This was my fifth cruise on a Carnival ship in 11 years. First one on a boat the size of the Elation, this was smaller than I had cruised on. I was concerned about the smaller boat being that I often have motion sickness issues. The boat had more movement than I had hoped for but there happened to be Hurricane Patricia blowing over on the western side of Mexico that was sending a little wind/wave action into the Gulf. Never once did I feel unsafe or worried, I was confident that the Captain would keep us out of harms way and he did.

All of the activities, services, excursions and clubs were typical. Our room was directly under the smoking section in the casino so we encountered a lot of smoke in the hallways but never in the room. That was extremely unpleasant, having to hold our breaths when leaving the room. The cabin was as expected, although looking fairly run down. There was some mold growing in the bathroom tiles. Edmundo, our porter was great. We never saw him, but he cleaned the room the minute we stepped out. The main issue was that there was a constant banging only at night in what seemed like right outside our window at night. It sounded like someone had a hammer and was hitting the metal boat every one and a half seconds ALL NIGHT long for four days straight. NO SLEEP at all because of this. We slept with pillows over our heads but that didn't help for long as we couldn't breathe well like that. Seriously the most annoying thing ever. One night I tried to sleep on the Lido Deck in a deck chair and got asked to leave.

Extremely disappointed in the food. The buffet was ok - nothing to write home about, but I expected a lot more from the dining room. The staff was wonderful as usual, but the quality of the food was sub par at best. I do not know how they feed that many people, they were fast, but compared to the previous cruises, the food was not good. Many times our table had to order additional entrees because what they originally ordered was overcooked or seemed inedible. I personally tried some of the chefs selections and had a couple that were good, those were the quality that I was looking for, but that was the exception to the rule. In addition, if you were expecting the surf and turf night, you were sorely disappointed, because that was an additional fee. I left the cruise feeling just "blah" - very disappointed in the quality and I will be cruising another line next time as the experience has gone down hill consistently over the past few years.