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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