Mardi Gras
Carnival Cruise Line · Cruise · In service · built by Meyer Turku
Mardi Gras opened the Excel class in 2020 at 181,808 GT, Carnival's first LNG-powered ship, and deliberately named without the Carnival prefix after the line's original 1972 vessel.
Derived metrics
Computed by ships.fyi from the core specification, see how we calculate these.
How big is it, really?
The Mardi Gras's length overall, against things you already know the size of.
The 747-8 held the longest-airliner record for over a decade, until Boeing's 777-9 took it by about 19 inches (76.72 m), our sibling site aircraft.fyi measures everything that flies the same way.
One Mardi Gras = 1.28 Titanics · 3.3 football pitches · 14 blue whales · 4.5 Boeing 747-8s laid end to end.
Plan a sailing on Mardi Gras
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The numbers
| Length overall | 344.5 m |
|---|---|
| Beam | 42 m |
| Height | 69.3 m |
| Gross tonnage | 181,808 GT |
| Passengers | 5,282 (double) / 6,500 (max) |
| Crew | ≈2,000 |
| Decks | 19 |
| Propulsion | LNG dual-fuel, 2 × 18.5 MW azimuth drives |
| Maiden voyage | 31 July 2021 |
Put the Mardi Gras next to something
Last verified: 2026-07-15 · Spot an error? business@luck.fyi
What makes it different
Mardi Gras is the ship that reset what a Carnival ship is. Before her the fleet's largest was Carnival Panorama at 133,500 gross tons; she arrived at 181,808 GT, roughly 40 per cent larger, and brought LNG propulsion, a zoned layout and a top-deck roller coaster with her.
BOLT is the detail everyone remembers: an 800-foot electric coaster track running around the funnel, the first roller coaster fitted to a ship, with riders controlling their own speed. It reads as a gimmick and largely is one, but it did something useful for Carnival, it gave a mass-market brand a genuinely unmistakable silhouette.
Her introduction was badly disrupted. Delivered from Meyer Turku in December 2020 into a shut-down industry, she sat for over seven months before finally sailing from Port Canaveral on 31 July 2021, one of the first US-based ships back in service. She carries no Carnival prefix, a deliberate reference to the line's original 1972 Mardi Gras, a converted transatlantic liner of 27,200 tons that started the whole company.
The Mardi Gras line
Excel class
The name
Who operates the Mardi Gras
All 1 operator of record, verified 2026-07-15. Figures marked ≈ are approximate.
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