Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation sees Dracula (Adam Sandler) and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) embark on a cruise to give the hotel owner a break from his stressful life.

“This time around, we are all leaving the hotel on a summer monster cruise which is a fun change,” Gomez tells PEOPLE. “The comedic situations the characters from the first two films find themselves in might be the funniest yet! My dad Drac begins dating, so in this one Mavis acts as the overprotective parent. I had a good time playing up that dynamic!”

And for Gomez, it was fun getting to revisit the character she started voicing in 2013.

“It’s great because I have grown up alongside the character who I love voicing,” she says. “I have always admired her spunk and smarts. She is sweet and confident while struggling with being her own person. I like playing a character who loves her family and being in a film that brings families together.”

Director Genndy Tartakovsky echoes Gomez’s remarks and adds that Mavis’ relationship with her dad is the “relationship that the stories are built around.”

“With each movie, she’s coming into her own and we see her relationship grow with her father in each one, because at the core of the films it’s about Dracula and Mavis,” he says. “It’s always awesome working with Selena, she brings a natural sincerity and believability in whatever she does.”

The 2013 original, Hotel Transylvania, was nominated for a Golden Globe and scored the best September opening of all time at the U.S. box office, only to have that record broken by its 2015 sequel. A TV series based on the hit franchise launched this summer on the Disney Channel.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation hits theaters July 13, 2018.