Splendor in Sydney, Australia
Carnival Splendor is a unique ship in the Carnival fleet. It started construction intended for Costa, as one of the Concordia class, but before construction was complete it was switched to Carnival and completed with features such as Carnival’s distinctive whale-tail funnel. It has just over 1500 staterooms and holds over 3000 passengers. It was briefly the largest ship in Carnival’s fleet when first completed in 2008, but Carnival Dream with a maximum capacity of over 4000 passengers soon took over that distinction in 2009. The current biggest ship in Carnival’s fleet is the Jubilee which carries over 6000 passengers and entered service in 2023.
stairway art
Carnival Splendor used to be part of the main Carnival fleet from the USA, operating in various different areas. We once took a Caribbean cruise on the Splendor out of Puerto Rico. The Splendor started sailing for Carnival Australia in 2019, after having first gone under some renovations including the addition of waterslides and a waterpark. It last had renovations in 2024, which included Carnival’s new blue hull paint design. Carnival ships used to be all white with a bit of red and blue trim. Inside the ship still has its distinctive pink dots (and donuts) as a major part of its décor, which are unique to just this ship and came from the initial plans for being a Costa ship.
view from the stairway to the waterslides while docked in Noumea
The ship has 13 passenger decks, but ships rarely claim to have a deck 13 so the highest one is dubbed deck 14 and is just outside space at the front of the ship with the mini golf and a walkway with stairs up to the waterslides. There are 5 decks with just cabins, 3 that are all public space and 3 with cabins near the front and public space on the rest of the deck, of which a lot of that is outside. The mini golf never had enough balls for all of the people who wanted to play, and may not have had any by the end of the cruise since it was down from around 6 or 7 the first time we played it to only 2 the second. There were also no beanbags in the big bin marked beanbags next to a rack of cornhole games and a big space to set them out by the last hole of the golf course and no balls in the foosball games in the Red Frog Pub.
Alchemy Bar
Public spaces included a variety of lounges and eateries, the atrium, some bars, a casino, and outside spaces. The promenade deck did not go all the way around the ship so the best space for walking or running was around deck 11, but only early in the morning before it got crowded. There was a tiny top deck track of less than 200 meters so pretty much useless like all of the top deck tracks on cruise ships. It did have a nice gym with a lot of treadmills though. The thermal suite at the spa was pretty good, but not as good as the one on Carnival Luminosa.
JavaBlue coffee bar
One long hallway on deck 5 had both a coffee bar and a juice bar that also sold coffee. Those both had long lines some mornings. The casino was on that deck as well as the piano bar, the alchemy bar, and the El Morrocco lounge at the back where a lot of games and activities were held.
duck depot – a duck every time
Deck 5 also had some of the shops and a very large arcade with its most popular machine – the duck depot where anyone who didn’t come prepared with ducks to hide could always get some.
dining room ceiling decor
Free food was available in the dining room or buffet. The ship has 2 dining rooms, the gold pearl and the black pearl. Ceiling decor that is supposed to be oysters with pearls looks more like fried eggs in the gold pearl and eyes in the black pearl. Some people see it as boobs, but nobody looks up there and thinks oysters.
naked toilet man – still in the elevator
Years ago when we first sailed on the Splendor we found a quite unique picture in an elevator, which we considered inappropriate yet entertaining elevator art and dubbed Naked Toilet Man. This is a mosaic style painting where the naked man on a toilet is most noticeable if you are standing in the elevator bay when the door opens to an empty elevator. Before the cruise we asked some Aussies we know who had recently sailed on the ship if it was still there and they said it was so we went looking for it and found it. I won’t say which elevator it is in so anyone else sailing on the ship can go on the hunt for it and have the reward of finding it for themselves.
cabin 1114
We had a spa balcony cabin on deck 11 where there is just a small row of cabins on each side of the ship. These are conveniently located steps away from the spa and gym, and with a door right out into the waterpark at the end of the hall. It’s also not far from that door to cut through the waterpark and take a stairway down to the Lido pool area, beyond which lies the buffet. If you take elevators really anything is pretty easy to get to, but we mostly took stairs so if you’re on the lower decks it’s a lot of flights to get back up to deck 11.
looking down on the atrium from many decks above
The best thing about sailing out of Australia on any cruise ship is that Australia does not allow any indoor smoking so no matter what cruise line you sail with the interior of the ship remains smoke-free. If only all of the other countries would follow suit – or at least keep it contained in a fully enclosed room where it wouldn’t spread throughout the ship like Princess used to. There are also no daily gratuities charged to passenger accounts when sailing from Australia because the full price is included in the cruise fare, another thing that would be nice if it was done everywhere. The Splendor currently sails from Sydney, but the cruises aren’t all repeats of one another. The one we took went to New Caledonia and Vanuatu, but the next sailing went to New Zealand.
Lido deck and waterslides at night
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