ANAHEIM, Calif. >> When Disney announced last year that it planned to spend $60 billion over the next decade to expand its theme park and cruise businesses, double the amount spent over the previous decade, the company’s stock price instantly dropped.

Wall Street wanted specifics that the company wasn’t prepared to give. Disney fans were excited for a hot second — and then they too started to demand answers, venting on social media about feeling baited. Was Disney being hypothetical about the expansion (as it has been on occasion in the past), or was this for real?

On Saturday, Disney finally showed its hand.

The company is building four new cruise ships — on top of four others it had previously announced — almost trebling the size of its current fleet by 2031. The Magic Kingdom, Disney’s flagship theme park in Florida, will undergo the largest expansion in its 53-year history, with one new “land” devoted to classic Disney villains and another focused on Pixar’s “Cars” movies. The Disneyland Resort in California will add two superhero-themed rides, a water-based “Avatar” attraction, the company’s first “Coco” ride and a Main Street, USA, show starring an animatronic Walt Disney.

“We’re dreaming big,” said Josh D’Amaro, chair of Disney Experiences, which includes theme parks, Disney Cruise Line, video games and consumer products. “We’re investing in every part of our portfolio and pushing boundaries as we turn what-ifs into reality.”

Disney is also working on a “Monsters, Inc.”-themed suspended roller coaster (with cars that hang under the tracks), a ride-through “Encanto” experience, a “Lion King” water ride and a major “Spider-Man” roller coaster. The project list, which includes new nighttime parades and elaborate outdoor pageants that Disney calls “spectaculars,” goes on and on.

D’Amaro detailed the projects — they’re all happening, he insisted, nothing conceptual — during a three-hour evening presentation at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, a three-day gathering in Southern California. (D23 is a reference to 1923, the year Walt Disney arrived in Hollywood.)

One important caveat: The ships and expansions detailed Saturday, while vastly expensive, do not add up to $60 billion. That sum also covers still-secret rides, resort hotels and shopping and dining areas that Disney is planning for the longer term, along with technology and infrastructure investments.

D’Amaro’s presentation, in the works for months, came three days after Disney reported weaker-than-expected theme park results for the quarter that ended June 29. Operating profit declined 3%, to $2.2 billion. Disney blamed a “moderation of consumer demand” that “exceeded our previous expectations,” along with higher operating costs. The post-pandemic surge in travel has worn off, Disney said, and lower-income Americans, battered by years of high inflation, have cut back on discretionary spending.

Disney, of course, is in the theme park business for the long haul, and many of the projects that D’Amaro unveiled will not open for two or more years. Disney’s parks have a long history of bouncing back quickly from economic downturns, in part because many parents view a trip to Disney World or Disneyland as a rite of passage for their children.

Laurent Yoon, a media analyst at Bernstein, a research firm, said in a report Wednesday that, despite near-term challenges for Disney Experiences, “we’re not concerned.”

The biennial D23 event amounts to a giant corporate pep rally, with roughly 140,000 people paying anywhere from $79 to $2,600 for the opportunity to be marketed to. Disney trots out dozens of stars, previews upcoming movies, and hypes Disney television shows like “Bluey” and “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.” Many fans come dressed as their favorite Disney character. Disney being Disney, there are confetti cannons and booths selling $30 glow wands.

It is also a spotlight moment for Disney executives. In 2022, Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO at the time, tried to use the event to polish his image and turn a page on what had been a tumultuous early tenure. (It didn’t work: He was fired two months later.) This year, Disney gave media credentials to roughly 1,000 reporters and online writers. Dozens came from overseas.

D’Amaro, 53, is a candidate to succeed Bob Iger as Disney’s CEO when his contract expires at the end of 2026. (Iger came out of retirement to retake the helm at Disney when Chapek departed.) On Saturday, D’Amaro came across very much like a Mouseketeer in chief, striding onto the D23 stage — where a 70-piece orchestra awaited — in a zip-up sweater and jeans and effortlessly commanding the 12,000-person arena.

His presentation included a cameo by a member of the royal family (Roy P. Disney, who is Walt’s grandnephew); comedic banter between D’Amaro and stars like Ke Huy Quan and Billy Crystal; and musical performances (Meghan Trainor, Shaboozey) replete with fire, fake fog and, of course, confetti.

More than 1.2 million people watched a segment of the presentation that was livestreamed inside the Fortnite online game. In February, Disney announced a multiyear partnership with Epic Games to create a Disney universe connected to Fortnite. D’Amaro has been working with the creative chiefs of Disney’s movie studios, including Kevin Feige of Marvel and Pete Docter of Pixar, on the project.

“A lot of people learn about our characters for the first time through Fortnite,” Feige said from the stage as part of an announcement about Disney characters (Doctor Doom, the Mandalorian, Cruella de Vil) coming to Fortnite for the first time in the weeks ahead.

Stoking the fan base and refocusing attention on the “magic” has been a renewed priority for the company as it tries to move beyond “Woke Disney” attacks by conservative politicians and pundits. Disney Experiences has in many ways been at the center of that cultural battlefield, with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Disney World locked in lawsuits (they made peace in June) and a reimagining of Splash Mountain, the popular log flume ride tied to a racist film, infuriating some Disney traditionalists.

From a business perspective, two areas of D’Amaro’s presentation stood out: cruise ships and Florida.

Disney Cruise Line, which introduced its first ship in 1998, has been an overlooked part of D’Amaro’s portfolio, in part because it is still relatively small. Although its cruise industry market share has doubled in recent years — the current Disney fleet operates at more than 90% occupancy — Disney still has only a 5% piece. As such, the company sees cruises as a crucial long-term growth business.

Part of the opportunity involves areas of the world where Disney cannot (yet) justify building a theme park, D’Amaro has said. India, for example, does not have enough consumer wealth to support a park. But it has more than enough for a Disney cruise ship, a floating mini-park that can act as a brand engine in the region.

In Florida, Disney is facing increased competition from the Universal Orlando Resort, which is pouring billions of dollars into a major expansion that includes a 750-acre fourth park and three new hotels. Disney has publicly downplayed the threat by saying that new attractions in Orlando tend to help the whole market, but the company is clearly taking it seriously: On Saturday, D’Amaro announced at least eight new Disney World rides.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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