After multiple losses this year, including a suspected $900 million loss in its entertainment sector, Disney revealed another major setback.
The last few years haven’t been kind to the Walt Disney Company. From suffering a significant loss as a company in 2022 to the tune of $120 billion to suffering last year’s biggest box office flop, the company might have been hopeful that 2023 would look better with Disney CEO Bob Iger back at the helm. However, 2023 has been a challenging year for the House of Mouse as well.
2023 Brings a Series of Misses for Disney
This year has been difficult for the Walt Disney Company. While they began the year on a high with the success of Avatar: The Way of Water and Ant-Man: Quantumania‘s initial success, it quickly soured with the massive restructuring and reorganization of the company. Seven thousand layoffs—which included some of the biggest names at the company—later, Disney seems to still be trying to keep its head above water.
Now, another setback has been revealed.
Disney Cruise Line Reports $325 Million Loss
Forbes reported that Disney Cruise Line had as rough a 2022 as the rest of the company. Per papers filed recently, DCL suffered a “$325.8 million net loss—the second-worst result in its 26-year history.”
While revenue certainly rose more than 11-fold through to October 2022, it’s still far away from the 2019 high of $1.6 billion in revenue. The increase in demand through 2019 led to the need for more staff and personnel on board; this, coupled with a 67.8% pay increase for staff, doubled operational costs to $1.5 billion.
Per Forbes, a large part of this is attributed to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, Disney Cruise Line’s fleet of five ships—Disney Wish, Disney Dream, Disney Magic, Disney Wonder, and Disney Fantasy—was grounded, and sailings didn’t resume until the summer of 2021.
While all might seem stark for the House of Mouse, the directors are hopeful. They shared in the published financial statements “the directors have a reasonable expectation that the company has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future.”
Now that all of the company’s cruise ships have resumed sailings, the financial statement clarified, “As the cruise industry continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an increase in occupancy levels…to 96% as of March 2023.”
Perhaps the latter half of 2023 will allow Disney Cruise Line to compensate for lost time (and revenue). In addition, Disney has also announced multiple new itineraries and locations—think like Disney Fantasy’s new itinerary from Port Canaveral, which includes Lighthouse Point—which might help the subsidiary break even if not post a profit this year. There is also a new Disney Cruise Ship being added to the fleet next year, Disney Treasure, which shines hope on the future of the enterprise.
