My daughter and I were on the Elation May 1-8. She's 17 (K)and I'm 35, her first cruise, my second. We drove from Missouri overnight and parked the car with EZcruiseparking.com. $45 for the whole week and they shuttled us right to the door, I would recommend them! I'll break this down into days.
May 1: Boarded the ship about 1 pm with no problems, the only lines we had were to have our picture taken! We got on board, and went straight to our cabin. I needed to put a cash deposit for my S/S card, and the line seemed long, but it moved pretty fast. Everyone was so nice and even though our cabin wasn't quite ready, our steward let us store our stuff in the room. Napped right through our late seating but met new friends in Duke's piano bar (pretty smoky, and I'm a smoker!) and then into the disco later. Good music and a wide variety of people.
May 2: Day at Sea. Slept in late and headed up on deck around 1. We found deck chairs with no problem, but we did have to move to the upper deck. Plenty of waitstaff and the entertainment was pretty good. Formal night was nice, lobster and prime rib were excellent!