Carnival Elation Cruise Reviews - Reviews

This was our first cruise and it was just as Carnival advertised - FUN. The shows were great, the food was amazing, the ship was spotless, the crew and staff were amazingly friendly and made us all feel at home. Cozumel was beautiful and the catamaran snorkeling and to a private beach was an amazing experience. In Progresso the trip to the Mayan ruins was a long bus ride but worth every moment.

This was a very pleasant and comfortable cruise.  My companions and I don't go for the onboard entertainment and activities, we like to read and relax.  The beach at Cozumel (Playa Mia) was clean, pretty and relaxing.  The stateroom was very comfortable,  nice soft sheets.

We had the best time.  Yes, the ship is smaller than some and Yes, it is older.  However the staff is AWESOME!  Our cabin steward remembered who we were, our dining staff remembered who we were!  The trivia was fun, the shows were amazing.  We watch Epic Rock twice and Heart of Soul was just as good.  The performers have amazing talent.  CD Brandon was so much fun.  Hasbro the game show was a great addition!!  I would sail on this ship again tomorrow.  We did Faster to the Fun and walked up to a check in desk and straight to the boat.  My 6 year old nephew loved Camp Carnival.  Our 16 and 17 year old nephews were not ready to get off the boat. Thank you Carnival and Cheap Cruises for helping us have a great family vacation.

What an awesome cruise.the crew was so friendly and courteous that it made our cruise experience that more enjoyable. great great great cruise. Tapa wa great Viviana was great and others.

Very great choice for our first cruise!  The staff and accommodations were outstanding. 

Specific individuals that stood out in their customer service were:

Akash, Putu Eka, Young, John, Doroteo and Alam were great!

Our experience was good. Food was delicious and service was fabulous. Our stops in Mexico were wonderful and we enjoyed the comedy shows.

However, the Carnival Elation is a ship that is up for an overhaul. It is one of the last ships to get a makeover in the fleet. The two teenage boys with us became bored rather quickly on the two sea days. There is one water slide which is great, but not quite enough to fill an afternoon.

Overall, we had a restful week and will definitely cruise with Carnival again.

We have been on carnival cruise lines a few times but with the whole family. This time me and my husband went just the two of us, when we got on the boat and saw all the kids we thought oh man maybe we should have took another boat or something. Yet we ended up having an amazing cruise like always. Thanks carnival for allowing us to enjoy cruises with you with or without kids.

I sailed with my fiancé and 5 year old granddaughter - my fourth their first - they had a BLAST!  I couldn't keep my granddaughter away from Camp Carnival!!

This was my first cruise and I had an absolute BLAST!!! We will def be going on one again.  We had an amazing waiter at dinner every night and the magic at dinner was AWESOME!!  Shows were great but Karaoke was def my fav part.  Will def recommend others!

The food and service are still great but don't expect entertainment. Most of the entertainment was trivia games and bingo. Not much fun on board. They really promote including children but other than kids club daycare there's not much for those under 12 to do.

I had a wonderful time. Everyone was very friendly. I had a great registration experience. The only negative thing that  I can say about carnival was that check out was unorganized. There was bit of confusion when checking out to leave off the ship. It was told if you put your luggage in front of your door the night before that it would be a little easier or a little smooth when departing off of the ship. Well, that's not true. It seems to me its better to carry your own luggage of the ship so that you don't have to wait hours to get off.  You will have a long wait time to get off the boat and you will be stuck to the back of a very long line. After waiting for and hour we started noticing that people were just getting in the line to depart off the ship with out their luggage so we did the same, only to find out that our luggage were in this room with thousands of others. There wasn't any one directing us on where we could pick our  luggage up, and others that were later called to depart off the ship,  whom put there luggage outside their door the night before were getting off the ship very confused and cutting through the lines trying to figure out what zone there luggage was in.

My two children, ages 18 and 16, and I stayed in a junior suite with an obstructed view (cabin V23).  We found the stateroom to be large enough for us with ample storage space.  The smaller size lifeboat in front of our balcony was really not an issue, however, the staterooms next to ours had full sized lifeboats completely blocking their views.  

The room was not completely clean, as I found hair in drawers as we were unpacking our things and crumbs on the floor, however, those were the only housekeeping issues we encountered.  Our steward, Ean was very nice and made a point to meet us and always called us by name.  We came in from long days in the sun to fresh ice and a large bottle of water to cool off.  The folded towel animals were a nice touch and refreshed beach towels were appreciated.

The food was very good in the main dining room and we especially enjoyed the "My Time Dining" which allowed us to eat whenever we wanted.  This is very handy on excursion days when your family may need more rest before dining.  We had different servers on this plan and found a team of waiters we really enjoyed and were allowed to ask for their section.  They were pretty popular and we found others were asking for them as well which increased our waiting time.  Generally though, we never had to wait more than five minutes for a table and we ate at variable times all week.  

We chose a snorkeling excursion in Cozumel and visited the Uxmal Mayan Ruins in Progresso.  Each excursion was enjoyable and worth the money we paid.  

A highlight for me was finding the gym tucked back in the spa area.  I found there to be a wide variety of equipment in good working order and it wasn't too crowded.  

My only wish is that the Internet was cheaper as I would have enjoyed listening to my music streaming service, but felt the expense was too high.  

Overall, we had a great experience on this cruise.  

This was our first cruise and we loved it!  The personal touch the staff gave us was amazing.  The dinner staff and room cleaning staff never failed to call us by name.  We rarely had a request, but when we did, it was met immediately.      

Enjoyed the experience.  The ship could use some updating.  We booked our snorkeling excursion through this travel agency and it was the best one could have hoped for.  Not only was the activity very well planned the boat we went on was very clean, well maintained, excellent crew and SAFE. There were only about a dozen persons aboard the boat compared to the large amount of persons on the excursion our friends booked on the ship.  Highly recommend booking this excursion through .  

Had a wonderful time.  The food was great.  The room was clean and the service was excellent.  The only thing that could have been better would have been if they had a kiddie pool for the small children.  The entire pool was about 5 feet so the children spent their time in the whirlpools.  Over all, it was a good trip and you can't beat the price.  I have been on a Royal Caribbean cruise and the difference was really that Carnival was much more relaxed.  We enjoyed not having to dress up for dinner!

The cruise was great from beginning to end. The ease of boarding to the ease of departure. The food was great throughout and the shows were marvelous. Service was ideal and friendly staff. If I had to consider any downside it would be that the ship didn't stay ashore long enough to squeeze in more off shore excursions.

My wife and I have experience with over 50 cruises on several lines including Carnival. This last trip was fun in that we were traveling with great friends that were less experienced with the cruise experience. Food service and quality were OK, but I've had better including previous Carnival trips. The wait staff were extremely polite, friendly and tried to be helpful. However, there were problems. At a table for 10, mistakes were made each night. Meals (as ordered) were not delivered. Multiple requests were needed for bread, condiments etc. One lady waited 45 minutes for her lamb because it had to come from "the other kitchen". All and all most all of the passengers seemed to have a good time.      

This cruise was much better than the first one on this ship. My ONLY problem was my cabin location!!! Because I trust ppl and didn't know much about locations on the ship again I got screwed!!! This is the 2nd time I requested midship and was booked in aft....smh trust me it won't happen again!!!! My kids were sick and so was I but we still made the best of our vacation.

This was our first cruise and we had a wonderful time, we are already planning on taking another cruise.It was very relaxing sitting on the back deck and just watching the water, then going to the casino and enjoying the shows.

This was our first cruise and it gave us the rest and relaxation we were needing. The food was excellent, especially in the main dining room. The food was very high quality. We will be dreaming about the chocolate melting cake and the bitter and blanc dessert. The dining room staff was awesome. We asked the 2nd to last night if they were going to serve the bitter and blanc dessert the last night. They said they weren't, but they had it special ordered for us that last night. They seemed more than happy to serve us, which was incredible, since they weren't working for tips. Jerry and Percival dancing was the best! They cracked us up! We also thought Catalina was lovely and did an excellent job serving. However, the very disappointing thing about the cruise was all the charges for gratuities and drinks. We were excited to have found an "all-inclusive" vacation, but we found out about the gratuity charges after we had already booked the cruise. If we had known how much drinks costs, the gratuity charges, and how much the off-the-boat entertainment was, we probably would not have chosen a cruise. Now we know, but unless we can find an incredible deal with lots of on-board credits, we probably won't do a cruise again. 

Something that was unfortunate was the Lido buffet closing at 2:30. We were in the "late risers" category, so we ate breakfast late (around 10). We got hungry around 2:00, which didn't give us much time at all before they closed the buffet, so we were always rushed when eating lunch. No one wants to feel rushed on vacation. 

The room was fine. We had a port hole room, which ended up being more spacious than I expected from other reviews. One morning we ordered room service for breakfast and sat in the little cubby hole and enjoyed our view of the ocean. We had plenty of storage space and hangers and the bathroom gave us plenty of space for our toiletries. The best advice we received was buying a shoe rack for the back of the door for toiletries, shoes, and straightener, and anything else we don't want sprawled out everywhere. And our room steward, Yadnya, remembered our names and brought us ice for the champagne we brought without us having to ask him.