Port Canaveral documents label new cruise ship Disney Triton
Will Disney Cruise Line’s next ship be named Disney Triton?
That’s the name documents on terminal construction at Port Canaveral are using. The name appears on a construction rendering while the words “Triton class” of ships also appears on part of the agenda for the Canaveral Port Authority commission meeting set for Wednesday.
The commission will be asked to approve negotiation of contracts for both landside and waterside improvements to Terminals 8 and 10, with an expected total cost of more than $46 million.
Terminal 8 is where Disney Cruise Line currently operates, but is expected to use both terminals by the time its first new ship arrives to the port in 2021.
Port officials have previously stated at least one of two sister ships that are coming online in 2022 and 2023 will also call Port Canaveral home.
Port CEO John Murray has stated Disney plans to keep three ships year-round at Port Canaveral. Currently, only Dream and Fantasy sail year-round with the older Disney Magic and Wonder shifting among Port Canaveral, Miami, Galveston and New Orleans as well as sailing to Alaska and Europe.
As part of the planned growth, the port and Disney have been working on a redesign of Disney’s dedicated terminal, but also expanding into use of Terminal 10, which will be shared with Norwegian Cruise Line.
It’s on a design specification rendering for that terminal that the name Disney Triton appears. The agenda for the commission meeting also refers to the “Triton class” of ships in documentation about the background of the search for firms to contract with for terminal construction.
One other piece of information in the document are some details on the new ship’s size, showing it to be 1,119.19 feet in length, 127.95 feet in width and to have a maximum draft of 28.22 feet.
Using those numbers, the new class of ships would be very similar in size to Dream and Fantasy. For comparison, Disney Dream is 1,115 feet in length, 121 feet wide and has a draft of 28 feet, according to the cruise line’s fact sheet.
To date, scant details about the new class of ships have been revealed, other than they will be powered by liquefied natural gas, be 140,000 gross tons, which is slightly larger than the 130,000 gross tons of Dream and Fantasy, but will have the same number of staterooms: 1,250. One rendering for the new ship shows a water ride feature that Disney officials have said would be different than the AquaDuck water coaster that’s on Dream and Fantasy.
Scott Sanders, who wrote about the use of the name Triton in the documents on his website disneycruiselineblog.com, which is not affiliated with the cruise line, said that he thinks the name is probably not the final one for the first new ship.
“I really think this its just an internal project name for the new class of ships,” Sanders said. “It does not fit Disney’s established nomenclature for ship names.”
But Sanders said he thinks Triton makes a logical project name, since the character King Triton is featured in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” has a restaurant on board Disney Wonder and the fact that Triton, the Greek God, is the messenger of the seas.
“What I believe is the ultimate reason for the use of Triton as the project name is combination of the above and the fact he yields a trident. The trident ties in well with three new ships of the same class.”
Cruise lines often refer to a new class of ships under a separate project name before final ship names are revealed.
“While I do like the name Disney Triton, I feel it is too much of a departure from the Magic, Wonder, Dream and Fantasy,” Sanders said. “They still have words like adventure, amaze, believe, enchantment, journey, imagine, and so on to toss around before making a final decision on names for the next three ships.”
rtribou@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5134
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