The large dome next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California is the former Spruce Goose Dome, a massive geodesic structure originally built to house Howard Hughes’ famous wooden seaplane. Today it serves as Carnival Cruise Line’s Long Beach cruise terminal, processing hundreds of thousands of passengers each year.
Why the Dome Was Built
In 1980, the Aero Club of Southern California acquired the Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose. This enormous wooden flying boat had a wingspan longer than a football field and was originally intended as a troop transport during World War II, though it wasn’t completed in time to see wartime use. Howard Hughes famously flew it just once, in 1947, for about a mile over Long Beach Harbor.
To display the aircraft, organizers constructed what was at the time the world’s largest geodesic dome right next to the Queen Mary on Long Beach Harbor. The Spruce Goose went on display inside the dome in 1983, and for nearly a decade the two attractions operated as a paired tourist destination. The dome’s interior housed not just the aircraft itself but also meeting spaces, dining areas, and elaborate audio-visual exhibits about Howard Hughes and the plane’s history.
Where the Spruce Goose Went
The Spruce Goose left Long Beach in 1992, disassembled and transported in pieces to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. After careful reassembly, the aircraft went back on permanent display there, where it remains today. Its departure left the massive dome sitting empty on the Long Beach waterfront.
The Dome’s Second Life as a Cruise Terminal
The dome sat partially unused until 2001, when about one-third of it was converted into a U.S. Customs and luggage-handling facility for a nearby Carnival Cruise Lines berth. Carnival began formally operating the terminal in 2003, and the dome’s cavernous interior turned out to be well suited for processing large numbers of cruise passengers.
For years, Carnival used only a portion of the dome’s total space. That changed with a major renovation that more than doubled the usable terminal area and allowed Carnival to take over 100 percent of the dome for its operations. The expansion improved passenger flow and the overall boarding experience. Carnival now runs more than 250 sailings a year from the terminal, with multiple ships carrying roughly 600,000 guests annually on cruises ranging from three to fourteen days along the West Coast and to Mexico.
Why It Stands Out
If you’re visiting the Queen Mary or just driving through Long Beach, the dome is hard to miss. Its rounded aluminum profile looks nothing like a typical port building, and that’s because it was never designed to be one. It was engineered to enclose one of the largest aircraft ever built. That unusual origin is why it still catches people’s attention decades after the plane it was built for moved to Oregon.