It appears that Carnival Cruise Line's oldest ship, the Carnival Elation, will be sailing for at least another couple of years into the foreseeable future.

The ship, which is 25 years old and is on its way to a scrapyard to be dismantled — a fate that has befallen six of its seven sister vessels in just the last three years — has just received the kind of update that doesn't ordinarily occur for a ship that is set to get that upgrade.

The eight ships that make up the series, which are referred to as the Fantasy class as a whole and have been the fleet's eldest vessels for a significant amount of time, have been in the process of being phased out by Carnival. The Carnival Elation, on the other hand, seems to have been granted a stay of execution.

This past week, Carnival made the announcement that its cruise ship Carnival Elation had resumed operations following a makeover that took place in a dry dock. The makeover gave the ship a new "livery" on its hull in the colours red, white, and blue, as well as interior upgrades such as a redesigned spa area.

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From Jacksonville, Florida, the 2,130-passenger vessel embarks on excursions to the Bahamas that last either four or five nights.

The ship is the only one in the Carnival fleet that dates back to the 1990s, at least in its current condition. The exception to this is Carnival Paradise, a Fantasy-class vessel that made its debut seven months after Carnival Elation.

In addition to it, Carnival operates another ship known as the Carnival Sunshine, which was built in the 1990s. But, in 2013, the ship had its interior entirely gutted, it was reconstructed from the ground up, and it was given a new name and christened. In the world of cruises, this makes its age a significant enough number to warrant the use of an asterisk.

The Carnival Sunshine was initially constructed in 1996 under the name Carnival Destiny.

Carnival Elation is a member of the Fantasy-class line of cruise ships, which first made their appearance in 1990 and have enjoyed tremendous success since then. The vessels were essential to the development of the tourism industry as a whole.

In 1990, when the first ship of the Fantasy class was launched, Carnival only had a handful of ships in its fleet. The introduction of this ship and its seven sisters between the years 1990 and 1998 propelled the line into the major leagues of the tourism industry in North America.

The Fantasy-class ships have been at the centre of Carnival's fleet for a good portion of its history. This, however, started to shift more than a decade ago with the introduction of numerous new series of larger ships, which led to a change. As a cost-saving measure, Carnival started retiring its Fantasy-class ships very immediately after the COVID-19 epidemic broke out at the beginning of 2020.

Just a matter of months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carnival retired four of the eight ships that belonged to the Fantasy class, and it removed a fifth ship from the series, the Carnival Sensation, from its fleet in the early years of 2022.

It has just been three and a half months since the line transferred the sixth vessel in the series, which was named Carnival Ecstasy, to a scrapper in Turkey to be disassembled. This event took place in late October.

Although they are still quite popular with Carnival passengers, in part due to their more cosy dimensions, the ships in the Fantasy class are notable for their dearth of balcony cabins, which are the type of accommodation that virtually everyone seeks these days. The majority of the cabins on these ships are either ocean-view cabins that only have a window or porthole or windowless interior cabins that are located on the lower decks of the ship.

Related: the complete guide to the cruise ships and itineraries offered by Carnival Cruise Line

In comparison to the more modern and larger Carnival ships, the ships in the Fantasy class provide a more limited selection of amenities and venues.

When it initially started operating, the Carnival Elation was one of the largest cruise ships in the world because it weighed in at more than 70,000 tonnes. At the time, its passenger capacity of 2,052 passengers, assuming that each seat was occupied by two persons, was quite a lot. Currently, it would not even come close to making it onto the list of the top 50 largest cruise ships, some of which have capacities of more than 7,000 passengers each. Cruise ships have gotten bigger and grander over time.

With a gross tonnage of 183,521 tonnes, Carnival's newest ship, the Carnival Celebration, which was just introduced to the public, is more than twice as large as Carnival Elation. It can transport 5,282 passengers at full capacity (6,465 with every pull-down bunk and pullout sofa filled).

Related: a rundown of the eight different ship classes offered by Carnival Cruise Line

As a result of Carnival Elation's six Fantasy-class sisters leaving the fleet in recent years and the addition of numerous newer boats to the fleet, Carnival now has a total of 24 ships in its fleet. That is a number that will increase later this summer when the line assumes possession of a vessel that was previously operated by its sister company, Costa Cruises. This vessel is four years old.

The ship, which now sails under the name Costa Venezia, is going to be rechristened as Carnival Venezia.

After being christened by Shari Arison Dorsman, a member of the founding family of the Carnival brand, the ship Carnival Elation set sail on its first journey on April 1, 1998. It was initially the same size as its sisters in the Fantasy class, but in 2017 a new deck and 30 additional cabins were added, causing it to become slightly larger than its sisters in that class.

The ship was notable for being the first cruise ship of any line to be outfitted with an Azipod propulsion system. An Azipod is a sort of propulsion system that provides ships with increased manoeuvrability in comparison to older vessels that were built using shaft propellers.

In 2021, Carnival's newest ship at the moment, the 5,282-passenger Mardi Gras, was the first to debut the new livery that would later be added to the Carnival Elation. As each ship in the Carnival fleet enters a dry dock for maintenance or improvements, it is being implemented on further vessels in the fleet.

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