[00:00:00] Speaker A: Each ship produces up to 99% of its own freshwater on board.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Yes.
Welcome back, everybody, to a special episode of the DCL Duo Podcast, brought to you by my Path Unwinding Travel. This is a continuation of our Deep Dive series about the Disney Destiny. And Sam, you're going to do a little interview here.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So today we're going to talk about sustainability across the Wish class because it's Disney Cruise Line's focus or one of Disney Cruise Line's focuses. And Brian had this unique opportunity. He was invited to do an engine room tour with a number of other media outlets. We basically were invited, but only one of us could go. And we decided it made the most sense for Brian to do this tour. And he got to see crew only areas, and not just crew only areas, but specific areas that only sort of the engine the engineers on the ship get to access.
And so, Brian, why don't you tell our listeners where you met on board and where you got to go and then we'll talk about some of Disney Cruise Line's goals and aims with this tour, I think.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Sure. And I really want to emphasize what a unique opportunity this was. So when we met up with the PR team in Saga as a group, the PR person, in advance of kind of taking us on the tour, said that they had really racked their brains over the last time they might have invited anyone but crew to come tour the engine room and could not remember a time when this had happened before.
This was also very exclusive. I think Sam mentioned a number of outlets, just to put perspective on it. I think There were about 12 outlets present for the tour. So it was like the 10 or 12 of us plus a couple of PR reps.
And then also the PR team had brought along a couple of people to do some photo and video along the way of the experience. And so we did first meet up in Saga. We had to get our PPE gear to go into the engine room. So we.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: So like a fluorescent vest, we were.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Given high visibility or high vis vests, some ear protection for while we were in the engine room. And then we were also given a. A whisper device, which was basically just a hearing assistance device, so that our guide, chief engineer, Johan Balakstra, who's the chief engineer of the Disney Destiny, he led our tour and he was talking the whole time. And so the device enabled us to hear him even when the in the engine room where it's quite loud.
After we did some introductions and some reminders about what we could and couldn't video and Take photos of in the engine room space. We headed down several decks from Deck 5 to a crew door and then we're shown into a crew hallway. It's kind of like on Royal Caribbean, they have the I, forget they call the i5 or the I whatever.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: I95, I believe they call it.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: The i95 on the Destiny is a little bit different. Like the space didn't feel quite like it would on a royal ship where we've done some, I've at least done some behind the scenes tours, but our first stop was actually at the recycling facility for the ship.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: And so what did you see in the recycling facility?
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah, so what Disney really wanted to emphasize at the recycling facility was, you know, the ship is not big and so they can't keep a lot of waste on board the ship. And they are committed to essentially. And they do recycle most, if not, you know, a major, Well, a majority for sure, they said. But most of the solid waste on board is recycled. And so they talked about how they have crew members who are actually going through the bags of waste to make sure that they're getting recyclables out of material and sorting it.
They then, you know, break down cardboard, they break down glass, they break down aluminum. They have a compactor on board to really like just compact that material down to the smallest amount of space possible.
And then they offload their recycling at ports of call and have it recycled. And they, they really emphasized, and I thought this was a really interesting point that, you know, they said there's lots of ports of call where people want to come contract with us to take this stuff and, you know, recycle it. But we know, as many people do, that not everyone who says they recycle things are actually recycling them and they might be putting them in a landfill. And so Disney actually sends members of their team to the facilities to verify that the supplier that they're working with is indeed recycling these materials. And so this is not a lip service exercise for them. They want to make sure that what goes off the ship that is recyclable is, is in fact being recycled. And I thought that was just a great, great commitment by the cruise line in this era of sustainability.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: That's awesome. Where else or didn't they talk about some getting rid of some, some stickers in this part of the tour?
[00:05:08] Speaker A: That's at the end of the tour. So wait until we get to the end of the tour. We got one more section of this to talk about after the engine room, but okay, after the recycling plant. We were then actually led down several very steep staircases. They're. The crew called them staircases. They're. They're effectively ladders. And we had crew can go down them face forward. They made us go down them like a ladder because they're so steep.
But we were taken down another deck into the engine room compartment.
And I believe at that point we had actually descended below the water line of the ship. And so they made a big point to say that, like, right now you're sitting below the water line of the ship.
And one of our first stops was to see one of the Disney Destiny's 5 engines.
And it's massive. I mean, I cannot give you a sense of how massive the machinery spaces are on the ship. I think when I posted a photo, because we were allowed to take photos, and you should head over to Instagram and you'll see some of our photos. And I'll actually be posting probably a post later this week with some of this information and a post and some of the photos we got to take.
Someone said, well, it looks like a lot of open space, and it is there. There is a lot of open space. They have to service the machinery and the equipment. But these are huge spaces. These are massive, massive engines on board the ship. Of course, they wanted to highlight the transition.
The engines are dual fuel. But they did want to highlight the transition to liquid natural gas. And so for those who don't know, liquid natural gas or LNG is a transitional fuel for the maritime industry.
It is being used across the Wish Class fleet, and it is meant to reduce carbon emissions because gas is a clean burning fuel or liquid LNG gas is a clean burning fuel. And so I did have a chance to ask the chief engineer, Johan, you know, how much has changed since they moved to lng? And he said, you know, it has changed the engineering function a lot. And primarily because the LNG gas isn't that you pump it into a tank and then it goes directly into the engine. The LNG comes in liquefied and is stored at very low temperatures. And then they have to take the step onboard the ship to convert it from that very cold, compact LNG into something that can be burned in the engines themselves.
Now, for those who picked up on the fact that I said that these are dual fuel engines, the ships across the Wish fleet or the engines across the Wish Class fleet can also burn normal diesel fuel. But Johan did clarify that, you know, 90 to 95% of the time, they are operating on LNG and only need to convert over to the diesel fuel in very rare circumstances, or I think if they go into ports where they can't refuel for LNG for whatever reason, but 90 to 95% of the time the ship operates on this LNG clean burning fuel. And I missed a step, I missed a stop. So let me back up and say before we went to the engine room, we were actually taken into the engine control room.
That room is manned by at least one crew member all the time.
And it is, you can imagine kind of a bunch of screens that are up. They've got video cameras on one side monitoring key spaces in the engine room. They've got boards that are showing them, you know, the engine operating status and what's going on.
But one section that was very fascinating is that they've got a.
I'll call it a machine learning. It is not AI. They want to be very clear. This is not AI, but it is a machine learning piece of software that they have installed on the Destiny. I believe, but don't hold me to this. I believe that the Destiny is the first ship to be using this software, which is when we were on board, it was in learning mode. And so it takes data from the Destiny across her sailings and it's. It helps the crew understand when and how to optimize the ship's energy to reduce emissions and energy dependency. So it's looking at things like the heating and cooling system and helping them make adjustments to burn less energy and to make sure, effectively what they're trying to do is get more out of the ship than what they're putting in, which, let me just say, I know from a physics standpoint is not possible, but, like, their goal is to get to as much of a balance around that as they possibly can. And so we'll talk a bit more about some ways that they. They do that across the.
The engine space, but also the heating, cooling water, all of that sort of stuff. But for now, I think it's just really important to highlight from a solid waste standpoint, that stuff you put into bins, like, nearly all of that is recycled into the LNG fuel, makes these ships very clean burning from a. From an environmental and sustainability standpoint.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: That's so cool, Brian. I'm so glad that Disney's committed to all of this stuff, and I'm really glad that you got the opportunity to see all these cool spaces and learn all of this amazing information.
Now, you mentioned that there was.
We're at the point about the stickers, Brian.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: No, that'll Be at the very end after we get out of the. I will tell you when we get out of the engine room that we went to Cove Cafe and I will talk about. There's another person who gave us a discussion about some of the single use plastics on board. That's where we talked about it.
No, after the engine room, we. We continued the tour to see some of the other plants and facilities in the engine room. So just a couple things to highlight here. When I said they're trying to get more out than they put in, that also means that, like the byproduct of some of what they're doing is being reused and recycled in other ways. And so one of the ways they accomplish that is engine heat. Disney repurposes excess engine heat and they. So the waste from the ship's engines helps power then the onboard air conditioning systems and then conserves fuel and energy.
At the same time, they've taken steps with the ship itself. So they've got a special hull coating on the ship that is meant to reduce drag in the water and save fuel consumption. Oh, they've designed the hull. It's called a hydrodynamic. Hydrodynamic hull and propulsion. So the hydro dynamic hulls and specially designed propellers are meant to save fuel by reducing the engine power needed to sail through the water. So they're trying to get that efficiency from the burning of the fuel itself and then capture the byproduct of that, which is the heat, to then repurpose it into heating and cooling. And of course, they've taken steps that many of us have taken around our own homes, using LED lighting for longevity and power consumption.
The ship is shore power ready. So the Disney Treasure and Destiny both launched with technology on board to be able to turn off their engines while they're in port and plug into local power grids to reduce their own emissions. Where those are available, it's not available everywhere. And they did tell us that the Disney Wish is going to get that upgrade here in the future. So we know she's due for a dry dock here. I think next year, Sam, is when we think that the Wish is headed to Europe for dry dock.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: So she will probably get that upgrade while she's.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Sorry, not 2026. 2027.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yes, 2027.
So a lot of stuff is going on to kind of repurpose.
Another stop that we had in the engine room was what I would call their wastewater processing. So they actually have a machine that is called a membrane bioreactor which processes all of the Sewage and gray water on the ship and tries to clean that water to be repurposed for other uses. Now, Johan was very specific in that all of the water coming out of the taps on the ship, including what they use to clean the decks, is potable water or potable water. So the, the water that they're processing through this machine is in part meant to service other needs that they have related to water on the ship that isn't flowing through the tap. So don't worry, you're not drinking gray water in your sink, in your bathroom.
Two of the things I just. Two other facts that came up through the cruise that or the tour that I wanted to highlight. One is to go back to the point about LNG being a compact fuel. When they process it on board, it expands up to 600 times. And so they are keeping a lot of this LNG fuel in a very small space that then it is expanded over time. And some out there, some of you out there may recall the Wish Treasure and Destiny are slightly bigger than the fantasy and the dream. And that is in fact to accommodate this additional set of tanks that they need to hold the LNG fuel and process it. And so that is why the ship is in many cases slightly or is slightly bigger.
Some Wish Class facts that I think are really interesting to share. The Wish Wish class ships emit 20% less greenhouse gases than the older version of the ships. The hydrodynamic hull that I mentioned in the propellers save nearly 1800 tons of fuel per ship annually.
The H Vac system saves nearly 700 tons of fuel per ship annually.
More than 90% of all of the lighting on board uses LED bulbs, which reduces their weekly lighting energy needs by about 30%.
Each ship produces up to 99% of its own fresh water on board.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yes. So they did take us to another machine that is a reverse osmosis plant that is converting seawater into fresh water on board. And as I just said, 99% of the onboard water is not, is not bunkered. It is produced from seawater. And then the, the byproduct salt is then put back into the ocean so they can continue producing water on board.
I also mentioned that they, they repurpose some of the byproducts here of things to, to power other experiences on board. And so they repurpose condensation from the air conditioning plant for onboard laundry, which saves the ship approximately 10 million gallons of water a year. And so they, they were, they were quick to highlight they use it for the laundry, but they take That a step further. And so they figured out that the last cycle of the laundry wash, the last rinse cycle, usually doesn't come out, you know, super dirty. Right. It's not dirty water because the laundry has been washed, it's been rinsed once, it's been rinsed again.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: It's just like rinsing the last bits of soap.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: So they take the water from the second rinse and they use it for the wash cycle of the next load of laundry.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: So that's so smart.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: They're repurposing it.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah, because they're just adding more soap to it. So it makes. Yeah. Wow.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: And so the.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if I like that though, because then my dirty laundry is mixing with somebody else's dirty laundry. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: And then someone else's clean laundry, I guess. Really?
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the other key fact they want us to know is that each ship recycles up to 400 tons of material annually.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: And so they are doing a really good job of trying to find ways to kind of reduce the power consumption to repurpose the outputs of all of these processes for other uses around the ship. And it's just, it was, it was fascinating.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: All right, well, what was the. Your next stop?
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So this is where we saw the engine room. We got to go down the take pictures by one of the engines.
We got to see the gray water recycling. We got to see the air conditioning plant and the reverse osmosis machine. We were not allowed to see the LNG fuel tanks. Those sit behind many security barriers, both for safety and also security reasons. We also weren't allowed to take any photos of the engine control center because that's a security issue for Disney Cruise Line.
After that, Johan graciously led us back into a crew area and the PR team took us up to Cove Cafe to learn a bit more about Disney's efforts to reduce single use plastics on board the ship.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So like we're talking straws, we're talking stickers, we're talking any other kind of single use plastic, stirring sticks, things like that.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yes. And I will say one more thing about the water that I want to make sure to highlight. They really emphasized they have some of the cleanest drinking water at sea.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: And so I think their drinking water tastes better than almost all drinking water on land, aside from like filtered bottled water, especially way better. I don't know if people drink the water at Walt Disney World. The water at Walt Disney World is terrible. But this water is so, so, so good.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yes, they also, they didn't talk about this much, but they did in the materials they sent us afterwards. Want to highlight that they treat their own ballast water in order to minimize its impact on the marine environment. And so that's something they also do.
And then on that monitoring management system, I don't know that I really finished the thought there, which is just that it is a proactive learning system that will alert the crew when there is a system that could be better optimized so they can take action to optimize it. So just a lot of stuff happening in that engine room. But after the engine room, we went up to the COVID Cafe and we were greeted by Duncan Gebbe, who is the environmental officer of the Disney Destiny. Now if you want to know what the environmental officer does, every Disney cruise line ship has an environmental officer on board who monitors the ship's water quality and supply, trains the officers and crew members on waste minimization and environmental safety programs, and oversees a ton of environmental initiatives, including all of the shipboard recycling efforts. And so a part of one of the major initiatives that Disney is pushing is eliminating single use plastics on board. Sam hinted at a few, but they gave kindly gave us a list of sort of all of the ways that they are working on this. And so some highlights when they have this one I know is not always a fan favorite, but they have replaced all the plastic straws on board with biodegradable straws and those edible straws that people sometimes enjoy. I don't. But on board they did make the move to the refillable bath product dispensers to replace the single use plastic bottles on board. So that has gone away fleet wide. Again, I know it's not been popular with people, but it is an effort by the cruise line to reduce single use plastics.
Um, this is also where we get the reusable shopping bags for all merchandise locations.
They have moved to all reusable cutlery and dishware at dining locations on board and at the island. So no more single use plastic dinnerware.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Their stir sticks are have always been, I think the wood ones, not the plastic ones.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: They have moved to single serve items.
Sorry. They've eliminated single serve items for milk, cereal, yogurts and they're using only reusable cups and bowls now. So if it's been a while since you've been on the cruise line, no more like single cereal plastic bowls that you rip the top off of. Now again, I know that's not been super popular with parents, you like to grab those and take them off on shore excursions. But again, it is meant to help reduce Disney Cruise Light's impact on the environment.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: And also those, you know, the coffee cups, if you get a to go coffee cup, you used to get a plastic lid with your paper coffee cup. And now those lids for the coffee cups are also the recyclable ones, like a paper, kind of a hard paper.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yes. And that is on the list. Beverage station and specialty coffees are served in all paper cups now with all paper lids which are fully recyclable or compostable depending.
And then the castaway Club in room amenities are now wrapped in paper or cardboard to replace the plastic sleeves and bags that they used to hand out on board. So they emphasized a lot of these, like the gifts that you would get or the stateroom amenities are now in sort of sustainable packaging.
The last thing that they sort of talked about or the last sort of thing that they highlighted for us is that they are testing, they have not yet adopted fleetwide, but they are currently testing 100% renewable wristbands to replace single use stickers for port adventures. And so these were, you know, it's not nylon, but it's a, it's a recycled material cloth material band that has a cinch clasp on it that you, you know, you press a button and you can kind of pull the ends through to make it tighter or lighter on your wrist. And they have recycled or at least compostable wood on top, then has kind of, you know, like kind of burned into the top of it, the character, you know, outline or face or whatever it is for your short excursion. So instead of wearing that aerial sticker that's always falling off and probably getting.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Falls in the ocean or just in.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: The port itself and people have to clean that up, you will now wear these wristbands that have that character emblem on them to help you with your port adventures. So Disney's making a huge commitment here to reducing single use plastics on board. And you know, from a sustainability standpoint, that's just necessary. And so while it's taking away some of the things that we might have had in the past that we enjoyed, it's to help make the cruise line overall have less impact on the environment. And so yeah, it was a really, really fabulous tour, a really great way to understand Disney Cruise Line's commitment to sustainability. And I'm just so grateful that they invited us to participate in this experience.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Brian, what was your favorite part of the tour?
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Honestly, like seeing the engine Room itself was just, there's just not a space that you get to see. I had hopes when they took us out of the engine room and we're talking about taking us upstairs, that maybe they were going to take us to see the bridge, but that did not happen.
But being able to have that just behind the scenes glimpse and then understanding how thoughtfully they are approaching all of these problems and then as a technology person again that like self learning and alerting software that they're using to really just in the moment say we can optimize something, let's do it and reduce the energy. Overall, I thought was just truly impressive. And I will say, you know, unlike some of the older classes of ships where we experience like heating and cooling issues and other things, like I felt comfortable the entire time I was on board that ship and they're still finding ways to save energy.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: I agree. I actually did. I wasn't chilled in the dining rooms. I wasn't too hot in the state room or anything, anything like that. The only times I was cold is when we were up on the deck because it was windy and blustery up there. It wasn't, it wasn't quite as warm as some of the other sailings that we've experienced. But yeah, one of the other things I wanted to ask you, Brian, was if they talked a lot about how Disney Cruise Line is a pioneer in this industry in sustainability because from what you hear, you know, cruise lines get ranked in terms of like do they get an A rating, a B rating on sort of their carbon footprint and did they talk about that in this more general sense about how Disney Cruise Line is doing in comparison to maybe her competitors?
[00:24:04] Speaker A: They didn't talk about that. And in fact, there were moments even apart from this where you know, I asked some questions of folks about what competitors were doing and Disney really shies away from the comparison and they don't, I don't think they ever want to be seen as badmouthing someone else in the industry. But yeah, they did highlight that they are a leader in this industry in terms of their sustainability efforts and environmental footprint. And I think that that is borne out consistently in the ratings and the rankings that we see, you know, external to the cruise line. I should mention there was one other way that they recycled on board that was just fascinating. So they actually repurpose all of their used cooking oil on board the ship and so they offload all of these cooking oil to be repurposed and turned into fuels and products for all of the communities around the world. That they port in. And they actually mentioned they're now experimenting with mixtures of cooking oil in the fuel up to 50% using repurposed cooking oil in their own fuel on board in order to power engines and other equipment on the ship. And so they're really leaning in hard to again that idea of we make the waste, what can we do with the waste in order to reuse it and repurpose it. And I just think that that's just fabulous. So. All right. Well, with that, we're going to wrap this up here. I hope you enjoyed hearing a bit more about Disney Cruise Line sustainability efforts and also this just again, very unique tour of the behind the scenes of the engine room.
Big thank you to both Johan and Duncan for taking the time out of their busy days to talk with us about it. And also just a huge thank you to Disney Cruise Line and the Disney Parks for letting us go behind the scenes. The Disney Destiny all right, we got a lot more Destiny coverage coming.
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