Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is the first of Carnival’s Excel-class ships and the first cruise ship in North America to burn liquefied natural gas. She takes her name from Carnival’s original vessel, the 1972 Mardi Gras, which is a piece of corporate sentiment rather than a piece of naval architecture; nothing about this ship descends from that one. Meyer Turku laid her keel in June 2019, floated her out in January 2020, and delivered her that December. She then sat for seven months while the industry was shut down, and did not carry a paying passenger until July 31, 2021.

What the Excel class means

Excel is a platform, not a Carnival design. Meyer builds the same basic hull for AIDA as AIDAnova and AIDAcosma, for Costa as Smeralda and Toscana, and for P&O as Iona and Arvia. All of them run on LNG and all of them come in around 180,000 to 186,000 gross tons. Carnival’s three are Mardi Gras, Carnival Celebration and Carnival Jubilee.

For a passenger the class means three things. First, scale: 5,270 guests at double occupancy and 2,641 cabins, which is roughly the population of a small town spread over eighteen decks. Second, the zone structure; the ship is divided into six named districts rather than laid out as one long promenade, and you navigate by district. Third, the gas. LNG cuts the particulates and the sulfur to near nothing and the engines are notably quiet, which you mostly notice as an absence: less vibration aft, and no diesel smell on the open decks.

Worth being straight about the ranking. Mardi Gras is the oldest and the smallest of Carnival’s three Excel ships (180,800 tons against 183,521 for Celebration and Jubilee), and with Carnival Festivale arriving in 2027 and Carnival Tropicale in 2028 she moves further down the list. She is the prototype, not the flagship.

What is genuinely hers

Grand Central. The atrium is not in the middle of the ship. It is set into the starboard side across three decks behind about 3,000 square feet of glass, so the room people pass through twenty times a day looks at the ocean instead of at a chandelier. Mardi Gras was the first ship built this way, and her sisters copied the idea with different names and different views.

BOLT. Two people in a car on 800 feet of Maurer track, running along the funnel deck 187 feet above the water at up to 40 mph. It was the first roller coaster ever installed on a ship, in July 2021. It is no longer unique, every Excel ship has one, but this is the one that proved it worked. You pay extra and you queue.

Emeril’s Bistro 1396. Emeril Lagasse’s first restaurant at sea, in the French Quarter zone, doing barbecue shrimp, muffulettas and oyster po’boys. The 1396 is her yard number at Meyer Turku, so the name belongs to this hull and cannot travel.

The zones. Grand Central, French Quarter, La Piazza, Summer Landing, Lido and The Ultimate Playground. The French Quarter has The Brass Magnolia for jazz; La Piazza has Cucina del Capitano, Bar della Rosa and a twenty-four-hour Pizzeria del Capitano; Summer Landing is the smokehouse and brewhouse end of the ship. The rest of the dining is the current Carnival lineup at full length: Chibang!, Street Eats, Rudi’s Seagrill, Bonsai Teppanyaki, Big Chicken, Seafood Shack, Fahrenheit 555.

Where she actually sails

Port Canaveral, and nowhere else for the length of the schedule. Through the spring of 2027 she runs week-long Caribbean itineraries. From May 22, 2027 she switches to four- and five-day cruises (the five-day calling at Celebration Key, RelaxAway at Half Moon Cay and Nassau, the four-day dropping Nassau), and becomes the first Excel-class ship Carnival has ever put on short sailings. Carnival’s own line about it is that she will be the largest ship ever to sail short cruises, and that is very likely true.

Who she suits

Families and groups who want the ship to be the destination. On a four- or five-night Bahamas run there is no chance of exhausting her, and the itinerary is barely relevant, two beach days and a lot of hardware.

She does not suit anyone who wants a quiet week. Five thousand two hundred and seventy people at double occupancy means well over six thousand aboard when the third and fourth berths fill, which on a school holiday they do. Nor does she suit people who resent paying twice: the coaster, the good restaurants and the Loft 19 sun deck are all extra, and the free ship underneath them is a normal Carnival ship. And if what you want is the newest and biggest Excel hull, that has not been this one since 2022.