Disney Cruise Line Adds Alaska to Its Back-to-School Giving for the First Time

By entgrove · August 25, 2026

Disney Cruise Line crews packed classroom supplies for Brevard County teachers, expanded school support in The Bahamas and, for the first time, ran a back-to-school visit in Alaska. Among the Florida volunteers was Turquoise, a University of The Bahamas music education student in the first cohort his university has sent to the Disney Programs cultural exchange.

Disney Cruise Line took its back-to-school volunteering to Alaska for the first time this year, adding Juneau to the Florida and Bahamas school drives its crews have run for over a decade. In Brevard County, the crew packing classroom supplies included a music education student from the University of The Bahamas who was in Florida on the first Disney Programs cultural exchange group his university has ever sent.

A cultural exchange first for the University of The Bahamas

Disney Programs has run cultural exchange placements for years, but this is the first time students from the University of The Bahamas have been part of one. The group worked in a range of roles across Disney's theme parks, resorts and water parks. Disney Cruise Line has a long relationship with the university, which it uses to feed hospitality and leadership training into the islands the ships call at.

Turquoise, a music education student, came to Walt Disney World Resort with 11 other Bahamian students and worked as a Quick Service Food and Beverage cast member. He spent part of the summer at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon Water Park, and he draws a direct line from that job to the classroom he expects to run one day.

"I never imagined I would work at Disney while studying education, but my Disney Program has shown me how much those lessons connect to the classroom. Inclusion, safety and creating meaningful experiences matter just as much for students as they do for guests." (Turquoise)

Packing classroom supplies with the Disney Wish crew

During the program Turquoise joined Disney Wish crew members volunteering at Supply Zone for Teachers in Brevard County, where the group prepared thousands of classroom supplies before the new school year started. He says he found teaching through volunteering rather than the other way round.

"My first passion was music, but I fell in love with teaching through volunteering," Turquoise said. "One of the moments that stayed with me was receiving an appreciation letter from a student I had the opportunity to teach. It reminded me how meaningful it can be to make a difference for a child." He also described the shortage the program exists to cover: "In many places, teachers do not always have access to the books and supplies they need. As a future educator, it means a lot to know programs like this exist to help teachers create classrooms where students feel successful."

Supply Zone for Teachers, an annual stop since 2012

The Brevard County connection is not a one-off. Disney Cruise Line has taken part in Supply Zone for Teachers every year since 2012, through both donations and crew volunteer events. The Brevard Schools Foundation runs it as a nonprofit resource centre that gives out free school supplies across the county. That is the county containing Port Canaveral, the home port the fleet has sailed from since the Disney Magic's first voyage in 1998, so these are the schools in the community the ships tie up in.

"Our Disney Cruise Line VoluntEARS always arrive ready to jump in wherever they're needed, and it's amazing to see what they accomplish during the limited time they have in port. Their teamwork, positive energy, and willingness to serve make a tremendous difference and our team truly looks forward to each opportunity to work alongside them." (Nina Moser, director of development, Brevard Schools Foundation)

The limited time in port that Moser mentions is the practical constraint on all of this. A turnaround day is measured in hours, so a crew volunteer shift has to be something a group can finish in one sitting, which is why the work tends to be high-volume assembly rather than a long-term project.

One of the volunteers was Becky, a Youth Activities crew member, the team that staffs the youth clubs families use on every sailing. It was her first time out as a Disney Cruise Line VoluntEAR, and she is a teacher at home.

What the VoluntEARS did in Florida, The Bahamas and Alaska

The back-to-school work went well beyond one supply drive. In Florida, crew members also assembled food packages with the Children's Hunger Project in Brevard County and set up learning spaces for educators at the Jack & Jill Center in Broward County. They ran STEAM programming, community events and conservation learning sessions with partners including Brevard Zoo and the Cocoa Boys and Girls Club.

In The Bahamas, Disney Cruise Line has been supplying textbooks and school supplies to students in Nassau, Abaco and Eleuthera since 2023. This year that grew through The Play Project, which built and refurbished safe play spaces, ran school beautification work and held kitting events with nonprofits including The Buddy Hield Foundation, love.futbol and Good Sports. Bahamian schools are a natural fit for the line, which now runs two island destinations there, Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point.

Alaska is the new entry. Crew VoluntEARS from the Disney Wonder, which spends its summers on Alaska itineraries, visited Harborview Elementary in Juneau with the Southeast Alaska Food Bank. They donated boot and glove dryers, which is a school supply that only makes sense that far north, along with hundreds of activity bags of learning books and games, and pre-packaged snacks for every student at the school. Captain Mickey Mouse and Captain Minnie Mouse turned up as well.

Alaska is the new stop, and the list follows the ships

The concrete change this year is Juneau joining Florida and The Bahamas on the back-to-school map, on the back of the Disney Wonder's summer Alaska season. Disney says that as the fleet grows, it wants to grow the same work in the port communities the ships call home, which means the list of school districts in a story like this one should track wherever Disney Cruise Line starts homeporting next.