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4 minutes ago, Host Sharon said:

These are all valid points. I think one of the major problems though is that P&O are not being upfront about it when you book. People are booking cruises  based on what they read in the brochures and on the website and only finding out on board that some of the speciality restaurants are closed or that there is no longer afternoon tea in the  MDR or nightly turndown. That is why expectations are higher than reality.

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.

1 hour ago, ozzysdad said:

Problem I have now with those doing the reviews is they expect Butlins prices with Hilton service

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.

10 hours ago, Yorkypete said:

Love Costa...much better thanStarbucks.

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

1 hour ago, sagaris said:

One evening I ordered apple and rhubarb crumble with custard and a scoop of ice cream, when it came the crumble and custard were cold and the ice cream had melted

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.

11 minutes ago, Cathygh said:

On Azura in October there was no little biscuit served with Costa coffee but at least cake was still free with the drink

They are charging for the breakfast pastries though.

5 hours ago, Marmadukes said:

but I do enjoy a good coffee

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).

24 minutes ago, Denarius said:

Probably reflects the high proportion of first time cruisers who are not sure what is and what is not acceptable so opt to play it safe.

Or have taste…

25 minutes ago, devonuk said:

To be fair we did have a particularly good stateroom attendant 👏🏻👍

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.

22 minutes ago, binman2 said:

We were priority disembarkation on iona allotted 8.45 am arrived at the venue at 8.05am allowed to get straight off 

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

55 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I believe that the CPS system may have changed? Can anyone who has cruised on Iona during the summer school holidays please advise how they found CPS in terms of speed?

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.

2 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

That last paragraph is somewhat contradictory, although I know it happens. But it just shows that they have not got a satisfactory way of allocating tables. If you have both sharing tables waiting to be filled, and passengers willing to share queueing  at the same time, then it's not rocket science to sort it out.

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 11/8/2022 at 10:22 PM, Otter18 said:

Hi Dillie. I was on Iona earlier this year. It was about 80% full, just for your info. Queuing for dinner was quite short whether physical or virtual.

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.

6 minutes ago, Neecy1 said:

We will, of course, put a mask on in confined areas

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. 

17 hours ago, Neecy1 said:

Sailing on Iona on Saturday. Just wondering how things are covid wise on the ships currently sailing. Do we need to wear masks. And are passengers being quarantined. It all seems to have gone quiet. Hopefully this is a good sign. 

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.

17 hours ago, JG&Lcruisingnewbies said:

She’s beautiful!

 

Only when viewed from the inside.

22 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

sharing a table hardly has any waiting time.

The ‘gentleman’ having a shouting argument with the MDR host last night after being told how long he would have to wait for a sharing table would disagree with you.

21 hours ago, davecttr said:

The new Arvia will have 2 large main dining rooms with the 2 smaller ones repurposed into the Olive Grove and an American diner.

That will exacerbate the pressure on the remaining two MDRs - the queue for a table can already be over an hour. 

Booking Saver fares early seems to be a bit of a mugs game - you are gambling both that the price won’t fall before sailing and you are gambling that the cruise doesn’t sell well so you are left with the dross that nobody else wants. 
 

If (and I severely doubt it) that P&O gave some priority to early Saver bookers to receive the best of the dross left when it came to allocating cabins then there might be some point, but as the allocation method appears to be a ‘put the names in a hat’ approach then why expose yourself to the risk. 
 

And if booking late then it is straightforward choice between weighing up the price difference between Saver and Select - and on the Iona cruise I am currently sat on the price difference was negative £450 - yes £450 cheaper to book Select over Saver. 

3 hours ago, Teddy123 said:

A quick question: is the app available across the whole P&O fleet? (I assume if it is, it's identical on each ship). Thanks.

It isn’t an app but a captive webpage that the ship’s WiFi serves whenever you connect to it. 

1 hour ago, wowzz said:

What current circumstances affect formal nights ?

Have you not noticed the difficulty that P&O has filling its ships with traditional customers. 

45 minutes ago, wowzz said:

but the three remaing mid-size ships will continue as before.

Unless you are on the management board of P&O then that’s just a guess. 
 

I would say that in the current circumstances that everything is up for grabs. 

3 minutes ago, wowzz said:

I think the direction is clear for the large ships - I see no evidence of any change of direction on the rest of the fleet.

 

Other than sending the ships that used to do that frequency to the scrapyard and replacing them with those that don’t?

The only booking for the MDRs (at least on Iona at the moment) seems to be for the early times (before 6pm), and after that you have to queue.

Lunchtimes it seems pointless using the app since if you just walk up to the hosts desk you will be seated anyway.

The main issue with the lengthy queues doesn’t seem to be the passengers, but the staff and P&O’s IT system. They still don’t have sufficient staff so the staff are struggling to cope, and their online ‘at table’ ordering system is constantly falling over.