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And the administered ones all say - *don't book a test if you have the symptoms of COVID*

You actually drink the brown stuff served in the buffet - brave, very brave! My preference if the ship is in port is to get off and find somewhere that actually serves coffee that tastes of coffee - and that’s pretty much enough for breakfast.

No, because 6.15 in the morning doesn't exist, and certainly isn't a time for food.

Have you not seen the people who actually finger the food in the buffet? Or those, despite the many signs, fill water bottles from the water and juice dispensers? And that's before you get to those that pick a plate up and then decide they don't want it and put it back, or those that can't take a single knife or spoon without handling the lot. Rule 1 is inviolate if there is even a hint of norovirus - never ever eat or drink anything that another passenger has had the possibility of touching.

For the boarding pass, on my last cruise I had contemplated simply transferring the QR code on the pass to Apple Wallet in my phone so it could be scanned (as I do with all other boarding passes, membership cards, etc.) In the end I didn't but took a paper copy, and as it turned out the check-in desk stamped the paper with an 'OK to board' stamp that was then checked before passing through the security scanners. Not having the paper copy - I am sure it would have been resolved but it would likely have delayed things slightly.

Of course not using sanitizer when going into the buffet during a norovirus outbreak is unforgivable, but who on earth would risk the Russian roulette that is the buffet during a norovirus outbreak! As for the MDRs, then using sanitizer is of course polite, but the risk of infection from passengers who haven't used sanitizer is substantially lower and is reduced by avoiding touching surfaces others may have done, but mainly by not eating with your fingers - leave the bread alone.

And in a dozen years of cruises, I have never had a missed port, so all those premiums would have been wasted! Of course. An informed position is a good position.

Depends on how you weigh up the risk and whether it is worth the cost of the additional insurance. Some people will insure for anything and everything no matter how trivial the impact (e.g. people insuring household appliances) because they are risk averse, others will 'self-insure' and take things as they go and if things go bad think 'hey ho' but remember about how much has been saved over the previous years.

They don't. They just require travel insurance that doesn't exclude cruises, which is different from travel insurance specifically for cruises.

Aren't P&O being upfront? For afternoon tea the website says "and even daily afternoon tea are included in the buffet" so that isn't misleading, and as far as I can see there is no mention of a nightly turndown. The speciality restaurants being closed is a reasonable complaint, but like all holiday packages there is always the fall back of 'subject to availability' and the world is still in a post-covid state.

Exactly The Iona cruise I returned from last week cost the two of us under £40 per person per night each. FORTY POUNDS! And that provided for accommodation cleaned daily, three meals a day served in the MDR plus whatever you wanted to eat elsewhere, transport to Spain and Portugal, entertainment (usually three different shows a night), gym, cinema, etc. For FORTY POUNDS a night! Am I expecting Hilton service at that price, of course I am not, but what I did get was an awful awful lot better than Butlins. If you want Hilton service then pay Hilton prices - and there are plenty of cruise brands within the Carnival portfolio offering that.

That's a pretty low bar to compare it with.

But did you send it back to be replaced and then afterwards say anything to the restaurant head waiter? On my recent cruise on Iona I had similar and did send it back and then mention it to the head waiter - and for the remainder of the fortnight we didn’t encounter any further issues.

They are charging for the breakfast pastries though.

Although what the Costa’s onboard sell is better than the brown water served elsewhere, it unfortunately isn’t what I wouldn’t call it ‘good coffee’ - adequate at best. And don’t rely on the pricing on the menu on the ship’s ‘app’ as the prices have increased by 10% from the prices shown, so although an espresso is shown as £1.95 it is actually £2.15 (plus another 10% if in a Spanish port).

Or have taste…

Are there bad ones? On any cruise I leave for breakfast (coffee and pastry) and when I return 20 minutes or so later the room has been dealt with in my absence and alway looks immaculate.

Nobody checks you are disembarking at the time you are allocated - they just want you gone for the next people to board.

It wasn't full school holidays, but I used CPS a fortnight ago when Iona was sailing pretty full, and returned on Saturday. Drop off was straightforward, drove in and instantly was met and unloaded the car and left it with them - although that was at 11.30am and I believe there were queues to drive into the terminal later on. I could then see from the car's tracking information that it was moved into the car park a few hundred yards away, and where it then remained until we returned. On return we got off (early self-disembarkation at 7.30am) and waited for 30 seconds to pick up the keys, drove out along with the others disembarking at that time and was away home instantly.

One thing I did notice on my recent Iona cruise was that most of those wearing black tie were wearing standard black tie and almost nobody was wearing dinner jackets of ‘unusual’ colours and incredibly few wearing ‘amusing’ bow ties.

To clarify, there were lengthy waiting times for both sharing and non-sharing tables, not helped by the fact there are separate queues for each of the four restaurants so you might have eight people waiting to be seated but they all want to be seated in different restaurants. The queues were not as result of there being no available tables free, there were plenty - although most of the sharing tables were unmade and full of the previous diner’s detritus by 8pm. It was the lack of waiting and kitchen staff that was the issue - waiters either running around like mad things serving their tables, or stood around polishing cutlery whilst waiting ages for the kitchen to deliver the food - the latter particularly the issue if anything had to come from the ‘allergy kitchen’ when waits of 40 minutes for a course were not unusual. When those sharing tables were eventually made up then they either went unoccupied, or one couple would turn up, then five minutes later another couple, and five minutes later perhaps another couple, and then either another couple eventually turned up or the waiters acknowledged the first couple had been sat at the table for 20 minutes plus the waiting time in the queue and served the part full table. Where did the other sharers waiting in the queue go - sorry I have no idea, but my guess is they either got fed up waiting and simply physically went to another restaurant as by that time people seemed to getting sat at individual tables as they turned up straight away (by that time the waiters want to get people through otherwise they are going to be late closing up).

On the Iona cruise I got off yesterday the queues for the MDRs were significantly longer with waits of over an hour not being unusual. Even those willing to share tables were complaining about the wait, and then with shared tables from 8pm onwards there was the issue of people needing to wait again for the table to fill if they were the first seated - and occasionally them giving up and serving only a pair of couples on a table for eight when nobody else willing to share arrived.

Having just returned from another cruise on Iona, it really is a 'curate's egg' of a ship. On the good points - - The cabin accommodation is good - far better than many of P&O's ships. - There seems to be more deck space than ships such as Ventura/Azura, but more importantly for me there are more outside that are not purely sunbed areas and there are more shaded areas. - Theatre is far nicer and more legroom in the seats. - Cinema screens are very good, and a welcome choice on seadays. - Quays food courts are a far better option than the Horizon buffet, and the Olive Grove is very nice. - 710 club is good - although now it is booking only (with any empty seats from non-attendees offered just before showtime). And the bad points - - The atrium with the Emerald 'cocktail' bar, the Glass House 'wine' bar, and the Cow & Keel 'gastropub' - all awful as the location as the atmosphere of an airport terminal. During the day the atrium is lovely, although all the space in the Cow & Keel is wasted as nobody sits there, but in an evening - awful. During a fortnights cruise I saw virtually nobody use the Glass House in the evening, and it was just sat there as empty wasted space. - Other space is also wasted, such as the table seating area on deck 8 for the ice-cream parlour that nobody uses. - Crows Nest is rather hidden away down a long corridor. - Some of the balcony cabins (deck 8, etc.) are just absurd. - MDR's struggling to cope with freedom dining - long queues, with queues even for those wanting to share tables - the main issue seems to be a lack of staff (both waiters and kitchen) as frequently on an evening there were vast numbers of tables unoccupied whilst people waited for the queue to move on the 'app'. Tables that had been occupied and then vacated at 8pm then sat with the detritus from the meal for half an hour or more, and by the time they were remade they were then frequently not used. - The poor level changes in the floor on deck 8 - it is almost as if they started building the ship at both ends and realised their measurements didn't match. - Club House struggling to cope with the volume of guests, particularly when the theatre throws out at 9.15 from the 8.30 show and there is a sudden influx of people all disappointed that there are no seats left. Other changes that P&O have made - - Using the housekeeping staff in the MDR's to guide guests to the tables - great but the housekeeping staff frequently don't know where the tables are. - The 'dumbed down' bar menus where the staff are unable to serve anything not on the menu even if they have the ingredients - you can't buy a vermouth anywhere onboard, even though some bars have bottles of it on display to use in cocktails. Also only some drinks are available in some bars (with no rationale as to why) so if you want that drink you either have to go to that bar and carry it back or go without.

Obviously your choice, but lifts absolutely jam packed, theatre full, club overflowing - and virtually zero masked passengers. Even where it was legally required on the shuttle buses in Spain (but not today in Portugal) observance was 50% on the buses out and 10% on the buses back to the ship.

Sat on Iona in Lisbon at the moment. Over the last 10 days I have seen no signs of any quarantine (red dots and trays outside of cabins, or areas blocked off), nor has their been any ‘gossip’ amongst the passengers about any cases. The ship did need to make an emergency stop yesterday after we left Cadiz so a seriously ill passenger could be transported ashore by the coastguard but there was obviously no mention of the passenger’s illness. Mask wearing - perhaps 1 in 500 or fewer passengers is wearing a mask. Amongst the crew it seems to be around 5 or 10%, but that includes the crew that wear theirs under their chin until they need to speak to a passenger when they pull it up (presumably to protect themselves). The questioning at the terminal on embarkation was “do you meet the COVID vaccination and testing policy” with an express ‘no we don’t want to see anything to prove it’. Effectively things are little different to they were pre-covid - other than the staffing issues and associated changes.