Carnival Cruise Line and Canaveral Port Authority have reached an agreement on a new state-of-the-art cruise terminal able to accommodate the new 180,000GT ship of the cruise line, the largest ever built for Carnival, due to debut in 2020.
The agreement's terms are due to be included on the agenda of Canaveral Port Authority Board of Commissioners’ meeting on August 29, 2018. If approved, the new agreement will clear the way for Carnival’s plans to homeport the still unnamed 5,286-lower berth cruise ship at Port Canaveral, further bolstering the position of the line as Port’s number one cruise ship operator.
The vessel will feature an array of never-before-seen amenities and attractions while also being the first cruise ship based in North America to be powered by LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas), part of Carnival Corporation’s design platform for “green cruising”.
Building of the 180,000GT cruise ship is scheduled to start in November 2018 with official steel-cutting ceremony at Meyer-Werft shipyard in Turku. Further details, along with itineraries out of Port Canaveral, are due to be announced next year.
The decision to base the newbuild on the Space Coast reaffirms a decades-long relationship and also reinforces Carnival’s position as number one cruise operator in Port Canaveral. The cruise line currently has 3 year-round vessels based in Port Canaveral that carry upwards of 650,000 guests per year. In October 2018, Carnival will also reposition Carnival Breeze to homeport at Canaveral.