Our party of 9 sailed on the Carnival Elation this past week. This is a second Carnival Cruise for us. In our party, two seniors, 4 adults and 3 teenagers. Getting on the ship was quick and smooth- we had done the fun pass in advance, so that might have helped. This ship looked much like the Triumph that we had sailed on before. This time we had a room with a window and I have learned I will never again cruise without a window. The Elation does show a bit of wear from her age but it is still beautiful. The interior was more of a "las Vegas" style, showy. The elevators were way better than the triumph and we rarely had to wait long. The decks were not quite as crowded and finding a lounge chair did not seem as difficult as on the triumph, although part of that might have been because we didn't have quite as good of weather as our past cruise. We had early seating for dinner and I liked that so we could go to the shows early. Dinners were similar to the Triumph. The people in my group said the food wasn't as good as other cruises. I thought it was about the same. LOts of it though!! I preferred to eat in Tiffany's buffet more for breakfast. I wasn't as impressed with the entertainment on this cruise as the last. There were two "las vegas" type shows which were pretty good but two other nights of only so so comedians and one night of a juggler although amusing wasn't what we expected in quality. We found the Mikaso Lounge (theater) not as big and it had many many dead spots where posts and or equipment hindered view of the stage, that plus not enough elevation between balcony rows resulted in frustration in not being able to enjoy the show.

My two major complaints were:

The hot tubs. During the day they were always filled with little kids (I love little kids but carnival's policy shows kids only in hot tubs with parents) this is definitely not enforced. Every hot tub was filled with kids playing in them all day long. When we went to the hot tub in the evening after the early show, we were kicked out at 10 pm. Apparently the hot tubs are closed at that time. This was extremely frustrating. We believe that they should have had adults only from 9pm to at least 11 or 12 to give the adults a chance to relax under the stars. We were hugely disappointed with this. Read more