So, our standard drawing font is Arial, unfortunately all the surface labels come in at the surface elevation which makes the Arial font look and print bold even though it isn't. short of exploding the labels, does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to make them print like the rest of the text in our drawings? Thanks

Use ROMANS?  It shows well on all of the drawings we do, and uses less ink too. 

Yeah........... I've tried using a few different fonts but the proportions are too different from Arial and unfortunately, I have a couple of engineers who obsess over that sort of thing.I would like to change our font standard but at this point it would take an act of god. Thanks for the suggestion though. If my engineers weren't quite so picky about their font it would work. 

The standard font for your drawings can be arial.  no problem.  What you need to do is create a LABEL STYLE for your contours.  The font for your style can be independent of the font you label everything else with.  Check on how to create the style. There are youtube videos, or text instructions on the internet.