Blue Mar Basins® Marks Operational Milestone at Carnival’s Celebration Key

In the one month since the debut of Carnival’s exclusive destination, Celebration Key, the new private cruise port on Grand Bahama has welcomed more than 150,000 guests to experience the largest freshwater lagoons in the Caribbean. Powering these massive amenities is the Blue Mar Basins® technology from Martin Aquatic, which maintains pristine water quality over a total water surface area of more than 7 acres. Celebration Key is Martin Aquatic’s first installation of the patent-pending, algorithm-based Blue Mar Basins system, which has undergone various design iterations since its original conception.

Measuring 3.5 acres each, the two lagoons at Celebration Key provide unique offerings to Carnival’s guests—from swim-up bars and shallow sunshelves for in-water lounging, to a DJ island and overwater cabanas. But beyond the design, the real marvel of these basins is how they operate at a more sustainable rate than that of an average swimming pool. With varying depths and concentrations of bathers, the two basins use the Blue Mar Basins system with a patent-pending approach to monitoring, treating, and reacting to water chemistry changes.

“The Blue Mar Basins system intelligently uses automation for creating the right water balance at the right time, and the technology we’ve created is getting better all the time,” said Alessandro Orio, vice president of Blue Mar Basins.

Equipment Exclusive to Blue Mar Basins
Engineering a project like Celebration Key to run as sustainably as it does is part of the Blue Mar Basins innovative approach. In the development of the Blue Mar Basins system, Martin Aquatic created proprietary ‘smart’ controllers for managing all of the chemical and mechanical equipment.

Together with Carnival and its ship deployment schedule, the Blue Mar Basins system uses proprietary algorithms to determine approximately how busy the lagoons will be depending on the passenger counts coming to the port each day. Currently, Celebration Key can host two ships a day with as many as 11,000 passengers; when the second pier opens in 2026, four ships can bring as many as 20,000 passengers per day. For days with higher capacities, the system is designed to run more optimally and use a proprietary AI Algorithm to adjust the water based on historical trends. This system allows the basin to take advantage of historical learning with active environmental conditions to optimize chemical and power usage for the design day. It is also designed to detect patterns in water quality changes, helping to proactively treat water that could be harmful to guests. The tracking of the water and active learning by the system is just one of the innovations that Martin Aquatic has deployed as part of Celebration Key.

The process for installing this equipment was easier thanks to Blue Mar Basins’ turnkey solutions. Even with the limitations of an island location and local contractors completing the work, Celebration Key’s lagoons were still the first item completed during construction, saving several months during the development process. Equipment was delivered on site in a plug-and-play fashion, allowing pre-certified and trained construction crews to install complex modules seamlessly in a fraction of the time. Providing a fully supplied package of equipment, Martin Aquatic’s world-class engineering team was able to develop a system that saves time for installation and allows large lagoon projects to open up faster and easier for clients.

Impact of Blue Mar Basins for Large Bodies of Water
Celebration Key has become a proving ground for how the Blue Mar Basins system can effectively manage high bather loads across a multi-acre amenity. This technology replaces that of other bodies of water and allows developers to transform every square foot into a fully swimmable aquatic attraction.

“Seeing our Blue Mar Basins system used in our largest project to date has been incredibly rewarding—especially for a project as high profile as Carnival’s Celebration Key,” said Orio. “The next developments coming down the pipeline will inevitably benefit from the experience and information we are gathering at this seven-acre site.”

Celebration Key is not the first Blue Mar Basins project to open, as Martin Aquatic started perfecting this technology several years ago through other large scale pools and even a 1.3 acre body of water that anchored a retail and dining complex. It will be followed by other developments such as surf lagoons, mixed use development lagoons, and other waterpark attractions that can utilize a more efficient water quality operational system.

“We’re excited for the future of our Blue Mar Basins technology,” said Martin. “The lagoons at Celebration Key have made an incredible impression on guests, and our clients are seeing what is achievable in creating the next great Aquatic Leisure Destination.”