When the Disney Wish sets sail next year, guests will discover a first-of-its-kind immersive experience that takes technology and storytelling to a new level “only possible on a Disney ship.” The debut of Disney Uncharted Adventure will lead guests on a journey “from bow to stern and beyond the stars” that allows them to interact with Disney characters in a “brand new way.”
Individually or in groups of up to six, the “multi-dimensional” experience turns a user’s phone, via the Play Disney Parks app, into an “enchanted spyglass” that transforms physical objects on the ship into story-telling devices guided by Disney characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
The experience, which starts before boarding and concludes with a finale including all participants on the ship, creates a magical realm where the wishing star explodes, prompting players to go on a series of quests to retrieve the pieces and restore the star. Guests can visit the worlds of Moana, Tiana, Peter Pan, Nemo, and more as the spyglass provides a key to unlocking adventures, solving puzzles, conquering quests, and ultimately saving the day.
“With the Disney Wish, we have an incredible opportunity to immerse our guests in the worlds of their favourite stories in surprising, interactive and completely unique new ways,” says Davey Feder, software product manager, Walt Disney Imagineering. “With Disney Uncharted Adventure, we’re literally putting the power in our guests’ hands to become the heroes of a grand adventure that can only be done on a Disney cruise.”
He adds, “While guests will need a mobile device to play, this isn’t a traditional mobile gaming experience. This is a heads-up, active experience that can be played with family and friends. The magic will happen all around the ship. The spyglass is not where the adventure takes place — it’s just the tool that brings the ship to life, opening portals into new worlds and allowing guests to interact with them.”
The quests will take guests users into a virtual realm, revealing views of the stars above, where enchanted constellations take shape as recognizable icons from Disney and Pixar stories, as well as adventurous locales such as Motunui, New Orleans, Never Land, Sydney and more.
Highlights include:
• Teaming up with Moana to navigate their canoes beyond the reef
• Helping Tiana cook up the perfect pot of her father’s favorite gumbo
• Summoning Tinker Bell to give the Disney Wish an extra dash of pixie dust, and
• Making an epic dive into the East Australian Current (EAC) with Nemo and friends.
Each quest also takes players on an expansive journey throughout the Disney Wish as they are prompted to seek artwork, signs, and props that magically transform to bring the characters and settings of these story worlds to life all around them.
“We are infusing the Disney Wish with innovative technology, like augmented reality and physical effects, to create a hidden layer of magic that can only be unlocked with Disney Uncharted Adventure,” Feder says. “Guests might admire a beautiful painting today without realizing that, hiding right beneath the surface, there’s a hoard of mischievous Kakamora from the world of Moana just waiting to escape and wreak havoc on the ship. A digital menu board might showcase what’s for lunch in the afternoon, but later it will host a cooking lesson in Tiana’s own kitchen.”
Along the way, guests will join the heroic characters who inhabit each destination on a mission to find the star fragment that landed there.
The adventure culminates in a grand finale hosted in one of the ship’s premier entertainment venues. During this live interactive experience, guests will gather with other players to battle an infamous Disney villain (who’s been pulling the strings all along) and finally restore the wishing star to its rightful place in the sky.
Disney Uncharted Adventure is being developed with flexibility, replayability, and customization in mind. Guests will be in charge of their own adventure, choosing when and how to play. Some may not complete every quest but can still take part in the finale event; others may choose to play again and again, discovering new surprizes and rewards each time. Families can play together on up to six devices at once, or team up on only one or two devices at a time.
Feder says Disney Uncharted Adventure continues the evolution of interactive storytelling at Disney – “experiences that give guests a role to play in those stories themselves… and have them become the heroes of their own adventures as they explore the ship together with their families.”
Importantly, Feder says designers considered to the ship to be a character in the story they devised, rather than just a setting for it. As such, he says, “it takes classic Disney storytelling into this whole new realm, combining imagination and technology.”
He explains, “As we were thinking about what sort of story we wanted to tell we really kept coming back to this really unique opportunity we felt we had here: to create an adventure that could only be told on a Disney ship… featuring all these beloved Disney characters we know our guests have deep connections to; but then there’s also the ship part of it – this incredible, beautiful ship that the story is being told on, that’s a setting not like any other. We tell a lot of stories in this company, but we don’t tell a lot of stories taking place on a ship that’s gliding across the ocean as that story unfolds.
“And that,” he continued, “gave us the opportunity for us to tell a story that truly belonged at sea; that it made sense aboard the Disney Wish, and that it couldn’t be told anywhere else.”
More details about Disney Uncharted Adventure will be announced at a later date.
Maiden Voyage and Inaugural Season
The Disney Wish will sail its maiden voyage on June 9, 2022, followed by a season of three- and four-night cruises to Nassau, Bahamas, and Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay, from Port Canaveral, Florida.