Carnival Elation Cruise 2025

It was all Kevin's idea to book a cruise for us this Summer to celebrate my first year back to teaching and some big work milestones for him.  The kids had never been on a cruise so we were excited to introduce them to something new.  Great idea, Kev!  He liked the idea of going out of Jacksonville, FL so that we could drive down to the port.  He worked with a Carnival agent to find some really great options and upgrades for our family.  He loves planning out all the details of our trips which I'm very thankful for.

We cruised Carnival and Celebrity probably 15 years ago and enjoyed it.  We always dreamed of taking the kids on a cruise when they were older.  No more strollers, diapers, high chairs or baby gear meant that we were ready to try cruising.

We are happy to report that Carnival has done a lot of upgrades!  Our ship is one of their smaller ships and it has been refurbished and well maintained.  We found plenty to do and really enjoyed our stops in Nassau, Bahamas and Princess Cays.  We remembered the food on Carnvial to be fine, but nothings oustanding.  They now have celebrity collabs for their menus and restaurants - Emeril & Guy Fieri - and the food was really tasty!  We all found favorite things to eat all over the ship.  I lost count of how many trips we made to get soft serve ice cream all week long.

Our cruise was 7 days/6 nights and we were all sad to say goodbye to the ship.

The port is small at Jacksonville.  You drive up.  Pay for parking for the week an park right next to the ship.  No need to shuttle in if you plan ahead and reserve parking.

Kevin found us all kinds of awesome VIP options that came with reserving a Suite.  It gave us really early access to the ship and to our room.  We felt like we had the ship to ourselves and almost a whole extra day to enjoy the boat.  We also go priority seating and reservations for all meals.

We boarded the ship and got to head straight to our room with our luggage!  No checking bags.  No waiting for access to our rooms.  Just straight to our room.  It was wonderful.

Wow!  Our suite was HUGE.  We had plenty of room to sleep, lounge and relax.  Kevin said he knew that we'd want to be able to relax and this room would give us the chance to do that.

Kevin surprised me with a balcony!!  I knew we'd have a window, but he told the big kids to help keep the surprise of an upgraded room.  They did and I was so surprised. I  thought we'd walked into the wrong room :)

We dropped off our stuff and headed to explore the ship + get some lunch.

See what I mean??  Early boarding felt very VIP :)

We were out on the balcony when we left the port.  These friendly dolphins put on a show alongside our cruise ship.

The sleeping set up was perfect!  A king bed.  A sofa bed and a bunk bed.  We all had plenty of room.  We barely ever heard neighbors and all slept so well.

We had a very large closet to hang all of our clothes for dinners and store luggage.  There were drawers in the closet and then a wall of drawers.  We all unpacked and then put our nesting luggage away for the week.

We each had our own drawers and spaces to keep our things organized.

Suite U107, thanks for the memories!  We had a really great time cruising during the week on Carnival.  We left on a Sunday and returned Saturday morning.  Kevin was told that the Carnival cruises during the week are more family friendly and low key.  We found that to be true.