We booked Iona to travel with friends who were celebrating a special occasion having previously moved away from the P&O brand for lots of reasons.
We were impressed with the boarding systems and were very quickly on the ship and in our cabin.
This is where things started to be not so good.
We had a conservatory cabin which was very long and thin.
in fact so thin that there was barely a foot at the end of he bed to walk into the cabin.
likewise the wardrobes were in a ridiculous position.
The door opened straight onto the side of the bed and the only way to put stuff in the wardrobe was literally to stand in it.
The conservatory was nice but unheated and on our cruise it was chilly so we didn’t use it much.
Whoever decided Iona should do the fjords is frankly a fool, we only managed 2 of our 4 stops as it was too windy for us or the ship was too big for the port.
we were 9 hours late leaving Southampton which meant we didn’t even make our first stop as there was not enough time.
You never saw the ships staff, the captain spoke twice on the whole trip very impersonal and business like.
The ship itself is very big in fact too big.
Not enough space in various venues in the evenings for the number of people on board, I wonder what it will be like when its at full capacity .
The food in the main restaurants was ok .
The food in the paid restaurants was better.
I liked The Quays but even that got boring.
The staff are seriously overworked and many don’t seem to know what they are doing.
Quite a few were surly to say the least and you often waited ages to be served not what you expect on a cruise ship.
To finish off my trip I came home with Covid.
Having avoided it for 2 1/2 years was very disappointed to catch it on a ship We will not be using P&O again
