Carnival’s Oldest Cruise Vessel, the “Ecstasy” Retires After 31 Years of Service
Carnival’s cruise ship, the Carnival Ecstasy concluded its final voyage at the port of Mobile, Alabama on October 15th after 31 years of service. The plans for retiring the vessel were announced earlier in February by Carnival.
This last cruise carried out by the Ecstasy was one of the more than 2,300 cruises completed by the ship in its 31 years of service. Carnival states that the vessel has carried nearly 5.5 million passengers during its service.
The Ecstasy was built by Wartsila and launched by Carnival in the early 1990s. The vessel was the second to be built in a new class of ships and was built in response to Carnival’s competitors introducing larger cruise ships that could accommodate more than 2000 passengers.
At the time, the 70,000 gross ton vessel was one of the largest ever built but is now dwarfed by the more recent and modern 150,000 to 200,000 gross ton ships in Carnival’s fleet.
Near the end of its career, the ship was reserved for shorter cruises of 5 days or less, offering a lower-priced entry-level product. The Ecstasy will be replaced by the Carnival Spirit, which is around 10 years younger. The Carnival Spirit will take over in October 2023.
The Carnival Ecstasy will be broken up into scrap at the Aliaga Ship breaking yard in Turkey. Carnival removed four of its vessels shortly after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Three of these vessels, the Fantasy, the Imagination, and the Inspiration were sent to be scrapped in Turkey.
The fourth was sold to a Chinese operator but also went for scrap in 2022. Earlier this year, Carnival retired yet another cruise Vessel, the Carnival Sensation, which was also sold for scrap.
Passenger Ship CARNIVAL ECSTASY is currently located at USG – Gulf of Mexico at position 28° 37′ 16.9″ N, 086° 47′ 52.8″ W as reported by MarineTraffic Terrestrial Automatic Identification System on 2022-10-16 08:55 UTC (1 day, 1 hour ago)
The vessel departed from MOBILE, US on 2022-10-15 16:27 LT (UTC -5) and is currently sailing at 12.7 knots with Southeast direction heading to MIAMI, US with reported Estimated Time of Arrival at 2022-10-18 05:00 LT (UTC -5) local time (in 23 hours, 8 minutes)
CARNIVAL ECSTASY (IMO: 8711344) is a Passenger Ship that was built in 1991 (31 years ago) and is sailing under the flag of Panama.
It’s carrying capacity is 70526 Gross Tonnage and her current draught is reported to be 8.1 meters. Her length overall (LOA) is 262 meters and her width is 31.53 meters.
Sources : Marine Traffic _FleetMon
