Why the Carnival Elation isn't for everyone
Written: Jun 25 '02 (Updated Jun 25 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent service, clean facilities
Cons: If you are high-tech and not a gambler, this could be a really boring week.
The Bottom Line: Carnival Elation has excellent service and ample food, but does not provide enough activities and options to entertain a non-gambling non-drinking family for a week.
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| mjlee22's Full Review: Carnival Elation |
I just returned from the 16-Jun-2002 Carnival Elation cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Leaving from San Pedro, the cruise started with 2 days at sea, 3 days of port stops (respectively, 14 hours in Puerto Vallarta, 9 hours in Mazatlan, and 5 hours in Cabo San Lucas), and one last day at sea. I travelled as a single mom with three 12-year-old girls in one cabin.
THE FOOD
The food was certainly ample. We mostly ate at Tiffany's, the buffet restaurant, which was open 24x7 for pizza, soft ice cream, coffee, tea, and juice. Soda was extra, either $2.50 per 20-oz bottle or else you could purchase a soda card for the week ($20 for kids, $30 for adults) that entitled you to cups of soda at the bars. During meal times there was always plenty of fresh fruit, a variety of hot dishes, salads, desserts, hamburgers and hot dogs.
There was a free sushi bar available from 5:30-8:30 each evening, but the line was usually 20-30 people to wait for one sushi chef to hand you 6 tiny slivers of strange maki sushi. So we only went through that line once.
We ate almost all our dinners in the formal dining room, where the food was equivalent to banquet meals at a Marriotts or Sheraton. The desserts with dinner were often fancy but frankly were not as good as they looked. It turned out that the kind of rich desserts that I crave at the end of a good meal were only available at extra charge at a dessert bar next to the casinos.
THE ROOM AND SERVICE
Because the cruise requires everyone under 18 to have someone in the room over 25, I could not get my own cabin and was apprehensive about getting claustrophobic with 4 people in one cabin. But it turned out that the room size worked out well and that we had enough space for everything we brought and also purchased along the way. The cabin and especially the bathroom were very efficient and well-designed. There were many hooks and racks in the bathroom to hang all our wet bathing suits. The sink was big enough where I could wash some clothes. The shower (no bath) had a hand-shower. For a luxury shower, I ended up showering in the fitness center, which had top and side shower heads. Be aware that you need to bring your own shampoo and hair dryer. Also, you can't dry your hair in the bathroom (or in the fitness center).
The service throughout was excellent. Our room steward was really attentive. He cleaned our room several times per day, constantly replacing towels, making the beds, leaving little treats for the girls such as cookies and candy, and fashioning the towels into little animals at night. In the buffet dining room, dishes are cleared off as soon as you are done with them. At dinner, they assign a waiter and assistant waiter to every 3 tables, so your water glass and bread plate are never empty.
For all this service, though, the ship gives you little gratuity envelopes on Saturday and suggests specified amounts per passenger to be given to the room steward ($24.50), table waiter ($24.50), and assistant waiter ($14), plus more for the head waiter and maitre'd. While I felt a $100 tip was warranted for the room steward, I couldn't see tipping $160 for our one daily meal in the formal dining room where none of us enjoyed the food that much.
THE ON-BOARD ACTIVITIES (OR LACK THEREOF)
I have to admit that I didn't do any preparation for this cruise, as I expected the ship to take care of this for me by providing excursions, port info, and on-board activities and entertainment. I assumed I would use the ship's library and the fitness center. I also thought I would spend some nights in the bar with other strange soccer fans, watching the World Cup.
It turned out these were very bad assumptions. Even though 800 of the ship's 2500 passengers were kids, the Elation cruise was targetted for adults who just want to eat, drink, and gamble. You had to be at least 16 to even enter the fitness center, which meant my girls could not attend the aerobics classes. The only physical activities for them were ping pong, the water slide, pool (not swimmable), and hot tubs. A small video arcade existed but was 50 cents per game. There were playstations and computers in the Childrens World, but these were largely for the elementary school set. There was a volleyball court available, but this was not organized and I guess you had to bring your own ball. As a result, there were kids whose main entertainment was running the elevators.
As far as the library, there was not much to read; 95% of the books were novels which seemed to have been left behind by previous travellers. There were no magazines. Even in the store, there were only 2 magazines and a few novels to purchase.
At night, the cruise provided an evening show and a teen disco (12-18). These were good events.
If you ended up sitting in your room (two of the days on board were too cold to sit around the pool), then there was almost no TV programming to watch. They provided 1 or 2 movies per day, which were replayed every 3 hours. There was intermittent broadcasting of CBS and ABC, but no newscasts were provided. No ESPN, no sports, no news. Many times even the scheduled programming wasn't working due to satellite problems.
Bottom line, it was a bummer to miss all the world cup games that week, especially the US team's good run. The ship printed a little 4-page newsletter each day to recap the world news, but it made me realize how much time I missed reading the newspaper every day.
Satellite Internet access was available on the ship, but the cost was a $4 registration charge per person plus 75 cents per minute. There were $50 and $100 plans available which would have gotten down to a 40 cents per minute rate, but basically the cost was so exorbitant we were afraid to use it. To get our Internet fix during the week, it turned out that there were internet cafes where the ship docked in Puerto Vallarta ($1.10 per 15 minutes) and Mazatlan ($4 for 30 minutes) as well as throughout the two cities. The connections are around 50kbps and they provide Netscape in Spanish.
The cruise provides talks on the ports to be visited, but the info and maps that they supply are oriented towards taking you directly to the stores (mostly jewelry) and restaurants (Senor Frogs) that they endorse, or else selling you on one of their shore excursions. You cannot really use the maps the ship provides to get around town. But it turned out that it was too hot for my girls to walk around anyways, so we ended up just taking taxis directly to and from where we wanted to go. The taxis want to charge you $10 US for every trip, and you can't bargain at the ship's dock. But in town, it's easier to get a lower rate. No tipping is required, and the taxis all take US dollars. You don't really need to get Mexican currency on the cruise at all. We went to Senor Frogs in Mazatlan, which provides an American style tex-mex crazy-restaurant experience at US prices ($15 per person for a fajita lunch). The food tasted just like Chevys.
EXCURSIONS
We went on two excursions. The first was to Las Caletas, a secluded beach in Puerto Vallarta. THis was $70 adults and $39 for kids. To get to this out-of-the-way beach required a 45 minute rocky boat ride each way, during which the tour operators dance energetically on the front of the boat and give quite a little show. At Las Caletas we snorkeled, kayaked, and had a really delicious lunch. In fact, this was the only real Mexican food on our entire trip! The seclusion was nice too after being on that crowded boat for 2 days, so I felt this excursion was well worth it.
In Cabo San Lucas, we did another snorkel trip, but this turned out to be the lowest point of the cruise. This trip snorkeled only from the boat, which was quite overloaded and had inadequate toilet facilities. The water was so cold that no one stayed in it more than 15 minutes. Since you only have 5 hours in Cabo, perhaps it is better to skip the excursions there and just see the town. I don't really know, since once we finished this excursion, we only had 90 minutes left on shore and spent it all in the souvenir marketplace next to the dock. This is the only port where the ship does not dock and you have to take a boat to get to shore. Note that the ship tells you that the last boat to return to the ship will be at 11:30 AM. But it took 2 hours to get all the passengers back to the ship this way, so you might want to avoid the hurry up and wait principle and just return to the dock by 1PM.
OVERALL
If you are someone who likes to eat all day, drink, smoke, and gamble, then this cruise is probably for you. If you hate kids, then don't take this cruise in the summer months. If you are a typical Silicon Valley type like me, then don't take this cruise at all. However, this is not to say that I wouldn't cruise again. I think the better strategy is to take a much bigger boat in a much warmer tropical area. The rest of my family took a Royal Caribbean Cruise last summer and had a much better time, but that was because that boat was so large it had a basketball court, rollerskating, and ice skating, in addition to pools and warm weather that you could actually swim in. And it provided adequate TV programming. The Carnival Elation was just too small to provide the kinds of activities that we needed, and as a result, all 4 of us were quite bored by Friday and were really glad to go home.
Recommended:
No
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
mjlee22
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Location: Silicon Valley, CA, USA
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Retired HP Software Development Manager and soccer mom. Demands quality in products.
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