From Adolfo's Desk Live: Meet John Heald, Brand Ambassador for Carnival

What did you think of the ship, Adalo? I think she's beautiful. Obviously reminds me of Venezia but has its own flare, obviously focused on Florence versus Venice. And then we have all the great stuff that we put on the Venezia, like the G Burger, the Il Viaggio, the Frante, all these great places that we've added to the ship to make it truly Carnival Fun Italian Style. But still the heart and soul of Carnival is on board, our crew members, team members on board, all Carnival people. And your guests would really enjoy trying something different, trying something new.

No you didn't.

You did? Yeah. Did it remind you of the original Mardi Gras?

So you know, we had a sales meeting on the Queen Mary, God I don't even remember how many years, probably over 20 years ago. And we stayed on board and it didn't feel haunted. It did remind me seriously, it did remind me a bit of the Mardi Gras, the original, yeah. Very much, yeah.

To say we have four ships in California now, so we have the Firenze, the Radiance, the Panorama, and then we have the Miracle. Is it Miracle now? I'm forgetting which one it was.

The one I said three seconds ago. So yeah, paying very close attention to everything I say. I'm having some brain farts today.

[Video plays] You may know Carnival Firenze is really the culmination, at least for the moment, of a very rapid period of growth that we've had over the past 18 months. Carnival Cruise Line has brought five new ships into the fleet, double-digit capacity increase overall in our fleet with beautiful, beautiful, beautiful ships for our great guests. And we carry more guests from California than any other cruise line. And with this ship, we're going to carry even more. And you know why? Because demand for Carnival cruises from Long Beach continues to grow. And that's why we're here. So in 2025, with this ship year-round, we'll offer more than 200 sailings and carry more than 750,000 guests. We're very honored to welcome Father Shabel Grabovac here. He is, thank you. Oh, my good friend, our Carnival Firenze Godfather, Jonathan Bennett. We are so thrilled that you're here to name this beautiful ship and to serve as Godfather. Jonathan and I always have so much fun when we're together. In observance of the ancient and sacred traditions of the sea, I hereby name this ship Carnival Firenze. May good fortune shine on all who work and sail on her, Firenze. And may she always have smooth seas and a following wind wherever she may sail. And now we're going to have some fun because clap along to the music and when all the champagne has been poured, we are all going to unite together in one very big salute. Keep that clapping going. Look at that, the champagne is flowing. That's the ship's bell that will permanently be here. And get ready for that big salute. The gang are going to raise their glasses. Salute! Salute!

Baby shark, baby shark.

I couldn't remember the Miracle, how am I going to remember your song? That's true. Who am I?

Yes, yes, I saw that. They get a view. I think it's fabulous. And can they still sign up for that?

Yes, we opened more spots. We announced them yesterday and we have sold out as of this morning. So another record-breaking registration cycle for Miami.

Jerry? Yes sir. We'd love to. So enough about that. Oops, I'm not giving those away yet. So John, one of the things that's exciting is we're getting ready to start a European season, or we just did start our European season.

I was going to say Pride.

Yeah, so we added the Heroes Bar and we added the Seaside Theater big screen on the Lido. And there was some, the spa, that steak spa, and the beautification, which is a lovely word made by very good-looking people with perfect teeth in the marketing department who used the word beautification. And it's a great word because the ship looks absolutely fabulous. I'll be driving to Dover, which is just over there, on the 16th of this month for her first arrival. So she was in Messina, Italy yesterday and Malta the day before. Tomorrow she's in Livorno, which is the gateway of course to three of Adalo's favorite places, including Tuscany, right? You love a bit of Tuscany, don't you? And Florence, or Firenze as we should say, and Pisa. And then she begins her British Isles cruises and cruises to Iceland, yeah. And then goes to places like Warnemünde in Germany, which gives you access to Berlin, and Helsinki in Finland, some Swedish ports. And then in August she'll move to, she's going to Rome. And from there they'll be able to do the Italian and the Med ports. And for all the travel advisors, of course, we are there next year on Carnival Mardi Gras. Carnival Miracle will be there and there are some exciting destinations, very similar. And in the autumn of this year we'll tell you about where we're going in 2026 and on what ship. So lots to look forward to.

Yeah, no, that's really... we took a couple years out of Europe and I'm so glad we're back. It really gives our travel advisors the opportunity to sell something different and to offer their past guests other opportunities, including Australia. We have the Splendor and the Luminosa. Today we made an announcement, the P&O brand is being sunset and two of the ships from the P&O brand will be merged into the Carnival fleet. And it is really a testament again to what Christine said in the video, the strong demand we have for the Carnival product. So we're going to grow almost 50, I think it's 50% by the time the second XL class ship joins the fleet, including these others. And just remember, if you think about Carnival, it's not just three and four day or seven out of Miami. We have Europe, we have transatlantic cruises, we have Australia, we have New Zealand, South Pacific. There's so many options. And trust me, a lot of your Carnival guests, our past guests, would be very interested in trying something new and different. And we offer a wide variety now of itineraries around the world.

Well, when I started, we only had seven-day cruises, Eastern Western Caribbean out of Miami.

No brain farts. Are we allowed to say fart?

Of course not. Neither do I. It's just my brain.

Aruba, St. Thomas for sure because I love, love, really St. John is my favorite place in the Caribbean and I know we can't really go there. But I just spent a few days in St. Barts last month and that is one of the most cool places you can go to. It's a very European island, great food, great restaurants, beautiful beaches, and just amazing. So I guess those would be the three ports I would do.

How about Europe? Three European ports?

Yeah, we have cruises next year on Miracle to Tallinn. Yeah, maybe I'll do that.

We lost you. You went Palermo. Palermo. Three wonderful places. And I'm just going to throw one more thing out that I personally would love to do before I retire. I would like to take a ship from New York straight across to Southampton, leave the ship in Southampton for 48 hours, let people tour London, come back to the ship two days later, and sail straight back. So it's basically a 14-day cruise with a two or three night stop in London.

Oh, let's do that. Yeah, we'd love that. We just need you to... you and I could sit on the bow with like pickaxes, just chipping away at the ice, and they'd give us a free cruise.

Yeah, it can be a bit... but I think it'd be worth it just to go there though. I mean it would be pretty spectacular. Jerry, I'm asking questions. Jerry, I see there's loads. Do you want to shoot us a question before we do the giveaway?

Well, I mean, the ship joined a fleet of three other ships that are sailing out of California and most of our guests are from California, obviously, and some of the surrounding states like Nevada, New Mexico. But that doesn't mean that we don't have people from all over the country. So if you want to try something different, think about, I mean I'm allowed to say it because it's Princess, one of our brands, think about The Love Boat if you remember. Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas. These are all places that out of the Caribbean or out of Miami or one of our home ports on the East Coast or even in the Gulf ports, you don't get an opportunity to see. So it's a completely different experience. Not only is the ship completely different from our other ships, it's very similar to Vista class in size and all, but when you get on board you'll definitely feel the big difference of the decor, some of the layout, some of the venues that we have available and some of the parties and things that we do. So if they want to experience something different both from an itinerary perspective and an onboard experience, this is definitely something they should try because like I said you can't get to those ports from the East Coast. And from the West Coast, it just opens up this whole other opportunity. You know, we do some overnight stays in Cabo which is just, I mean I went there back in 1984 on the Tropical, believe it or not. Roger Blum was the chief purser and I remember thinking how cool and different it was then. I can only imagine now, Cabo San Lucas is just spectacular. Back then, I'm sure it's even more spectacular now. And Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and any of the other ports that we get opportunity to visit on the West Coast. So my thing is, if they're on the West Coast, this is typically what they would take anyway because it's so convenient, they can drive to it, short flights. But even...

No, you froze. So I was trying to pretend. Carry on, sorry. I don't know where you got... where I left off.

You did hear that? Yeah, we froze. You froze on Roger Blum. Okay.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, no, they are great. Another question we've gotten a lot of today that would love to hear from probably both of you is what are you most excited about Celebration Key? There's a lot of information coming out. We've been sharing and talking a lot about Celebration Key, but what are you most excited about for it? My, at least from my perspective, the beach club, even though we haven't announced any real details, I think that's coming out later this month or next month. And it is an elevated experience that will be for adults only with the cabanas, the regular cabanas and beds, and there'll be an upgraded dining option there as well. And just the fact that we'll have such an amazing destination for our ships. You know, right now we have 500 itineraries calling at Celebration Key. We will have four piers there so we'll be able to dock up to four Excel class ships. We probably won't dock four there until we expand Celebration Key. There's a plan to expand just, I think it would be on the south side, just east of where we are today. It will be a bigger destination and there's just going to be so much for adults and for kids and for everyone to do. And we're excited to share as much as we can at our events coming up, at your Sneak at Paradise, your Sneak Peek at Paradise. So very excited.

It will be a game changer for us for sure. And then we have our next one coming up on Tuesday, July 23rd, with my good friend and longtime colleague of over 40 years, Vicki Ray. And we will be announcing more details, but this will be Tuesday, July 23rd at 2 pm Eastern time. All right, I think that's it. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. John, really appreciate your participation. Thank you. And just a big thank you to everybody for all the hard work you do. Once a month, around the 28th or 29th of every month, I have on my Facebook page, which is my name, I have an open day for travel advisors. I make a post to thank you and ask if you'd like to advertise your agency, do so below. I did this last week and we had over 700 travel advisors and comments of people who expressed, 'I've got the best travel advisor.' And it's so fun reading the friendships that people have, not just that people have got a travel advisor, they've got a friend who started as a travel advisor but now became their friend. So at the end of every month, look for that post on my page. Please feel free to write what you want, post your details. And I know a lot of people have received some really good feedback and able to pick up some new clients as well. And thank you for all your support. Apart from the lady who tried to drag me onto the dance floor... I can't say what... it was lovely to meet many of you. It was like there was like 10 of them, it was like the zombie movies where they all come to and they were trying to drag me onto the dance floor. So I ran away. And Jerry did nothing to help. Thank you everybody. Thank you Adalo. Thank you so much for your support of travel advisors. Really appreciate it and I know they do too. Thank you. Thanks.