Carnival Jubilee

Carnival Jubilee is the third Excel-class ship and the one that went to Texas. Meyer Werft laid her keel at Papenburg on March 18, 2022 as yard number 717, floated her out in July 2023 and delivered her on December 4 of that year; she sailed her maiden voyage from Galveston on December 23, and Gwen Stefani christened her there the following February. She has never been based anywhere else, and on the schedule in front of us she never will be.

That is the thing to understand about her. Mardi Gras and Carnival Celebration move around. Jubilee is a fixed asset in a single port, running a two-week alternating rotation, and the case for her is that she is the largest and newest ship most of the middle of the country can drive to.

The name is a reused one, and deliberately so. The first Jubilee was a Holiday-class ship of 1986, from the era when a 47,000-ton hull was a big Carnival ship; this one is close to four times that. Carnival has spent the last few years pulling names off its own history (Jubilee, then Festivale and Tropicale on the two Excel ships behind her), and attaching them to the largest vessels it has ever run.

What the Excel class gives you

The layout is the class layout: six named zones rather than one promenade spine. Grand Central is the atrium, three decks of it with floor-to-ceiling glass on the starboard side; Summer Landing sits aft on deck 8; the Lido and the Ultimate Playground are on top, the latter holding SportSquare, the SkyCourse ropes course, WaterWorks and BOLT, the 800-foot electric coaster that runs a track around and over the funnel, controlled by the front rider, at a surcharge and subject to weather.

Two zones are hers alone. Currents, on decks 6 and 7, is a walk-through ocean environment with an LED ceiling and lighting that changes as you pass through it; The Shores, on deck 8, is the seaside quarter, with Coastal Slice, Beach Buns and the Golden Mermaid bar. Where Celebration built her identity zone around Miami Art Deco, Jubilee built hers around the water itself.

The eating is the deep bench the class is known for: the Pacific and Atlantic dining rooms for the included meals, then Fahrenheit 555, Rudi’s Seagrill, Bonsai Teppanyaki, Cucina del Capitano, Chibang!, Guy’s Pig & Anchor, the Seafood Shack, Big Chicken and Emeril’s Bistro 717, named, like Studio 724 on the ship being built behind her, after her yard number. Free food runs from Guy’s Burger Joint and BlueIguana to Street Eats and the buffet. Loft 19 is the paid sun-deck retreat; Serenity is the free adults-only one.

She is dual-fueled on liquefied natural gas, which is the class’s whole engineering argument and the reason her hull form and machinery spaces differ from anything Carnival built before 2020. It also means she burns cleaner alongside in Galveston every Sunday and Saturday, which is a real thing for a port town.

Where she actually sails

Galveston, every week, from August 2026 through March 2028, all seventy-five departures in the window, no exceptions and no repositioning.

The rotation is two itineraries, thirty-five of each, alternating. The six-night Western Caribbean run calls at Cozumel and Isla Tropicale, which is Carnival’s port at Roatán in Honduras, renamed from Mahogany Bay. The eight-night run goes the other way, to the Bahamas: Celebration Key on Grand Bahama, Nassau, and RelaxAway at Half Moon Cay. Five seven-night sailings add Costa Maya to the Cozumel-and-Roatán pattern.

Look closely at the eight-night before booking it. Galveston to the Bahamas and back is a long way around the Gulf and through the Florida Straits, and three stops in eight nights means four or five days at sea. That is either the best part of the trip or the worst, depending entirely on whether you want the ship or the ports, and on a 5,000-guest ship with BOLT, a water park and eight paid restaurants, Carnival is betting you want the ship.

Who she suits

Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and everyone else within a day’s drive of Galveston. That catchment is the reason she exists, and it removes an airfare and a hotel night from the cost of the newest hardware Carnival has afloat. Families with teenagers get the coaster, the ropes course and the water park; groups get enough restaurants to argue about; the six-night is a genuinely good short Caribbean week with two easy stops.

She does not suit anyone who wants an itinerary. There are two of them, they repeat for eighteen months, and if you have already done Cozumel and Roatán you are booking this ship for the ship. She does not suit people who dislike crowds; 5,362 guests at double occupancy fills up the Lido on a sea day no matter how many zones the layout has, and the good tables and the BOLT slots go early. And the eight-night Bahamas run is the wrong choice for anyone who gets restless at sea; the Southern Caribbean ships out of Florida do more with the same number of nights.