Spring Break on Elation 3/16-21

[twinmom2298]

Just did a spring break cruise with my 21 yr old daughter on Elation.  I know a lot of people don't like the smaller ships but we felt there was plenty of room, never had an issue finding a deck chair and loads of activities to choose from.  

 

We did faster to the fun for the 1st time.  I would definitely book this again.  It was worth the money for embarkation and debarkation and for the ability to get an easy tender on the day we were in half moon cay.

 

Our cruise director was Chris Malliate and he was fantastic.  

 

We did the behind the fun excursion which I'd never done before. It was very interesting.  There were 9 of us on the tour, it lasted about 3.5 hours and each member of the crew in every department took a ton of time and answered every question from every participant.  If you are at all interested in the innerworkings of the ship and how it operates I would highly recommend this tour.

 

In Half Moon Cay my daughter swam with the sting rays.  While she absolutely LOVED it and said she would do it again.  I was a bit irritated that the tour before our's was very large and ran late so they didn't start our tour until 30 minutes late.  but then they cut us short because the tour after our's was arriving.  So they skipped the last part of excursion.  Which actually in the end worked out because since they started so late if they hadn't ended early we would not have been able to make it to the BBQ in time to get anything to eat.  Even going straight there from the excursion with the excursion charter dropping us off at food we got there only 5 minutes before it closed.  So I would say if you want to do this excursion I would make sure to book the 1st one of the day.

 

One thing I was disappointed in was the bar/coffee service.  There never seemed to be enough bartenders or barristas and they did not move fast.  So you spent a lot of time waiting for a drink or a coffee.  At one point I ordered a drink well before a show in the lounge was due to start.  I didn't receive it until the show was almost over almost an hour later.  Another time I ordered a mimosa when we sat down to sea day brunch.  And I didn't receive it until our meal was almost complete.  While I'm not a big drinker and never anticipated drinking anything close to the 15 drinks a day I initially thought between drinks, water and specialty coffees we would break even or better on the Cheers package.  But with the long waits it would have been cheaper to just pay by the drink.  So I wouldn't do Cheers again.

 

Both my daughter and I are gluten intolerant so needed to be gluten free.  We were both very happy to say we got off the ship and neither of us have been accidentally glutened at all.  The dining room and kitchen staff were all over being accommodating.  The maitre d' did warn us on the first day that we needed to watch anything we ate on Lido deck as they weren't necessarily as cautious as the dining room staff.  The one thing I did notice so we didn't eat at the deli was that while they had gluten free bread and they did change gloves between sandwiches and used a fresh knife and they had GF butter to use on the bread before putting in panini maker they took the spreader that they used on the regular bread stuck it in the GF butte and used it on the GF bread then stuck it back in the regular butter.  So major risk of cross-contamination.  

 

All in all we had a wonderful time and are already trying to find a date to cruise again around school and work schedules.

[sc4125]

In reference to the long wait for drinks - I've gotten to the point that I go to the bartender myself and order a drink when I'm on the Lido - much faster than ordering with a bar waiter who is taking drink orders from everyone else on the way to turn your order in.  I hardly ever order through a waiter unless it's a slow port day out on Lido.  The one think I like about CHEERS is even though I normally get free drinks in the Casino, I prefer to walk up to the Casino bar & order my own with CHEERS.