Key Aspects:
- Mardi Gras emerged from a one-month dry dock at Chantier Naval de Marseille in France on October 16, 2025.
- One hundred staterooms were modified with new connecting doors to provide more offerings for families and groups.
- Renovations also included accessibility improvements, retail refurbishments, and a casino expansion.
It’s party time once again on Carnival Cruise Line’s Mardi Gras, which is back at sea following a month-long dry dock at Chantier Naval de Marseille in France.
The first in the cruise line’s Excel class received a host of upgrades and enhancements across its public spaces, staterooms, and onboard facilities and departed on October 16, 2025, on a 15-day transatlantic cruise back to Port Canaveral, Florida.
The repositioning cruise includes stops in Málaga and Cádiz, Spain; a visit to Carnival Cruise Line’s private destination, Celebration Key, in the Bahamas, and a call in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where she made a maiden call en route to dry dock on September 22, 2025.
After concluding her repositioning on October 30 in Port Canaveral, Mardi Gras will resume year-round Caribbean sailings, with more room for groups and modern updates.
“Mardi Gras was a game-changer when she debuted as our first Excel-class ship, and now she’s setting the pace again as the first in her class to complete a dry dock,” said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.
Duffy said the updates to the ship that debuted in 2021 not only enhance the onboard experience for passengers but “signal the exciting direction we’re heading in with future fleet enhancements,” teasing that more is to come.
The 180,800-gross-ton vessel’s dry dock focused heavily on accessibility, modernization, and group travel. In fact, 100 staterooms were modified with connecting doors to better accommodate multi-generational families and larger parties.
Public walkways and guest areas were also redesigned with improved accessibility, while guest cabins received upgraded features.
The ship’s casino was also expanded with new slot machines, while retail spaces were updated with refreshed interiors, including Tag Heur, Breitling, Pandora, and Swarovski.
Expanded casino aboard Mardi Gras. (Photo Credit: Carnival Cruise Line)
Even the Carnival Adventures deck has a new layout and look to help make shore excursions more streamlined for Mardi Gras’ 5,270 passengers (at double capacity).
But Carnival Cruise Line said the dry dock was less about reinvention and more on refinement, bringing Mardi Gras in line with evolving fleet standards and matching the look and feel of the company’s more modern vessels.
Modernized and Ready to Sail
Once Mardi Gras returns to homeport in Florida, she will relaunch with a 9-night Eastern Caribbean cruise to the US Virgin Islands, St. Maarten, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Celebration Key from October 30 to November 8, 2025.
After which, the vessel will resume 7-night roundtrip voyages with a choice of Eastern or Western Caribbean itineraries.
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Eastern routes will take guests to Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos, Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic, and Nassau, Bahamas, while western journeys will sail to Roatan, Honduras, and Cozumel, Mexico. Both options will include a full day at Celebration Key.
Carnival Cruise Line is continuing to modernize its fleet. Mardi Gras’ dry dock followed Carnival Liberty’s recent dry dock, which was extended when strikes at the Spain facility forced the vessel to relocate to France to complete.
Carnival Conquest, which was originally scheduled to dry dock before Mardi Gras, will be the next ship heading to dry dock in February 2026.
Appeared first on: Cruisehive.com
