PORT CANAVERAL — The Disney Treasure cruise ship’s arrival to Florida is something Disney Cruise Line is used to — the second ship of a new class preparing for its maiden voyage.

It’s what comes next that marks uncharted territory for the cruise line as it prepares to flood the market with seven more ships in seven years.

The line is running through preview sailings on Treasure ahead of its maiden voyage Dec. 21 when it begins normal seven-night Caribbean sailings, taking on the weeklong duties while its sister ship Disney Wish, which began sailing in 2022, continues short three- and four-night sailings from Port Canaveral.

“We’ve been really able to build on the launch of the Disney Wish and by following up with the Treasure almost right behind — certainly feels right behind — with new stories, new intellectual property, new character experiences,” Sharon Siskie, senior vice president and general manager for Disney Cruise Line said during an interview on the ship. “Just sort of taking and building upon what we did with Wish and being able to add enough unique, different spaces and stories that it’s really interesting and exciting for guests and for our crew and for our cast.”

The two ships are nearly identical in terms of spaces, but an adventure theme has pushed the venue and entertainment choices on board the new ship including a Broadway-style play based on “Moana,” an atrium themed to “Aladdin” and spaces pulling from theme park attractions including The Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It also has spaces themed to the films “The Aristocats” and “Coco” that are unique to the Treasure.

“It was hard to make choices,” Siskie said. “So when you’re deciding which spaces … that you’re just going to pull through the fleet and then which ones you’re going to do something unique with, I think maybe if we had any challenge, it was narrowing down and choosing, because we had so many good ideas.”

The two ships’ arrival within the last two years follows a pattern set originally with the debut of Disney Magic in 1998 followed by its sister ship Disney Wonder in 1999. More than a decade then passed before DCL expanded to four ships with Disney Dream in 2011 and Disney Fantasy in 2012.

Now, though, DCL is primed to grow its six-ship fleet to 13 vessels during a seven-year run from 2025 and 2031.

“We’ve added capacity over time at a very slow rate, and I think what we’ve realized is, we are very well positioned as a leader in the family cruise market,” Siskie said. “We have fans all over the world. We just have a significant opportunity to do more, and we know it, and so we’re just very bullish on it, and we felt like the time is now to do it.”

That includes a third Wish-class ship Disney Destiny that will make its debut at a home other than Port Canaveral for the first time, arriving to its new second Florida home in Port Everglades in November 2025. That will be followed quickly by the debut of what will be the largest DCL ship when Disney Adventure debuts out of Singapore.

A fourth Wish-class ship will be built to sail out of Japan by 2029 and Disney has announced four more ships to come between 2027-2031 in a yet-to-be-named new class.

Also, the presence in Florida will be much larger with five ships planned to sail out of either Port Canaveral or Port Everglades during the 2025-2026 winter sailing season. That goes along with the debut this year of a second private Bahamas destination, Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point, on the southern tip of Eleuthera that augments Disney’s original popular island destination Castaway Cay.

“Florida is really, really important to us,” Siskie said. “Our home at Walt Disney World, certainly, contributes and plays a role in that. We have many, many guests that come from all over the world to visit Walt Disney World. That gives us a really good opportunity for guests that would sail on any of our ships out of Florida.”

She said the line generates a lot of first-time cruisers because of that, tacking on the cruise experience to their theme park plans.

“They choose Disney first, and they decide to take a cruise because of Disney, and for them, you know that some of the shorter cruises, the Bahamas, the Caribbean is just very appealing to a first-time cruiser,” she said. “We know we have a lot of additional demand.”

The pace with which new cruise ships will be coming online may be faster than the past, but Siskie said she feels the line is prepared.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of work ahead, but we have a lot of experience in this business,” she said. “We know how to develop a great cruise product. We know what our guests want. We really just want to build on all those things that have made Disney Cruise Line that family cruise experience, and we know what our guests love.”

Decisions on just what will be going on board some of the new ships will have to be made faster, though, than previous new ships.

“Because of timing and sort of the cadence of all of this, there will be some sort of compression, where historically you would do things sequentially,” she said. “And now we’re doing some things … a little bit more stacked than sequential.”

And while sailing more ships means bringing in more crew to support the experience, Siskie said most of the new hires aren’t being plundered from other cruise lines.

“We’re so fortunate that we attract the best in the world, and so as you think about growing the fleet, you think about how we continue to expand our number of crew members,” she said. “In general, we we target a certain type of individual, a profile of how they think about service.

“And so often we’re hiring and training. … We actually find that it’s easier to teach the Disney way when they just come to us with whatever their experience is, and we teach them everything that they need to know.”

In the meantime, the focus is on Disney Treasure, which has seen smooth sailing so far in preparation for its debut with paying customers.

“We’re in this momentum now of building new ships. The Wish was the first, and so that was I think probably where we had the most kind of learning,” she said. “Now it feels this has been just such a beautiful launch, and everything has gone so well for Treasure.

“Everybody’s just excited and ready to go.”