If you blinked, you might have missed it: Carnival Cruise Lines this month christened the Carnival Dream, its newest and largest ship, in a New York ceremony that was subdued yet unmistakably Carnival.

Despite the presence of the Dream’s godmother, Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden, and although the ship offered a twist on christening traditions by having a 9-year-old girl name its water slide, the Dream’s arrival was accompanied by nothing close to the level of hoopla that has surrounded other ships debuting this year and next.

It’s not easy to compete with Royal Caribbean International’s 5,400-passenger Oasis of the Seas, the largest and most expensive cruise ship ever built. The Oasis debuted only a week after the Dream, complete with coverage on "Good Morning America."

And Norwegian Cruise Line’s upcoming, 4,200-passenger Norwegian Epic has become as talked about for the features it won’t have (no main dining room) as for such innovations as cabins with curved walls.

Even the other Dream, the one being built by Disney and slated to debut in 2011, has managed to steal headlines this fall with a four-deck-high water coaster and virtual portholes in its inside cabins.

But if Carnival is concerned about any of this, the anxiety isn’t showing.

"Carnival is very happy with the niche they have created for themselves," said Cruiseguy.com’s Stewart Chiron. "It works well, and they know what kind of profits they are going to get out of it. They go to market differently. … Some make more noise than others. Carnival has never gone off the deep end."

Carnival’s naming ceremony, hosted by its senior cruise director, John Heald, was a fun and simple affair, but it was overshadowed easily in the news by the Oasis’ seven godmothers.

"Carnival’s debuts have always been much more sedate than what Royal does," Chiron observed at the Dream naming.

Carnival Cruise Lines long ago surrendered the size and amenity wars that have defined much of the last decade in ship design and cruise line competition.

The company has remained true to its core strategy: building ships that it can fill at low prices. It’s a strategy that the line’s CEO, Gerry Cahill, said has left Carnival in a better financial position than most of its competitors right now.

Calling 2009 "a challenging year in the travel industry and the cruise industry," Cahill said: "We fared better than probably just about everyone in North America. All of a sudden, consumers are in love with value, even the rich. That has played to our strength.

"We’ve been true to who we are. We have a clear understanding of that," he added.

Cahill was just as clearly stating that Carnival is not like its competitors.

Cahill firmly asserted that Carnival would not build ships that are too big to rob the line of its flexibility to switch homeports quickly and to thereby make more of its vessels accessible to U.S. drive markets.

Cahill noted that 50% of U.S. residents now live within a five-hour drive of Carnival’s 20 North American homeports, a boon to the line as families try to avoid the cost of flying.

Moreover, Carnival is averse to building ships that earn headlines but not dollars.

"There’s innovation at a cost," Cahill said. "Anybody can spend an unlimited amount of money and come up with innovations. If you drive your costs up too high, you have to raise your ticket prices and then a lot of people can’t afford it. … We don’t want to price our market out."

The Dream still has some interesting design elements, such as balcony cabins by the water line and the longest water slide at sea. But it offers nothing as headline-grabbing as a zipline or a carousel.

Carnival’s innovations are calculated more for financial return than for sound bites.

Equity research firm Majestic Research noted last week that on vessels owned by Carnival Corp., balcony cabins get a 59% premium compared with inside cabins. So when Carnival looked for ways to be innovative, it engineered a way to build balcony cabins where it never had before.

Joe Farcus, Carnival’s chief interior architect, has made clear that with space at a premium on a cruise ship, the line is not interested in gimmicky onboard amenities that are not widely used. "We look at innovations that appeal to everyone onboard," Farcus said.

At 130,000 tons and with 3,646 passengers, the Dream has to consider how it uses space; the ratio of square feet per passenger is lower than it is on the 220,000-ton, 5,400-passenger Oasis.

This is also calculated, as Carnival has tried to minimize per-berth construction costs.

The $740 million Dream cost half as much to build as the $1.5 billion Oasis, about $202,000 per berth, while the Oasis cost about $277,000 per berth. (These are lower-berth costs; both Royal Caribbean and Carnival consistently sail with occupancy levels above 100%.)

By keeping its building costs down, Carnival has avoided some of the headlines that NCL and Royal Caribbean would rather not have had regarding concerns on the part of investors and analysts about financing their shipbuilding.

But as a comparison of ticket prices demonstrates, the Dream does not command the prices that the Oasis does, and it possibly never will.

Looking at each ship’s Jan. 9 departures, an inside cabin on the Dream starts at $729; on the Oasis, prices begin at $1,229.

Analysts have said that demand for the Oasis could negatively affect other ships. In its note last week, Majestic said that Carnival pricing could be challenged due to additional competition the Oasis is generating in the first quarter of 2010.

But Majestic also said that the current Oasis prices can’t possibly last. As with every new ship, Majestic said, those premiums will drop significantly over time.

Long term, Carnival likes its chances.

Carnival executives "know what kind of profit they want to get out of their ships," Chiron said.

Pointing out that Carnival has introduced only three new ship classes since 1996, he observed, "Their ships work well for them."