Mardi Gras: Sanitation Record & Health Report

Let's get one thing out of the way: a 98 on the latest CDC inspection is not "pretty good for a mega-ship," it's the kind of score that makes other Excel-class captains check their own paperwork twice. Mardi Gras jumped from a 92 in August 2025 to a 98 in April 2026, and that's exactly the trajectory you want to see — not a fluke high score sandwiched between disasters, but a ship visibly tightening up. Against the fleet-wide latest-score average of 96.7 (median 98) across the 162 ships we track, Mardi Gras isn't just clearing the passing bar of 86, it's sitting right at the top of the pack. For a ship carrying 5,282 guests and a 1,735-person crew — one of the largest hull-and-crew combos sailing out of Port Canaveral — keeping the galleys and pool decks that clean is a genuinely impressive logistical feat, not a rounding error.

That said, we're working with a thin file here: only two inspections on record, so "improving" is a real trend but not yet a long track record. And we can't speak to outbreak history at all right now — CDC's outbreak data is currently unreachable, so treat that as an open question mark rather than a clean bill of health. Nobody's hiding anything; the data pipe is just down. Worth checking back on before you book if that specific stat matters to you.

Who it's for: first-time cruisers and families who want the biggest, shiniest toy in the Carnival fleet (18 decks, brand-new as of 2020, fresh off a 2025 refurb) without gambling on cleanliness — the inspection scores back up the shine. Who should skip it: inspection-history purists who want a decade of data before they trust a number, and anyone who specifically needs outbreak transparency to book with confidence — right now, that answer is simply "we don't know yet."