The spirit of Pacific islander culture has driven the newest Disney Cruise Line stage production on board its new ship Disney Treasure.

“Disney The Tale of Moana” debuted on the ship sailing out of Port Canaveral this month as one of three main stage shows, but the only one new to the cruise line.

“We’re so proud just to be able to share this story,” native Hawaiian and lead actress Kaenaonālani Kekoa said on board the ship during a media preview sailing. “Even though we’re not all from the Pacific Islands, this cast did such a beautiful job of taking care of our stories and making sure that our hand motions, our dance moves, the language that is coming out of our mouths was accurate and authentic to the place that our story is based out of.”

The story pulls from the first “Moana” film that came out in 2016, but had to be morphed into something unique for the cruise ship, telling the story of her family’s start on the fictional island of Motunui and her search for the demigod Maui to help return the heart of the goddess of Te Fiti.

“I think we did a really good job at inviting people into Motunui and making sure that you still feel in our village, even though there is, you know, just a little bit of space,” she said.

Kekoa was previously cast as Jasmine of Disney’s touring Broadway production of “Aladdin,” but is still based in Honolulu, where she first began acting at 11 years old with a role in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“All my ohana is there, but I just came here for this beautiful show,” she said, although she and others have roles in the other two stage productions on board as well, “Beauty and the Beast” and “Disney Seas the Day.”

The size limitations of a cruise ship mean a much smaller area off-stage for props and costumes, especially with three shows sharing one space.

“Because we are holding two other sets in our theater, just making space. I mean, you can see, even in our wings, we have to have these huge set pieces just be able to live somewhere,” she said about what was most difficult performing at sea. “They can’t just go off and hide away. So being able to kind of just maneuver our set, because we have so many things in this condensed space.”

Parts of the story also had to be edited out to get the show under an hour, but it still features many of the film’s original songs like “Where You Are,” “We Know the Way,” “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome” that were cowritten by Lin-Manuel Miranda as well as some new music.

Director and co-choreographer Connor Gallagher had previously worked on both DCL’s version of “Tangled” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

“We came off ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and I said, ‘If I’m going to do another show here, I want to do something really easy or really, really hard’,” he said.

His pitch for “Moana” was him opting for the hard production.

“The material, of course, is incredible,” he said. “The opportunity for the visual world for this was so incredible. And so the first thing we did was we took the film and sort of boiled it down to the essential elements.”

He said it was about finding the key moments of tracking Maui and Moana’s journey.

“We have to take the moments that are not only going to ramp up the emotional impact, but also what we can translate visually to the stage, because action-adventure is often so hard to pull off on stage,” he said.

The pace is picked up by the use of a narrator with unique shadow puppetry along with the fully realized, towering puppet of the fiery, black puppet Te Kā, and its ultimate transformation back into the green goddess Te Fiti.

That climactic moment had audience members watching with mouths agape.

“What I think is cool about it is we really did work hard to make sure the show didn’t ever feel digital,” he said. “We didn’t want it to feel like a movie. We didn’t want it to feel like it was computer-generated. So it’s a lot about blending the older techniques with the new and sort of softening the edges.”

He said this “Moana” production is pushing the limits for what can be accomplished on a stage at sea.

“A lot of puppetry, a lot of collaboration with these amazing designers and I had a co-choreographer on this,” he said. “So we’re blending theater, we’re blending Pacific dance and artistry and all of that into one, which is why I think it’s so impactful, because it’s such a really spectacular visual world to spend an hour in.”

As far as what keeps him coming back to Disney Cruise Line, Gallagher said the audience is primed.

“They love these stories. They love these characters, so what you need to deliver them is just beautiful storytelling. Like they’re ready to have a good time,” he said.

Land-based productions can be more challenging to corral an audience.

“You do feel like the collective experience they have when they come in here is so different and full of so much love,” he said. “I love making theater for people that are already coming from that place. It’s really freeing.”