Carnival Elation

by Jessica
(Phoenix, Arizona)

My name is Jessica, and I am from Phoenix, Arizona. I took a cruise on Carnival Elation in March 2009. The cruise left out of San Diego, California, with ports of call in Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico.

Overall, the cruise was very enjoyable for both my boyfriend and I. It was too cold during our trip to use the pool (at least for us Arizonans), but others seemed to enjoy the pool area and slide on the ship. We had an oceanview cabin (there are only a few balcony cabins on this particular ship), which was kept very clean and neat by our cabin steward.


We tried a few things in the buffet, which was pretty average, except for the pizza which was available twenty four hours and quite good. We had the room service breakfast a couple of days, which is really just a continental breakfast, but it was very nice to have coffee brought to the room in the morning. The remaining days we had breakfast in the restaurant, which was very good. I would recommend eating breakfast there instead of the buffet if you have time. For lunch we either ate in port or grabbed something quick from the buffet, so not much to say about that. We had dinner in the restaurant every night but one, and it was fantastic. Really good choices and wonderful service. We enjoyed every meal there, and the desserts were especially good. The chocolate melting cake is a must-have. I had it twice. We also had the sushi a couple of times before dinner, since we had the late dinner seating, and the sushi was pretty good.

We participated in a slot tournament in the casino, which was okay, but otherwise didn't really gamble. We participated in a few of the activities put together by the staff, which were pretty fun, including the trivia games and the best one being the "horsey" races which was a blast (but be sure to have some small bills if you want to gamble). You get a list of all the games and activities that are going on for the next day each night, so you can figure out what you want to do.

A lot of the activities were geared towards kids/families, but it might have been because we cruised over spring break so there were lots of kids on the ship. But most of them were well-behaved. I think they have a club for kids to keep them busy during the day. Oh, and we attended the Captain's reception, which I believe was on the formal night. We definitely took advantage of the free drinks they provide, and even danced together on the stage a little when they opened it up, which was a lot of fun. Besides those activities, we just enjoyed the scenery (one night a pod of dolphins swam beside the ship and we just sat and watched them for probably half and hour), and took advantage of the many bars on the ship. The drinks weren't terribly priced, but it's very easy to rack up a large bar bill, especially with the ship card that you use to charge everything on. Luckily they gave us a statement periodically so we could see where we were at with spending.

Overall, it was a nice little trip. We really felt like we got our money's worth, when you consider the meals alone would probably have cost us what we paid per night, and it was a fun introduction to cruising.