I took this cruise with my parents as we take one as a family vacation every year. We have only used Carnival in the past, so I can't compare with other cruise lines, only other Carnival ships. We arrived in Orlando on Southwest Airlines around 8:30 am. We easily found the Mears transportation counter in the baggage claim area and had to wait about 1 ½ hours for the first bus to arrive. It took about 1 hour for the bus to get from the airport to the cruise terminal. Embarkation was very easy and fast. It only took about 30 minutes to get on the boat. Our room wouldn't be ready until 1:30pm, so we headed to Tiffany's for lunch. The deli in Tiffany's is very good and I decided to get a Turkey sandwich on the first day. After lunch, we explored the ship. The ship is smaller than the Carnival Glory we took last year, but it was still very nice. My only complaint is that the Glory has "adults only" hot tubs and the Elation did not. Most days, every hot tub was full of kids, which was very annoying.

Our room was on the upper deck, which is a great location because it is sandwiched between two decks of rooms, so it is very quiet. The room was clean and the bed was very comfortable. Before we pulled out of Port Canaveral we had to do the required lifeboat drill which is pretty painless. We had dinner at 8:30 in the imagination dining room and had a fabulous server named Pavlina. She was very friendly and always had suggestions for us as far as what to order. All of the food in the dining room was great except for the pasta dish on the first night. The pasta was still hard and didn't taste like it was cooked enough. My favorite part of the meal was the starters. The best ones were the French onion soup, the broccoli cheddar soup, and the spinach stuffed mushrooms. The desserts were awesome every night especially the chocolate melting cake and the apple pie. We ate at Tiffany's for breakfast and lunch almost everyday. They had the same things every day; scrambled eggs, oatmeal, pancakes, French toast, ham, hash browns etc. The pancakes tasted like frozen ones that had been warmed in the microwave and the potatoes were very greasy. The breakfast I had delivered to my cabin one morning was much better. Lunch most days had very strange selections, so I opted for either pizza or a deli sandwich.

Grand Turk was our first stop and we arrived there an hour late. We were late because the seas were VERY rough the night before and the ship listed so hard one time that everything on the dresser went crashing to the floor. Not a fun way to be woken up! The captain took an alternate route to try to get us into calmer waters, so we arrived late. The cruise terminal is nice with many shops and a Margaritaville that has a large pool. We decided to do the horseback riding excursion which is one of the best I have ever done. After a 15 minute drive, we arrived at a farm on the beach. After we were assigned a horse, we rode along a cliff, where the guides offered to take pictures of everybody. We then rode down the beach and into the ocean. It was a great experience! Read more