Taking a family cruise has always been a dream of mine! My husband and I had talked about taking one for YEARS but for some reason or the other, it just never happened. I eventually found an amazing deal on a short Carnival Cruise to the Bahamas and we both decided it was time!
Like any other vacation, it seemed like it took forever for the day to finally arrive. We live in Georgia and decided to drive on down to Jacksonville,Fl a day early. [As a first time cruiser, and as travel agent, I suggest doing this method as well- even if you are flying in!] We spent the entire drive down talking about what we hope to see and do while on the cruise. It definitely helped the time pass with the kiddos. Arriving a day before embarkation allowed us to feel less rushed come the next morning. Even with our priority boarding the whole process was a bit hectic but thankfully it went quick! I highly suggest to have all your documents out and ready to go for sure. 😅
Our first day on board consisted of just checking out our room, enjoying our balcony, and exploring the ship. The Carnival Elation is one of the smallest ships in the Carnival Cruise Line fleet. For our first cruise, we felt like this was a great stepping stone. Even though it is a smaller ship there were TONS of things to do for everyone in our group. There were super fun water slides, clubs (for kids and adults),mini golf, Seuss at Sea, and tons of dance parties on the Lido deck!
One of our favorite things to do was duck hunt! Yes, you heard that right.. Duck hunting! We searched for rubber ducks that were hidden all over the ship. This activity isn’t actually a part of the cruise. It is a super fun thing amongst other cruise guests. Most would leave little tags stating where the family is from and how to share it on social media when you found their duck. Between the 5 of us, ended up finding 12 of them during our trip. We made it a game to see who could find the most. I highly suggest participating this! Next time, I plan to buy some ducks ahead of time so we can have fun hiding them too.
During this sailing we visited 2 ports- Freeport and Bimini. And like every cruise, you can book several different excursions, if you’d like for the ports that you visit. We decided to opt out of those this trip since we weren’t sure how the kids or I would handle being on a ship. Our first port of call was Freeport. I had heard a lot about this port and was super excited. Once there, I can honestly say that I wasn’t exactly impressed. Freeport had TONS of little shops that you can walk around and check out. Overall, without doing any excursions, it seemed pretty lackluster. 🤷🏻♀️
Our second port of call was Bimini. We loved Bimini and could have stayed there forever! We walked around the little resort area that was lined with a few shops and a fun bar area with live music. We spent most of our day at the beach though. My kids are like Moana- the ocean calls them! 😂 We were all a little sad when it was time to board the ship again. For our next cruise I think we will definitely try out an excursion.. or two!
When it comes to dining on the ship, there are seriously so many choices! We chose to do the buffet for breakfast and for lunch we would either do the buffet, Guy’s Burger Joint (AMAZING burgers btw!!), or the Blue Iguana. For dinner, we always found ourselves at one of the formal dining rooms. My daughter loved the formal dining. My daughter is on the spectrum and she ended up trying so many new foods here! It was so great to see her branch out from the standard chicken tenders/ nuggets (IYKYK)! Her and our waiter became friends very quickly during our stay too. He would always make her super cute “friends” out of the napkins, she would draw him pictures, and they would dance together during the dessert dance party. It was so sweet to watch!
Overall, the cruise was fantastic and ended way too soon! Looking back, I do wish we went with a longer cruise. We made so many wonderful first time memories and none of us wanted it to be over. But it was time for us to disembark head on over to our next adventure at Disney World!
Be sure to join me next time when I will be talking about why we added a single park day at the end of our cruise and why you should too! 😉 Until then…
Your Bibbidi Bobbidi Bestie,
Kayla
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