Ahoy, Melissa!
Welcome aboard planDisney! I love your level of early planning. You may be looking a few years into the future, but when it comes to planning the perfect vacation for you and your crew, there’s nothing wrong with taking a page from Doctor Strange and looking ahead at the possibilities!
To answer your question, you can definitely start planning now, but the actual booking part is still a few years down the road. Disney just released
itineraries through spring 2028 about a month ago, and if future releases follow a similar timeline, I would estimate that spring 2031 sailings could become available around summer 2029, with summer 2031 itineraries possibly following sometime between January and March 2030. Of course, those are only my estimates based on previous itinerary releases, and there’s plenty of time for Disney to throw a little Inside Out plot twist into the release schedule between now and then!
While you may not be able to put down a deposit yet, there’s still
plenty of planning you can do now. The first thing I’d work on is your budget and savings plan. I like to look at current sailings to get a rough idea of what a cruise might cost based on the size of my crew, the length of the sailing, and the time of year we want to travel. Prices will certainly change between now and 2031, but it can at least give you a starting point and help you figure out what kind of vacation you want to plan.
You can also start thinking about what matters most to your crew. We won’t know exactly where each ship will be sailing that far into the future, but maybe you already have
a particular ship you’d love to experience. Or perhaps the ship matters less and you’d rather follow your own version of Jim Hawkins’ treasure map toward a specific destination or itinerary. Those are all things you can start narrowing down now so that when those 2031 itineraries finally appear, you’ll be ready to see which sailing checks the most boxes.
I hope this helps you start charting a course toward your 2031 adventure, even if booking day is still somewhere beyond the horizon. With this much of a head start, you’ll be ready to spring into action when those itineraries finally make their grand entrance!
Sea ya real soon as summer waves goodbye and autumn magic begins to shine,
Dustin