The Society of Explorers and Adventurers is showing up at D23 this year, and honestly? I did not have “mysterious unopened crate” on my 2026 Disney bingo card, but here we are.
If you’re new to S.E.A. (no judgment, we all start somewhere), here’s your crash course: it’s the in-universe organization behind a lot of your favorite Disney attractions (think Tower of Terror, Mystic Manor, Jungle Cruise) a fictional group of explorers, scientists, and inventors dating back to the 1500s, all devoted to chasing down the world’s great unsolved mysteries. Basically Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones had a whole club and a really good archivist.
And speaking of the archivist — this is where it gets good! For the past three months, someone on the Society’s team has been going through old S.E.A. artifacts, and they pulled a crate out of storage that hasn’t been opened in over a century. Nobody (not Imagineering, not the Society itself) knows what’s inside. Which is either the most exciting reveal of D23 or a very elaborate way to make me lose sleep; I haven’t decided yet.
That mystery crate is headed straight to D23, where it’ll be part of the panel “An Inside Look at the Society of Explorers and Adventurers” on August 14th. If you’re at the show, that’s your window to find out what’s inside before anyone else does.
Can’t make it to Anaheim? You’re not totally out of luck — Imagineering says they’ll be posting updates on the Walt Disney Imagineering Instagram as things happen, so that’s the move if you’re following along from home (me, I’ll be refreshing my feed like it’s a part-time job).
So: unopened crate, century-old mystery, a Society of fictional explorers who are somehow more organized than I am on a Monday. D23 just keeps delivering! What do you think is in the crate? I need theories, and I need them now.
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