| IMO | 9837444 |
|---|---|
| Service speed | 23.0 knots |
| Builder | Meyer Turku |
| Yard | Perno shipyard |
| Hull number | 1396 |
| Launched | 2021 |
| Maiden voyage | 2020 |
| Class | Excel-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Carnival Cruise Line |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Mardi Gras is the ship that relaunched Carnival Cruise Line's founding name — and with it, the line's modern era. She is the first of Carnival's Excel class, at 181,808 GT the largest ship in the fleet when she entered service, the first cruise ship based in North America to be powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), and the first cruise ship anywhere to carry a roller coaster, the top-deck BOLT. Her name deliberately reaches back to Carnival's very first ship, the 1972 Mardi Gras — which was itself a converted ocean liner, the former Empress of Canada of 1960. The bare mardi-gras slug in this directory belongs to this 2021 ship; the 1972 original is filed under her liner hull. Delivered in the middle of the pandemic shutdown, she waited more than seven months before she could carry her first guests.
Key specifications
The dataset row for this hull is sparse — IMO, builder, hull number, speed and status, but no tonnage, dimensions or capacity, because the roster carried none. Her own article supplies the headline figures: 181,808 GT; a maximum passenger capacity of 6,500, with about 5,282 guests at double occupancy in more than 2,600 staterooms; and approximately 2,000 crew (some line material says about 1,735–1,745). The dataset's dates need correcting against the article's chronology: she was floated out at Meyer Turku in January 2020, delivered on 18 December 2020, and — after repeated postponements of her debut during the cruise shutdown — began operating weekly passenger sailings on 31 July 2021. The dataset's "maiden voyage 2020" is her delivery year, not a passenger sailing, and its "launched 2021" is her service-entry year. Both are logged in the batch notes.
Design and construction
She was built by Meyer Turku at its Perno yard in Turku, Finland, as hull 1396, to Carnival Corporation's Excellence-class platform — the common LNG-powered design shared, with brand-specific interiors, by ships for AIDA, Costa, P&O and Carnival. The order was announced on 6 September 2016 as a memorandum of agreement for two 180,000 GT ships for Carnival, for delivery in 2020 and 2022; to make room, Meyer Turku pushed a Costa sister's delivery back a year. The defining engineering choice was fuel: four dual-fuel engines able to run entirely on LNG, making her the first LNG-powered ship to be based in North America — a pivot Carnival attributed partly to environmental-group and EU pressure to cut emissions. Her three-deck-high central atrium, with floor-to-ceiling windows and movable LED screens, is the platform's architectural signature.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The name was chosen to honour Carnival's first ship, the Mardi Gras of 1972, itself named for the New Orleans carnival — a thread the designers picked up in her French Quarter zone. She was floated out at Turku in early 2020 and taken over by Carnival in a virtual delivery ceremony on 18 December 2020, the pandemic dictating the format. Her inaugural passenger voyage was postponed repeatedly as the industry shutdown extended — an April 2021 start was announced and then abandoned — and she finally began weekly sailings on 31 July 2021 from Port Canaveral, Florida, where a new terminal had been built to handle both the Excel-class ships and the LNG bunkering operation. Her formal naming ceremony at Port Canaveral followed in autumn 2021.
Career by operator
| Years | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2021– | Mardi Gras | Carnival Cruise Line |
One name, one operator: Mardi Gras has been a Carnival Cruise Line ship from delivery, the flagship of the fleet on her debut and the template for the Excel-class expansion that followed. Her significance within the Carnival system is structural as much as commercial — she proved the LNG platform in North American operation, bunkering arrangements and all, and she set the design language (zones instead of a single promenade spine, branded speciality dining, the top-deck playground) that her sisters inherited.
Onboard character
The Excel-class design organises the ship into six themed "zones" rather than a conventional deck-by-deck layout. Two of them define her era. The French Quarter zone carries the New Orleans theme of her name, with venues associated with chef Emeril Lagasse; and the Ultimate Playground on the top decks carries BOLT, the first roller coaster at sea — self-propelled two-person cars on an 800-foot track reaching up to 40 mph — alongside a water park and sports centre. Add the line's first Big Chicken outlet from Shaquille O'Neal, Guy Fieri venues and the glass-walled central atrium, and the ship reads as Carnival's deliberate break with its own past: the fun-ship formula rebuilt at 180,000 GT around branded, zoned, headline attractions.
Major refits and incidents
Her early history is one of delay rather than incident: construction and delivery completed on schedule into a shut-down industry, followed by repeated postponement of her maiden voyage between December 2020 and July 2021. No major casualty, fire or grounding is recorded for the ship in the sources used for this guide, and as a 2021 ship she has had no major refit.
Sister ships and class
She is the lead Carnival unit of the Excellence/Excel platform. Her direct Carnival sisters are Carnival Celebration (2022) and Carnival Jubilee (2023), built to the same platform at Meyer Werft, Papenburg, and Meyer Turku respectively. Wider platform-mates wear other Carnival Corporation liveries: AIDA's AIDAnova and AIDAcosma, Costa's Costa Smeralda and Costa Toscana, and P&O's Iona and Arvia. The naming of the second Carnival ship — Celebration, after another retired Carnival name — confirmed the class's retro-naming pattern that Mardi Gras began.
Fate and where she is now
She is an active Carnival Cruise Line ship and a centrepiece of the fleet — the ship that carried the line's original name into its LNG, Excel-class era. No sale, transfer or rename has been announced; her role as the class prototype keeps her among the most significant Carnival hulls afloat.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras_(2020_ship); https://maritime-executive.com/article/carnival-cruise-line-takes-delivery-of-its-first-lng-cruise-ship