From day one of my cruise, I decided I wasn’t going to use the app, it was the best decision I made.
Passengers were having numerous problems using it, bookings disappearing, long queues for tables in the restaurants.
Christmas Day was a nightmare for some passengers, especially people with young children who finished dining at 11 pm, having been waiting for hours.
I avoided these problems by not using the app.
The staffing levels on the Iona were quite low with most crew having two jobs, for eg, the cabin stewards were also expected to serve in the restaurants.
Having said that, I found that the crew were extremely helpful and polite under very difficult situations, unfortunately, they took a lot of the flack from disgruntled, passengers but remained calm.
I was very disappointed after asking at reception for help with my luggage off the ship(I couldn’t manage my walking stick and luggage) to be told that no help was available, and that I would have to make my own way down to the lounge, fortunately I had a brilliant cabin steward who helped me, some of the senior staff could do with taking lessons from the hands-on crew.
