The penetration of a long gas bubble through a tube filled with a viscoelastic fluid is studied. This problem has practical applications in gas-assisted injection molding, enhanced oil recovery, production of hollow fiber membranes, and coating of ceramic monoliths for the manufacture of catalytic converters. A hydrodynamic coating is formed on a capillary tube wall by injecting a single long gas bubble through the fluid. This problem has been studied extensively for Newtonian fluids, but little work has been done to understand how non-Newtonian fluids behave in this flow. The work presented in this paper is directed at identifying the effects of fluid elasticity on the hydrodynamic fractional coverage coated by a long penetrating bubble. Experiments were performed with four test fluids including two Newtonian fluids and two highly elastic, constant shear viscosity fluids. Hydrodynamic fractional coverage, m was characterized in terms of the capillary number, Ca and Deborah number, De. For small Deborah number, De < 1, both viscoelastic fluids exhibit a fractional coverage identical to that of a Newtonian fluid at an equivalent capillary number. The fractional coverage for both viscoelastic fluids begins to increase relative to the Newtonian result at De approximate to 1. Fractional coverage continues to increase with Deborah number for all De greater than or equal to 1. At De approximate to 5 fractional coverage is 30% greater than the Newtonian fluid result. A plot of fractional coverage versus capillary number is found to be independent of tube diameter for a Newtonian fluid. However, for a viscoelastic fluid, fractional coverage is found to be a strong function of tube diameter. The Deborah number is found to collapse fractional coverage data for experiments conducted with different tube diameters.