I'm not qualified to know what medications would work best for others, but I can share my experience. What causes me mania more than anything else are the following:

* Being unmedicated
* Drinking alcohol with or without medications
* Taking any kind of antidepressant (though I know many people with bipolar disorder benefit from them)
* Taking a stimulant (like Provigil)
* Taking bipolar medications that are activating for me. In my case, Lamictal and Abilify were quite activating. I do take a small dose of Lamictal now and have for a while, but I take it along with an antipsychotic and a large dose of a moodstabilizer that is not activating for me (Tegretol XR aka carbamazepine ER).
* Being on bipolar medications that just don't have enough umph to fight my mania
* Being under great stress (being triggered by that). Sometimes the great stress is even an extremely positive one.
* I often get upswings in the spring. This year it has been controlled well, though.

If I avoid all of the above, I can usually (but not always) fight off mania.

I won't go into detail about my manias because they pretty much include everything in the symptom list. I do get elated manias, but often either during the elated mania or towards the end, it gets extremely irritable. Often my manias become mixed.