't even know what to call it. But the siding of each level of the atrium, that is kind of those like balcony.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: Thank you. The. The Wakanda textures. But then the glass panels that are actually there as the actual balcony so you don't fall over. Those all have like. Like a triangle pattern similar to Black Panther's. Suit etched into them, and then they can do different lighting effects.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: Oh, very cool.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Differently.
I didn't realize that was going to be the case, so I. That was a delightful surprise. The. The sculpting of the. Around the proscenium archway there. It's all done, but the big lighting installation, like that big diamond is not put in. And I don't think all the paint work in there is quite done. The carpet's not in.
I saw some big slabs of marble sitting on the stage that presumably are going into something, but that was cool. Where else did we see. I told you about Pride Lands? Not very done.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Did they let you into the Pirates of the Caribbean themed barn?
[00:37:10] Speaker B: They did. Oh, my gosh. And the ceiling there is my favorite. It's all Mark Davis sketches of Pirates of the Caribbean. And they've annotated them a little bit to add castaway key and lookout key in there.
And it is just beautiful. It's really beautiful. Like, dark wood. That one's fairly far along. Sarah Pepper, who's one of the imagineers working on that, she took us through.
And, like, the bar is fully installed. It even had set dressing, like things that looked like little drawers that you could pull out that might have maps or something in them. The TV screens were all up.
The window casings were there. But they're apparently going to add, like, wooden sculptures around the windows that were not in there yet.
[00:37:57] Speaker C: I make it feel like you're more on, like, a pirate ship kind of feel. Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: But like, this, as far as I know, the ceiling was in. Like, that was all. It was fairly done. Like, it looked like you could just flick on the lights, grab a bottle of rum, and, like, scooch up some barrels to sit on and you'd be good to go.
[00:38:14] Speaker C: It looks like they also took you up to the. It looks like they also took you up to the pool deck here, Stephanie, to see the funnels.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: And, yeah, this was like the grand finale. Taking us up to the pool deck.
And this was super cool because you're in this giant garage. Right. I'm never gonna see these views again of the ship sailing through something like this point. A gantry crane just went just, like, right past us. I don't know how they move so fast.
So we got to see the funnel. The pool deck actually looks fairly done. Like, the lights were on in the Aqua Mouse.
Some of that.
[00:38:47] Speaker C: Look how shiny the paint is.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Shiny and new.
We. At certain points, you could see the, like, pool deck that would be there that we would walk on. In our bare feet, if we were going to the pool, some of the sections were more covered, so I'm not sure if it's fully done. The pools are installed, but like the.
I guess the trim around the sides and the vents and things, those weren't installed yet, as far as I could tell, for the pieces that I saw at least.
But the funnel vision was on. Playing that like, destiny loop, just like they have for all ships, where it has the logo and it's just like a little sizzle reel.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Oh, my God, I love that.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Bizarre.
But yeah.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: What about the space that's going to be? I can't even remember what it is on the ship, but it's like Sarabi and Luna.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. What is it called? Saga.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Saga, that's right. It's also Avengers themed.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah, we walk past it. It's themed to the throne room from Wakanda.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: Wakanda.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: And we walked past it, but no work was going on, so they had all the lights off, so we couldn't really see anything.
[00:39:59] Speaker C: Just so folks know, because we got dinged in a review a while back that we talked too much about Avengers and stuff. We can't avoid it when the whole ship is themed to that.
So we're not an Avengers show, we're a TCL show. But when they theme is shipped to it, you know, our nerdom does win out. So. Yeah.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well. And I love Linda's comment. What horns do we think they're going to add theme or go the distance? I think both is probably a great answer. Or, you know, I think. And maybe Cruella de Vil.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: That would be a very good one. I would love the Spider man theme. Personally.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: I think there's a lot of options with this ship.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: But they did not tell us what the new horns are going to be. But I heard that there's going to be three of them, so I guess we'll find out pretty soon.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: Well, we just came up with four.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: How about the Muppets? Well, they came up with four ideas just right here between. Between, you know, Stephanie, myself and Linda. Right. The Avengers theme go the distance, Cruella de Ville and the Spider man theme. I love it.
[00:41:02] Speaker C: And the Muppets.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: Program those horns.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah, come on.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Disney did play the when you wish upon a star horn as it like sailed out. But they were not prepared to show us the new horns yet.
[00:41:17] Speaker C: Yeah, fair enough.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: They did play There is like a destiny hype up song, for lack of a better word, that they have commissioned.
I'm not really sure I can't really, really think about when a wish or treasure song is played on board.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: Well, they had that one that they commissioned. Remember, it was like CZ or something. Like, it was like it was for the treasure, but it was like, had the adventure in it.
They don't on board that.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: I can recall that in the.
Like at Port Canaveral or Port Everglades before you get on the ship. Right. That would get you really hyped up. Up as at that point.
So I don't know what the song is going to be used for. But they did play it and it was a bop.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, they'll play it for. For at least advertisements. That's what they. That's what they use. They did the christening ceremony they had. Because they had Jordan Sparks there.
[00:42:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Sings it. So she, you know, she sang it for the christening. Like, they may do that for the christening.
Oh, Vanessa's saying they played the song at Sail Away.
[00:42:22] Speaker C: That makes sense. Yeah.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: So. Yeah. So.
And like I said, advertisements for sure would. Would play it. But yeah, they. Oh, and they use it in the Adventure Tea, which, by the way, I don't know. I don't know if people have noticed, but if you're booked on the Disney Destiny and your onboard booking window has opened.
When ours opened for the maiden voyage, one thing that was available was the Adventure Tea with royalty, which is the same as on the Treasure. The same tea with the princesses. At least it has the same name. So I'm going to assume it's the same or almost the same experience. Yeah. Look at how cute you are, Stephanie, with your. With your yellow, your construction vest and your hard hat. It's just.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: I'm just.
I'm a. I'm a vision.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I love it. I think it's a. You're adorable. Like, it's just the best. This is. These are the best pictures of you in front of the ship, like, and then the one with you and Minnie, which I'm sure is it later.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I have.
[00:43:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Nice. And to everyone in the chat reminding us where they play a song. Yes. Unfortunately, I'm too busy getting a shave. Usually at Sail Away Away.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: So Brian skips Sail Away for the Getting a shave. That's true.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: I like to go someplace quiet and watch the port sail out. Like, I'm not the big, like, party person. So.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I just need to see it. If it's a new show. If it's not a new show, then I don't need to see it. But if it's new, it's on brand.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: And I love that for you, Sam.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Here's a question for you guys. Which type of show, like the Magic Class, the Dream class and the Wish class all have like a different format for their Sail Away show. Which one do you like the. The best?
[00:43:53] Speaker A: You know, I honestly, as the ships.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Have gotten bigger, I've appreciated the bigger show. Like, like especially because as Pirate Night, as they've gotten bigger, they've done more fun things with Pirate Night.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: So yeah, I think Pirate Night is different. But for Sail Away, I like the Sail Away party on the Magic and the Wonder with the big Mickey hand. I kind of like that one. And I like. I really actually like the costumes in that show and I like the costumes that the cast are. The cast. Well, like, because they're bounding as the characters again, twins.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Sam. Because that's my favorite too, for all of those reasons.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I just, I love what the. With the cat, the entertainment cast bounding as the characters.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: It's buy those outfits, put them in the gift shop. Disney.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: Linda's asked a good question before we go to the float out because I do want to get to the float out before we go there. Linda's asked a good question. Any guesses on what the storytellers of the Destiny will be called? So Sage and Coriander who are on the Treasure, we don't know who they like. There are storytellers on the Wish, but they play. Play kind of a lesser part than Sage and Coriander on the Treasure. I think just due to length of cruise, same may be true for Destiny. I kind of wonder if the storytellers are going to have to be low level Avengers of some sort. Like is it going to be. Is it going to be Hawkeye and Romanov, Natasha Romanoff or something like that.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: I don't think Natasha Romanoff would be very happy to be called a low level of Hawkeye.
Don't know their names and I don't know who they're going to be, but I know they will be there. And we were told they're actually going to have a much more active role because something that's going to be happening on board that sounds really cool. Is they're going to have what Disney is internally calling play and greet experiences. So this is different than just a photo op where you pose with Mickey, thumbs up, click, click, you're done. These are going to be more interactive for me. It sounds more Star Cruiser y where you or. Or more kids Clubby. Like we're always like, we want to go to the Ocean Years Club and play with Thor. Right. But you can't because you're a grown up.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to do like the. There's like different like tic tac toe games and stuff with Minnie and I mean, I want to do.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: They're gonna bring those things out. We don't know exactly what they are. There will be some for heroes, there will be some for villains.
They like one we already saw at the preview in April where Cruella has you do the Runway that's gonna be called Wretched Runway. So on the. I think that, I think Anthony said there's gonna be 16 of these and some of them will be. Be the same character in multiple.
I don't know what they're all called. I don't know what most of them are called. And they're not going to be labeled as play and greet. It's just going to be one of those things that over time, as we all go on cruises and then recorded on the podcast on the vlogs, etc, you'll know to look for Wretched Runway and then to go to that if you want to engage. I do like that. I mean, I want to go play with them all. That sounds great, but I really like this idea as opposed to like, I don't know. I know on Star Cruiser they were like, oh, if mom doesn't want to come along and do this, she can just go sit in the room, sit in the bar, whatever. My mom did not. My dad didn't go on Star Cruiser with me because my mom did not want to go to Star Cruiser and do that. She wanted the spa at Grand Floridian for a couple days, but only if I wanted to go. I wanted to go to Star Cruiser. So in this case, it is still an absolutely normal cruise. But if you want to go to these interactive opportunities, you can.
You're not forced into them if you don't want to be there. I like that.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: It makes me think like, like the Jungle Cruise adventure now on the Treasure, right. If you don't show, it's only done like twice a cruise in the atrium. If you're. If you don't happen to be in the atrium, you would never know what even happened. You don't have to participate if you're just walking by. You can just kind of watch from above and walk away and like, it's one of those things. You absolutely don't have to.
But yeah, it's. It seems, seems like there's going to be more and to answer Vanessa's question yet Loki is a main character in the Avengers universe and he is, he is, he was a villain in. If anyone who's actually currently watching Avengers or the mcu, he's no longer really a villain, but they're bringing him back or they're going to be bringing him on the Destiny, I believe as a villain character and he's going to, yes, try and take over the ship. It sounds like it's going to be similar to kind of what they did for Star wars day at sea back in the day. So.
But let's talk about the float out.
[00:48:22] Speaker C: Hold on, I want to say, I want to say one more thing there which is, I think it could be interesting if the characters were actually Loki and Thor, because if they're storytellers, like they're both, like they're both kind of storytellers telling a story from two different perspectives and Loki is kind of the villain and then Thor is kind of the. It would be interesting if they did that as kind of your storytellers on board.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Can I just say at the, the event in April, we met Spidey and we met Black Panther. My Spidey meet and greet was more just like, oh, hey, how's it going? How's New York? Kind of normal meet and greet kind of thing. But when I talked to t', Challa, he was hinting that there might be some villains afoot that he might need help with and could he conference with me later to come up with a solution. And like that 30 seconds like got me hooked. I was like anything you say. Wakanda forever.
So I.
[00:49:11] Speaker C: Major, major star cruiser. Major star cruiservice.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like you're like Wraith bringing you in on his heist. You're going to be on these. Yeah.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: And I really think so. There's four and five day sailings primarily for this. I really think that five day sailing, if you're a family that wants to do these activities, but you also want pool time and bar time and all of that, I think a five day sailing is going to be really key.
[00:49:37] Speaker C: Well, what's nice is if they're importing any of this stuff from kind of concepts they learned that worked on the star cruiser, is that, that was a, that was really a one and a half day, 2ish day kind of thing. So on a four, five night cruise cruise, you do still have time to spare and still interject some of that stuff into the experience effectively. And so that's, that's kind of nice. To see. I'm gonna just put a plug in Disney, can we have a space on the ship much like they have the. What is it? King Arthur's sword in the. The sword and the stone. Can we have one with. With. With Thor's hammer where you just can't pick it up. Just can't pick it up. But maybe the, you know, maybe a little magic allows a few of the worthy to be able to pick it up. I think that'd so be such a fun experience.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: The smallest toddler picks up.
Picks up the hammer.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:23] Speaker C: All right, let's. Let's talk about the float out now. So this is also a big deal.
Disney usually likes to put on a little bit of a show. I feel like more so than some other cruise lines when they do their float outs. But.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: And my understanding. Tell us, Stephanie. But there are lots of people from the town and the surrounding area that come out, Right.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: It's a scene, let me tell you. I was. I mean, I watched all these videos online in advance, trying to get ready. I was not prepared. Prepared. We showed up to the same gates where we had been before, the day before to. To enter the property. And up the road, there's just like cars pulled off onto the side. Like when you go to a really busy beach or something. And all of the. All of the regular parking is full up. I was like, okay, that's a lot of cars. Interesting. We go on. The entire parking lot is full of caravans. People are tailgating. People have come, they've spent overnight. They're just gonna watch this float out. And then where.
Where the hull that it floats out from is, there's like a huge long strip. So it can basically float the entire ship out. And then they turn the ship from there to pull it into the outfitting pier.
That entire thing is just chock a block full. There's fences up so that you can't get too close to the ship. And everybody's just, like, at the fences. I did not take videos or photos of the crowds. There's very different, like, laws in Germany.
[00:51:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: Capture like, children or anything on of those. But I really wanted to, because I wanted to just show, like, how many people were there. I did take a couple photos of where you couldn't actually see. You could just see little blobs of people.
There's a whole, like, meadow on the other side. For lack of a hill, for lack of a better term, where people were just, like, camped out having nice picnics. It's a whole thing. And later in the Day we went back to the town to get our bags and then leave again to go back to Amsterdam. And as we were coming back, there were even more people, because for some people, they're going for the float out. For some people, they just want to go see the ship for the first time. So they're just coming out for, like, a nice family day to see the new ship. It was wild.
They have, like, food trucks. They have everything. Like, there's washer set up. It's. It's a festival atmosphere.
[00:52:35] Speaker C: Are they letting them into the. Are they letting them into the shipyard in some way, or are they. This is just public grounds.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: It's the parking lot of the shipyard. I'm staring really soon.
[00:52:44] Speaker C: Got it.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's where you would come if you were a guest, because you could. You can go and pay to take a tour. Not the tour. I did a very different tour than the tour I did, but where they kind of walk you up on this platform and they tell you different things. You kind of look down into the. Some of the different halls.
So I think if you were doing that, you would come park your car there, and then you would go up to the security gate. Like, I had to give my passport to get in.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: In.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: Not to float out, but to get into the actual facility. They had to give me a, like a barcode badge thing. Because when we were going on and off the ship, you actually go through a turnstile and boop. On and off to make sure that they know exactly who's on and off the ship at any given time.
So it's very. It's very secure. So I think this is the public parking lot. I could be wrong about that. I do not think it is just public land. I think it's owned by the ship yard.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Did you get the sense of whether or not the folks from Poppenberg and the surrounding area come out for every ship float out? Or if it is really just unique for Disney or if it's just like they come out for all the ships but the Disney. When they come out for the Disney ones, it's in fuller force.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: Because obviously they do come out for all the ships, because almost everybody in Papenburg, if they're not working at Meyer Werft, one of their family members is. Or like they're a school teacher and all the kids. All their parents. Parents work at Meyerwurt. Right. The whole town is really centered.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: The.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: The schools, the restaurants, the grocery stores. They're. They're just there to. To service the people. Who are working at Meyer Werft really is the feeling that I got. So they do come out, but especially families because of the fanfare and things. Disney is definitely a favorite because the ships are so interesting to look at. You want to see the little song and dance they do.
But I, yeah, I've definitely seen videos and heard that they go out forever. Everything.
[00:54:37] Speaker C: So when the ship floats out, Big question I have. I don't think it's under its own power. Correct. They're. They're pulling it out. Yeah.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: Engines are installed and they're turned on. They're not. They're turned on like that. They could be used, but they don't use them. They told us it would shake that whole building.
So they use a tugboat to very gently maneuver it out and then maneuver it adjacent to the outfitting pier.
[00:55:04] Speaker C: Right. And now she'll be there for a little while because they're going to continue to bring on supplies and continue to put pieces together. Like, for the adventure. They actually had to take her out of the hall because she's, she's tall enough. They needed, they had stuff they needed to put on the top that they couldn't do inside the hall.
[00:55:19] Speaker B: The funnels on the top of the adventure until they brought her out. Yeah.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: Yeah. They brought her out earlier for that exact reason. They brought, they brought her out earlier than they normally would have, I think, like, for a float out. Because. Because the, she became too big for the hall versus the destiny. Obviously. Her funnels are already on. We saw them in those, in those pictures. But there and then she's going to be doing some.
She'll be there for, I think, several more weeks before she then traverses the EMS to go out for sea trials.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Now, how long is, how long does it take like this float out? Right. For her to come out of the hall and get turned around and get essentially parked at the other pier.
How long of a process is that? I, I, it's relatively slow. I know. Because of the tugboat, but what are we talking about?
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Two and a half to three hours.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: So it started around nine.
And by 9:15, 9:20. It was this far out. And they did.
Sorry for people who are listening and not looking at the YouTube video. Like, just the aft was poking out. And then they did a little bit of fireworks off the top of the hall, and then they continued to pull it out. And then they pulled it adjacent to the outfitting pier. Not quite up against the outfitting pier yet. They did some more fireworks and played the song Again and did the horns. That was probably around 11:15. And then they, it still for about another half hour was being kind of maneuvered and backed into its final parking.
[00:56:56] Speaker C: So spot it is amazing how big these ships. I mean it, the, the photo that I was looking at that gave me a sense of real scale is this one where you can see some office, some three, four story office buildings that look like small houses next to these large halls as the ship is being backed out. And then Stephanie's got a great photo here of like just can't even get the whole length of the ship from, from your vantage point as she's like fully backed out here. So yeah, it's, it's, it's an impressive operations.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: And you see of course the little tugboat pulling her and the tugboat is like, you know, tiny.
[00:57:29] Speaker C: It reminds me of the times we've gotten to go up to Everett to see the Boeing facility up there. They're manufacturing multiple airplanes in one place.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: And it's triple sevens, right? And the, and the halls are each, each hall is this size, right? Each hall that they're building the plane, you know, a single plane in. And it's as very similar in this sort of assembly line way that they do things if you were to. In fact they show you a video up at Everett, at the Boeing plant to show you how everything is constantly moving and so you can't tell in real life it looks like nothing, it looks like because it's going so slowly. But they show you like a sped up video and you can see literally things going around and around in sort of an assembly line fashion. And so it's very similar. Here's my favorite picture of you with hero Minnie and I'm of course wearing her hero Minnie ears.
You're wearing your Disney destiny hat at the. This is this photo. I love it, I love it.
Tell us what if any pomp and circumstances happening where you all are. Is there any kind of presentation, is there any kind of talk going on as you're watching or are you guys just watching and Hiromini's just there for pictures?
[00:58:41] Speaker B: For the most part we were just watching. So the day before we did the tour we had lunch and then Philip and Claire gave us a presentation that was more about, I will say the business operations of the ship. Like how, how, how it goes from a concept through like pre contract visioning into like the. Which takes about two years and then about three years is the actual contract when they're building the ship and commissioning all the things and then the commissioning, which is turning all the things on and then the conveyance down the M's and all of that. So they kind of took us through all those processes.
But, like, then, like the business part was over and it was content cap. Like, this was our content capture time. So they had a really nice little area set off for the media that was in front of the fence that everybody else had to wait behind. They had a nice little tent where we could get some, like, coffee or water, some little snacks, and they had some tables and chairs. But I don't think anyone was really sitting down because we were all so excited. We're trying to get all these different shots. The nice thing is because it took a couple hours. It's not like a normal media event where you're, you know, it's 10 minutes fireworks show, and everybody's just trying, like everybody's in each other's way trying to get their shot. We all had time to get our nice little shots. So that was really nice. And just all chatting about how excited we were and everything we learned the day before. And then right at the end when they had the ship in position, they were like, okay, hero Minnie is going to come take a couple photos with you. And she came in, she was with us for like maybe 10 minutes. And then. And it wasn't just us, it was like some Disney execs were there, some Meyer Werft execs were there, the European media also.
So we did some quick, quick photos and then she flew off to save the day. And that was pretty much it for the event.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: I love that.
[01:00:29] Speaker D: Do they have a Hero Mickey, Sam.
[01:00:31] Speaker C: That I've not seen the outfit for?
[01:00:32] Speaker A: Yes, so they have the plushie. So they have not shown us a character, but we have seen a plushie of Hero Mickey that is for sale already for the Destiny and Yes, the pin.
Yes.
[01:00:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: And we have pre order. So for the Destiny maiden voyage, they allow you to pre order certain things.
One of those things is Mickey and Minnie plushie and its hero, Mickey and Minnie. And so we've had pictures that we've posted on social media. Brian.
[01:01:03] Speaker C: Well, we learned this week that they're allowing that as an amenity. Pre order now, at least some sailings.
[01:01:08] Speaker A: On some of the sale. Yeah. On the Treasure and on some of the ship models.
[01:01:12] Speaker C: And the plushies are something you can potentially now order as an onboard amenity.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: That's such a good idea because then they don't have all this clamoring in the gift shop for these things. They know exactly how many to bring on?
Bravo. More of that, please.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. Well, and for Alaska. They haven't introduced it for Alaska, but it would be very smart to do because as. As we know, there have been many people for many years who have had a hard time getting Alaska Mini in particular, she's probably the most popular souvenir from the Alaska season. She's in her sort of furry coat that's just really beautiful. And so, yeah, she's. Apparently this year, though, there haven't been issues like people have been coming, coming, getting off the wonder and saying that they've been able to get any of the souvenirs that they wanted. But in previous years, that's been a real challenge, especially later in the Alaska season.
Well, I'm super excited as we hear more and more about the Destiny. Of course, I'm hoping, and I don't know if you think just this is a prognostication question, I guess, but we've still heard very little about the Disney adventure.
It still seems as though American media in particular is not being given a lot of access or invitations and things like that, save for little bits here and there.
But it also seems like Disney's keeping a much tighter, you know, I don't know what the word is, tighter lid on information about where adventure is in her construction.
[01:02:50] Speaker B: I think a lot of that is because. So like Disney Cruise Line Singapore, is the PR team really running this ship. And even with the ships that we have here, different teams are in charge of the rollout of that ship. Right.
So to be respectful to your colleagues, you need to let them run it the way they want. And if what they want is to not show anything until it arrives at Singapore, then I think everybody has to get on board with that.
[01:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that definitely seems, I think they're being tighter lipped. I think they're also targeting their advertising very much towards that market and not towards this market. And so there's, I think, you know, for a lot of reasons and I think we'll probably not see much coming out of the adventure, or at least not much PR information coming out of the adventure until she sails or. Right. Maybe right before. Before.
[01:03:43] Speaker B: I fully agree with that and I. You're right. I don't think it's aimed at this audience at all. But when you think about the international parks, they're really not aimed at a North American audience at all. You will get people going. And I know everybody loves Tokyo Disney, but every time I'm at Tokyo Disney, there's like 1% of guests are foreigners.
So like it's not, it's not their bread and butter. Right.
Um, so they don't need to. I would say that maybe. So it's going to be in Singapore for at least five years. Maybe when we hit year three, year four, if, if the local taste for it has climbed to a fever. We're not going to see a lot more here. If it's like waning off and they want to get more people interested maybe. I think like there's a lot of cost associated with going that far but beyond the cost because that's maybe not as important for the cruise audience as for the park audience.
The prospect of sitting on a plane for 14 hours or going through like three transfers or whatever, I'm lucky. You guys are lucky. We're close to international airports where we can probably get direct flights or close to direct flights. But most people in the US are going to have to have at least one stopover if multiple.
[01:04:56] Speaker C: And it's still, even living on the west coast is still a schlep. Like it's still, it's in like I'm not even sure we, we can probably get direct flights. Yes, that's right. But a lot of people are just are going to have to fly to.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: Like, like you might have to go to LA and then get a direct flight from there. Right.
[01:05:10] Speaker C: Or fly from here to Tokyo and then take a flight down or something like that. So it's, it's. Yeah, it's a short.
[01:05:15] Speaker B: And those are all long flights. It's still another, I don't know, eight hours maybe to get to Singapore from Tokyo. I'm just making that up. I haven't looked it up but it's a long way. It's not a two hour hop.
So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot to consider there and I don't think.
[01:05:32] Speaker C: Yeah, well the next next big milestone here will be the conveyances up the EMS river for. Well actually the adventure is not at Pappenburg, it's at Mayor Werft.
[01:05:40] Speaker A: I'm forgetting the name of it's in Vismar.
[01:05:43] Speaker C: So the next next big milestone for the destiny will be conveyance up the EMS and sea trials.
And so we will be watching out for that. Stephanie, as we wrap up here, please, please, please remind our audience how they can find subscribe to the fabulous magazine the WWDW magazine magazines us so much.
[01:06:04] Speaker B: Well if you go to wdw-magazine.com that's where you can find. We have daily online content about the parks and the cruises.
So on our blog there we have all different articles happening. But that's also where you can find our magazines. Whether you want to become a member, get those magazines every month or if you want to just buy a one off and test us out and see what you're like, find out, find out about our calendar which has just gone on sale, which we do every year and always sells out. It's free shipping right now, so you.
[01:06:35] Speaker A: Might want to forget DCL Duo all caps and you get 10 off in their store.
[01:06:41] Speaker B: Everything in our store. DCL Duo, not just our Disney cruise magazine. And if you don't have our Disney cruise issue, you should definitely get it because it's the first of more that are coming that are currently underway, being planned.
[01:06:53] Speaker C: Disney fans don't like to collect things, Stephanie. We don't like to.
[01:06:56] Speaker B: We're not completionists. We don't like.
And if you really want a lot of DCL content, we actually have DCL magazine on Instagram and Facebook that's really specifically about dcl. We also have it for WW magazine and DLR magazine if you're an all around Disney fan. But come follow our cruise content. We're having a lot of fun with it.
[01:07:16] Speaker C: Nice. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for taking time to come on and share this just fabulous experience with our audience.
Dear Disney, if I get a hard hat, you'll never hear from me again. I just, I really want one of those.
[01:07:28] Speaker A: Like me too. So cool.
[01:07:31] Speaker B: This is so souvenir. I've ever got anything in my entire life.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: Please wear that like everywhere.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you should wear it. No, you should wear it on the, for the, the destiny for like the previews and stuff that you get invited to. Like. Yeah, because you should just. I mean if I were, if I had that hat, Stephanie, of course I would want it to say Sam, but I would wear it. I would like wear it to work. I would wear it to like our local courthouse. Like I'm, I'm not lying.
[01:07:58] Speaker B: I just figured, oh, they probably have just like buckets of hard hats for whatever visitors show up at any given time.
So that was a wonderful surprise.
[01:08:09] Speaker C: Well, once again, thanks for coming on. For everyone out there watching, listening to this after the fact, we will be back on Monday night, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm Eastern. And our guests will be our very own My Path Unwinding Travels. Karen and Kayleigh, who are currently on the Star of the Seas and Star. So we are going to bring them on to talk about Royal Caribbean's newest ship always an option that Disney fans are looking at Sailing Royal. So we like to keep abreast of what is happening over there and get their thoughts and feedback on whether it was a fun ship to be on and a good opportunity for families who normally cruise Disney Cruise Line and maybe experience something different. So we will have them on Monday night with that. Thank you to all of you out there for hanging out with us this evening and have a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you Stephanie.
[01:08:56] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:09:01] Speaker D: Well, thanks everyone out there for listening this week. We really, really appreciate it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. You can keep getting great content from us every week. In fact, twice a week we publish shows. So be sure to hit the subscribe button to get all of those great episodes. And if you want to watch us live, we have a live show now every week Monday nights, 5:30pm Pacific, 8:30pm p.m. eastern over on YouTube.com DCLDUO so be sure to head over and check that out. If you want help support the show, be sure to hit those five stars on Apple Podcasts and if you leave us a written review, a five star written review, we will read it at the top of one of our main episodes. So please head over there and hit those five stars. Of course you can also help support the show by supporting our fabulous show sponsor, My Path Unwinding Travel. You want to book your next Disney vacation? Head over to mypathunwinding.com forward/dc dclduo or email them at dclduomypathunwinding.com so they know we sent you their way. If you've got questions or you'd like to connect with us, the best way to do that is to head over to DCLDuo.com it's got links to all of our things, full catalog of the podcast episodes including a searchable catalog for the podcast links off to our vlog, a link to our Etsy store. We sell some fun fan inspired magnets link to our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support the show each and every month, just just head over to the website or patreon.com DCLDUO also as a way for you to sign up for our substack newsletter that we're hoping to start really pumping out monthly here, at least on a few blog.
[01:10:21] Speaker C: Articles that we've written.
[01:10:22] Speaker D: So DCLDUO.com is the best way to connect with us. You can also of course email us at infoCLduo.com or reach out to us on our voicemail line at 40241, 35590. That's 402-413-5590. The DCL duo Podcast is not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line, the Disney Company or the Disney Family of theme parks. The views expressed on the show are solely those of the individuals on the podcast and in no way reflect the views of the Disney Company or Disney Cruise Line. If you have questions about a Disney Cruise or Disney Vacation, please contact the great folks over at My Path Unwinding Travel or Disney directly or your own travel agent. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time for another fabulous adventure with the DCL Duo.
[01:11:03] Speaker C: Well.
