First of all this was my second cruise and I was very impressed. Keep in mind I booked this cruise on a Friday and left on Monday. It will not be so easy in the future since everyone will have to have a passport regardless of where you are going. I was only required to have a birth certificate and my drivers license. The first ship I cruised on was very small, thank God it was my first cruise because I didn't really know what to expect.

Getting on the Elation was very easy. I dropped my luggage off at the drop off location with a lot of assistance from the Carnival luggage guy. He asked me what floor my cabin was on and I told him I had no clue, I only had the printout that was emailed to me from when I booked the cruise on the phone three days before. He looked at the printout and told me where I would be and said that I had a very nice cabin, I thought to myself, wow he knows what my cabin looks like that is pretty neat. Now I think to myself, he had no clue what it looked like he was just working for his tip and did a pretty good job of it. Since it was fairly early and I was getting dropped off I asked if I had to stay with my luggage and he assured me it would be taken care of and would be waiting in my room later.

After dropping my luggage off I went to have lunch with my parents and was then dropped off again. Since I live so close to Galveston my parents offered to drop me off to save a few extra bucks for parking. I am starting to get a little nervous boarding the ship since I am going on this trip solo. I managed to make my way to my cabin, get my luggage unpacked, touch up my makeup and make my way back down for the lifeboat drill (or whatever they call it hehe). Since we are still in Texas and it is only November it was very warm up on the deck with life-jackets on standing very close to other cruisers but I managed. I still have some butterflies in my stomach but they are getting better. I went back to my cabin and grabbed my camera and made it back up to the deck right when the sun was starting to go down and was able to get some awesome pictures. Read more