Carnival Splendor, built for Europe?

In an interesting development, the new Carnival Splendor sundeck seems designed for Northern European sailings. Of course the ship has a British godmother too, and this may suggest that soon Splendor will be permanently based in Northern Europe. Usually Carnival’s sundecks are wide open but the new Splendor design, with its retractable roof, is actually three compartmentalised spaces: the slide area, the mid-ship area (with magrodome bad weather roof) and the aft pool. The children’s pool too is in a separate space, although this may be more to do ensuring small kiddies have safe water play than a design feature. What’s most interesting is that this is the only ship in the line to go for this approach – the next to be built (Dream) returns to the open-plan pool deck with the cover.