Carnival Festivale

Carnival Festivale does not exist yet. She is a hull in a covered building dock at Meyer Werft in Papenburg, on the Ems, where the first steel was cut on April 8, 2025 and the keel was laid on August 14 the same year. Delivery is set for spring 2027, and she is booked from Port Canaveral from May 19, 2027. Everything below is what has been announced and what the schedule already says; nobody has sailed on her.

She is the fourth ship of the Excel class, after Mardi Gras, Carnival Celebration and Carnival Jubilee, and the fourth Carnival ship designed to burn liquefied natural gas as her primary fuel. About 180,000 gross tons, 344 meters long, and rated for up to 6,400 guests at full occupancy. The class is a known quantity by now (six named zones instead of one promenade, an enormous Lido, a spread of paid restaurants) which makes the two places she departs from it the interesting part.

The coaster is gone

Every Excel ship so far has had BOLT, the electric coaster that runs a track around the funnel. Festivale does not. In its place is Sunsation Point, an outdoor zone spanning the top three decks and built around Carnival WaterWorks Ultra: six slides, including a pair of dueling racers, a double-slide and a twister sized for small children, two splash pads and a baby splash area, a sports court and a ropes course. She will also be the first Carnival ship to run the water park after dark on selected evenings, with lighting and a DJ.

That is a deliberate reallocation. BOLT carries two people at a time for a surcharge; a water park carries a queue of families for nothing. The rest of the ship points the same way. Festivale is being built with close to a thousand interconnecting staterooms, about 70 percent more than her sisters carry, and with dedicated space for Carnival’s Turtles program for the youngest children. This is the Excel class tuned for the family market rather than for the thrill-ride photograph.

Studio 724 and The Festival

The two new zones are both about music. Studio 724 takes its name from her Meyer Werft yard number, S.724, and occupies two decks; Carnival describes it as a celebration of the music-making process, with lighting and animation that respond in real time to the sound in the room. The Festival is the other, built to feel like an outdoor music festival, a stage, standing room, and the noise that goes with it. Grand Central, the Lido, Summer Landing and the Ultimate Playground carry over from the earlier ships.

The name

Festivale is a revival. The original was built in 1961 as the Union-Castle liner Transvaal Castle, ran the England–South Africa mail route, and was bought by Carnival in 1977 and rebuilt as a cruise ship. She entered service as Festivale in 1978 and sailed for the line until 1996, in the years when Carnival was inventing the mass-market Caribbean cruise out of secondhand ocean liners. Her 2028 sister will be Tropicale, after the 1982 ship that was the first vessel Carnival ever ordered new. The naming is a company writing its own history onto its newest steel.

Where she actually sails

Port Canaveral, and nowhere else. All fifty-one departures in the booking window (May 19, 2027 through April 29, 2028) leave from and return to Port Canaveral, and there is no repositioning season inside the schedule.

Two itineraries carry almost all of it. Twenty-three six-night Caribbean sailings run to Celebration Key, Carnival’s Grand Bahama beach, plus Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic and RelaxAway at Half Moon Cay. Twenty-five eight-night sailings go deeper: Amber Cove and Celebration Key again, then San Juan, St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and on the longest rotations Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. The season opens with one four-night Bahamas run, Celebration Key and RelaxAway, on May 19, and there is a single five-night and a single seven-night in the mix.

Celebration Key is on the schedule of all fifty-one sailings. If you sail this ship in her first year you are going to that beach, whichever week you pick.

Who she suits

Families, and specifically families that need more than one cabin. The interconnecting count is the single most useful thing about her, and the reason to book her over an identical-looking sister. Anyone within driving distance of Central Florida gets a brand-new ship without an airfare, and the six-night Caribbean run is a comfortable first cruise: two of the three stops are Carnival’s own beaches, where the ship is the only ship in port.

She does not suit anyone chasing BOLT, that is the one Excel feature she was built without, and if the coaster is the reason you wanted this class, Celebration and Jubilee still have it. She is a poor fit for adults looking for a quiet week: a 5,000-plus-guest ship whose defining new feature is a six-slide water park with evening hours is going to be loud, and the Southern Caribbean eight-nighters are the only itineraries here with real sea days. And she is an unbuilt ship, which is its own risk. Delivery dates move, inaugural seasons get trimmed, and the first months of any new hull are the months when the crew are still learning her. Book the second season if you want the ship working properly.