In celebration of this 100 ship milestone, all passengers sailing on Carnival Corp ships have the opportunity for a champagne toast on Friday night. That could potentially mean over 277,000 passengers! Pretty impressive.

Carnival released a pretty cool composite photo of CARNIVAL MAGIC alongside their first ship, MARDI GRAS. Looking at the photo, I know which ship I would prefer to sail on. How about you?

Ernie

Yes there is the promenade deck but I can't help but think deck space on these ships is very, very limited, especially if you want to be by a pool which there are only two. I think I'll pass on sailing CARNIVAL MAGIC.

The good news is that Carnival officially announced that CARNIVAL BREEZE will be the very last of this class of ship (which basically dates back to CARNIVAL DESTINY in 1996!). The next Carnival newbuild will be a completely from scratch, new design. I have to wonder if that means it will be a modified version of the Princess newbuild or something totally different. In either case it will be a much needed change in ship design for Carnival Cruise Lines. It will also be the first ship for Carnival designed from scratch under the new Carnival leadership, so it will be interesting to see what changes and innovations will be in store under this new breed of leadership.

I do think that the CARNIVAL DREAM/MAGIC/BREEZE look a lot better than previous Destiny-class derivatives, but I do agree that there seems to be only very limited open deck space. Not my kind of ship!

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Originally posted by rd77:
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I guess Carnival can't build any more sisters of these ships after the BREEZE due to the new SOLAS Safe Return to Port regulations. If it weren't for those rules, I guess Carnival would have just carried on, building even more Destiny-class derivatives.

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Originally posted by GregD:

could you elaborate on the regulation. I would assume that all new ships were up to class and not have to be grandfathered in.

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Attached below is a link for more information on SOLAS 'Safe Return to Port'.

No, ships were not grandfathered in. I believe as long as the ship was ordered prior to July 2010 it was exempt from the new requirements.

I believe designs like the Grand Class, Vista Class, and Destiny Class would require significant and expensive design modifications to meet the new standards, which is why we are finally seeing some new designs from Carnival Corp.

My understanding is the Oasis Class, the Solstice Class, and the DISNEY DREAM already meet the standard even though they were ordered prior to July 2010.

Many have also speculated that if CARNIVAL SPLENDOR met this standard, the outcome would have been different. More redundant systems allowing the ship to return to port on it's own power. The goal of this new standard is that the ship itself is the safest environment in most incidents, and to avoid having to evacuate the ship to the smaller life craft. Usually in that situation there may be loss or life or multiple injuries during the evacuation process, plus the small boats are much more exposed to the elements.

Ernie

Safe Return to Port

[ 04-28-2011: Message edited by: eroller ]

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Originally posted by Grant:
Ernie-thanks for the link, very interesting reading. Very technical as well, with much of it above my head! I'd rather sail on Mardi Gras, and wish I had. I did manage a ship visit while in Nassau, using my Festival boarding card. That was some time back!
Grant

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Wasn't that nice when you could just flash that little green piece of paper that Carnival called a boarding pass and basically walk on any Carnival ship. I don't think anyone ever checked the date or the ship. In fact even when I sailed on other lines like NCL or Princess, I still carried that Carnival green boarding pass with me from a previous cruise so I could board any Carnival ship we were in port with. Worked like a charm every time. Well we all know those days are long over.

Carnival was one of the last hold outs with that paper boarding pass.

Once, while on QE2 in Bermuda, my wife and I took the tender to Hamilton and walked right on board Cunard Princess...we just flashed our QE2 pass, with the big Cunard logo, and were welcomed on with smiles. We walked around, had lunch, sat by the pool...pretty much spent about two hours on board. Her interiors: dog ugly!

Another time, when I was Oceanic in Nassau, I got on Atlantic in much the same way......

Too bad that's all changed.

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Originally posted by GregD:
Random question here: Is the the Magic using the new 300pax lifeboats. I noticed the dream has more lifeboats, but in the pic above I assume she is on seatrials.

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The lifeboat arrangement on CARNIVAL MAGIC was modified to incorporate larger lifeboats, but I don't think they are as large as those on the Oasis Class. Perhaps the size of the boats on NORWEGIAN EPIC. On OASIS and ALLURE each boat holds 370 persons.