Most of the European River cruises market toward the non-children crowd. The new Disney river cruises are the one exception. I think it's still somewhat in the experimental stage, but it's offered I believe through Adventures By Disney, and is indeed geared a bit more toward families.
Viking and the rest actively dissuade people with children from signing up. There are probably many reasons for this, but tops among them would likely be the fact that it's hard to escape the kids on a long, low, thin boat. On big cruise ships, adult only areas are easy to find, and easy to maintain as kid-free. Plus, it's hard to find things for kids to do on a long, low, thin boat. No big splash areas, or Oceaneer Clubs unless the boat is specifically designed accordingly.
We've done three ADB's and they're great. But definitely not cheap. To be honest, I think they are a miniscule part of the company. Assume 30 guests per Adventure. Then assume that adventure goes for 25 weeks/trips out of the year. Then assume that there are 20 adventures offered. That's only 15,000 guests per year, which is a really mediocre day at Magic Kingdom. Even if Disney "profits" $1,000 per ABD guest, that's only $15,000,000 of yearly profit. Sounds okay, but imagine one inattentive guest stepping off a curb in London and getting run over by a double-decker bus. Even with insurance, your profits just dropped dramatically. And even with great safety precautions, one guest out of 15,000 getting seriously hurt is a very real possibility. Believe me, there's serious stress in guiding 30 or so people around world venues, especially in busy foreign countries. Even trying to cross a street with that many people can be a nerve-wracking task. Our guides in St. Petersburg Russia did this on a busy street with questionable traffic laws, and it was not relaxing.
Anyhow, ABD is fun, but it barely warrants a mention in the Annual Report once movies, ESPN, ABC, the parks, the Cruise Line, ILM, Pixar, DVC and all the other divisions are included. It's a great supplement to the idea of vacationing, but it impacts so few people that it's a very minor part of the company. By the way, the adventure guides are usually not even full-time with ABD. Instead, they're often park employees on a break from their normal job, or even private contractors who are not "employed" through Disney during the rest of the year.
