sistersontheseasuk

I believe Ocean has capacity for 1000 people to be seated upstairs and around 100 downstairs, 5000 people are never going to turn up at exactly the same time, even without the guidance of the arrival times. Most people do try and aim for as close to their times as they can, and coaches obviously have set arrival times too. Prior to these changes of people being asked to wait outside had you ever arrived at the terminal and found the building to be full? I know I haven't and I have sailed on full Iona sailings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't believe the queuing area outside would house as many people as the building could?

Totally agree Mayflower park is nice, but only when the weather is good! When you've had a long journey and have been up for hours, sometimes all you want to do is find a quiet corner to wait in. Some people (appreciate not all!) are paying thousands of pounds for their dream holiday and they're being asked to wander the streets of Southampton for hours on end when there is a perfectly good terminal building that was literally made for people to wait in.

For us, Princess isn't enough of a better product to account for the big difference in prices once you've accounted for gratuities. We've cruised with Princess a couple of times and do like them, but had a terrible experience on Enchanted Princess last summer which has made us a bit apprehensive about booking with them in the future.

We've done the luggage drop and gone back into Southampton and come back recently. No issues at all doing that, baggage handlers don't know your arrival time. We did have an issue very recently where we simply couldn't get close to the port area to drop luggage before taking our car to the car park, the traffic was horrendous! For all the planning in the world its extremely difficult to time your arrival with perfect accuracy. Lots of people don't actually want to queue jump and board early, they just want to be allowed to wait somewhere, like you can in an airport if you arrive early for a flight. The majority of the terminal buildings in Southampton have space to allow this (Ocean certainly does!) so it just seems like P&O are being intentionally difficult by not letting people inside to wait.

We've branched out into YouTube today, and have posted our first video review -

Didn't work for us on Enchanted Princess in August, but there was a massive amount of passengers using the Wi-Fi so it was poor in general.

Our parents have used AllClear in the past, I know they state they'll cover any medical condition and have no age limit but no idea if there are cheaper insurers out there or not.

There are a couple of different options at Chef's table compared with the MDRs, for example the Beef Wellington is available at Chef's table but not in the MDRs. By regular menu options do you mean the steak and salmon dishes that are available everyday? If so, they aren't offered in the MDR on celebration night on Iona. You just get the celebration menu. These aren't great photos, but here's the Chef's Table menu from our August Iona cruise.

You can't book until you're onboard, but I wouldn't be too panicked about getting a booking. On Iona Chef's Table is in the buffet, and I think they just extend the space used depending on how many bookings they get.

We've continued posting on the blog and now have a few posts documenting our summer cruises onboard P&O's Iona and Enchanted Princess 🙂 Any feedback is appreciated - https://www.sistersontheseas.com/blog

Thank you! We'll keep posting, we've got a few trips coming up so hopefully we'll have lots to post about!

Hi all, We’re sisters, Lizzy and Laura from Birmingham UK who have been cruising for 10 years. We’ve been sharing our stories and photos on Instagram since April and have had so much fun doing it that we’ve decided to start a blog too. It’s very early days and we’ve only got 2 posts so far but would love to get some thoughts and opinions! http://www.sistersontheseas.com We’ll be sharing lots more about previous cruises and experiences and upcoming cruises.

Coral/Pearl for me, generally a lot quicker to get a table as they are so much larger

We were on Iona in a group of 8 in October, we didn't book anything until boarding as we couldn't see a way to book for the linked parties online. Once onboard we were able to book restaurants pretty easily just by physically going to the restaurant, it was a pain on the app as we weren't able to book a table larger than 6 on there (it wasn't possible when joining queues for the MDR either). They may have updated this by now though? At the Olive Grove they wouldn't make a booking for us manually and we had to book 2 tables of 4 via the app, we were however seated at one large table once we arrived.