Carnival’s new Bahamian destination Celebration Key opened on July 19, 2025 with Carnival Vista making the inaugural call on Grand Bahama. Within days, traffic ramped up: the first two-ship day on July 22 (Glory + Conquest) brought over 7,000 guests, and on July 25 the Mardi Gras tied up alongside Carnival Pride, delivering 9,000 guests in a single day. Momentum was the point: Carnival says the pier opened with capacity for two large ships at once, with an extension already underway.
By the close of the opening phase, Carnival’s own planning guidance had 15 ships slated to rotate through the destination from eight homeports, tallying more than 80 visits through Labor Day weekend. In other words: a full calendar from Day 1.
August wasn’t a lull; it was the ramp-up.
In the first full month after opening, Carnival Venezia made its inaugural call on August 2, Carnival Magic built the cadence with Celebration Key scheduled as Day 2 on its Aug 17 sailing (arriving the next morning), and Carnival Paradise called on August 30—a neat early-mid-late pattern that signaled the port was moving from launch to routine operations.
That rhythm set up a packed September. The published port schedule shows near-daily calls—often two ships a day—with marquee visits from Carnival Celebration, Vista, Sunrise, Glory, Liberty, Freedom, Pride, Venezia, Mardi Gras, Horizon, Dream and more, typically in the 7:00–18:00/8:00–17:00 windows. In short: by the end of summer, Celebration Key was behaving like a high-traffic Bahamian stop, not a novelty.
The September 2025 port schedule listed 51 ship calls at Celebration Key, drawn from at least 15 different Carnival vessels—including Mardi Gras, Carnival Celebration, Vista, Horizon, Dream, Glory, Freedom, Sunrise, Liberty, Pride, Venezia, Elation, Paradise, Magic, and Sunshine. Calls were spread across practically every day of the month, often two ships per day, with times generally in the 08:00–17:00 or 11:00–19:00 bands depending on itinerary, according to Cruise Mapper which also factors in potential changes due to unsavory weather conditions.
With a touted target of welcoming 2 million visitors annually, Carnival Cruise Line’s Celebration Key is already behaving like a high-traffic Bahamian port—multiple calls per day, marquee ships in the mix, and headline days pushing 7,000–9,000 guests.
We’ll keep watching for Carnival’s official Q3 visitor count once the company publishes it, but September’s schedule alone shows a destination running near full clip.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
