Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship features DCA’s stateroom design

Currently under construction at the Meyer Turku shipyard in Turku, Finland, Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship – Mardi Gras – is set to enter service on August 31st, 2020. From October that year, she will be operating out of Port Canaveral, offering year-round seven-day Caribbean cruises.

For this, their most innovative ship, Carnival chose DCA as their design partner for the new range of stateroom cabins. Our work began with an intensive period of research on board an existing Carnival ship, observing and talking with a wide range of crew, staff and guests. The insights we gained fed directly into the detailed thinking reflected in the final stateroom designs. As Ben Clement, Carnival’s Senior Vice President of new builds comments, “DCA used a thoughtful guest-centric approach gleaned from observations of how our guests use their space in conjunction with their vast experience in product design with the goal of making the rooms as comfortable and functional as possible”.

On a recent visit to Turku to view the Mardi Gras staterooms, DCA’s Transport Sector Manager, Dom Hargreaves, was delighted to see how faithfully our design work had been translated into the production implementation. It was also fantastic to receive such positive feedback, not only from Carnival but also from the shipyard staff about the practicality of our design. As Dom says, “We’ve taken the best practices in hotel concepts and applied them to Mardi Gras to create guest-friendly staterooms designed to make guests feel at home. It’s been an incredible experience to work with Carnival to enrich the stateroom experience by focusing on the small details, creating moments of delight for Mardi Gras guests”.