CRUISE REVIEW : IONA

14 NIGHTS ON P&O’S CRUISE SHIP IONA

I SAILED ON IONA

At the end of October 2022 I spent 2 weeks cruising on the newest cruise ship in P&O Cruises fleet, Iona.

I had a very nice time.

Not an amazing time, nothing to wow me, no real excitement, but nice, very nice.

Not much (though not nothing) to complain about really either.

This is my review of the holiday. I’ll save the ship tour for another post.

A note on reviews

Now this may seem obvious, but as I’m writing this review it is an account of my experience on the ship and my opinion of it.

How much weight you put on my review will depend on how much the other posts I share resonate with you and therefore how much value my opinion has to you.

Remember this is just my opinion. You are welcome to read it and disagree. I welcome constructive thoughts, whether you agree with me or not, in the comments section below.

LAST MINUTE DEALS

I got a great last minute deal!

Being free to travel any time at the moment is a real bonus. I fancied a bit of winter sun, but I had been struggling to find anything within my budget.

My usual go to cruise lines were a bit expensive, or there were no last minute solo spaces. I considered beach holidays, but even then I wasn’t having much luck.

Then by chance I looked at P&O’s website. It is several years since I last sailed on P&O’s Britannia. Not my favourite cruise ship, I must admit, but not so bad I would write them off.

It was Sunday morning and leaving the following Saturday was a two week cruise on Iona.

A standard inside cabin with no single supplement was a real bargain. I don’t know if this was due to how late I was booking, or a genuine regular low price. I suspect something in between.

In any case I couldn’t resist.

I was going on holiday…. in a week’s time!

BOOKING ONLINE

I booked my holiday with P&O Cruises directly on their website.

The deal was a Saver fare cabin, so I had no choice, other than I knew was it would be a standard inside cabin.

Actually the booking process was very simple. I had emails with all of my details in no time. It helped that as a past customer I already had a P&O account set up online.

Over the next week I had to update my details and travel documents, complete a health survey. Covid protocols are no longer so onerous, but not quite consigned to history just yet.

My only criticism was that there were at least two separate websites to use to enter information. It would have been helpful if all the links were in one place. But I managed to work it out.

By midweek I had my cabin allocation and my luggage tags were printed.

Offline I was frantically getting my holiday packing together. Fortunately its not my first trip, so it may have been chaos, but it was organised chaos!

ITINERARY

The Canaries, Spain & Portugal was a lovely itinerary.

I had actually been to all of the ports before at one time or another. There were enough places that I wanted to revisit that made it a worthwhile itinerary though.

The ports of call and destination stories will pop up in later blog posts, but the full itinerary was:

IONA CRUISE COMPARISONS

My Iona cruise followed recent cruises with Marella, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, so inevitably I found myself comparing it to the others, not always favourably.

The Wow Factor

The ship itself was underwhelming.

I had high hopes for the 8th biggest cruise ship in the World and a brand new one at that. I had seen so many glowing posts on Instagram and the like, that I think I had built up possibly unreasonable expectations.

In fact I found it quite boxy and they seemed to have filled almost every bit of space, so that many of the venues actually felt quite small. Some parts are just poorly designed in my opinion.

There was no wow factor for me at all, which was a shame. This is where the comparisons to other more interesting ships I had sailed on kicked in.

A fair comment comes back to value for money. Somebody mentioned to me that they had paid far less for their cruise on Iona than they did for those on other ships, and you have to bear that in mind. Its true, late deals aside, that other cruise lines can be more expensive. Indeed the low price was the main reason I was sailing on Iona. You get what you pay for.

That’s not an excuse for unimaginative design in an ever more competitive cruise market though.

Mega Cruise Ships

To be honest I also thought the ship was too big. That’s not me being a naysayer against large ships, I generally like them, but this was my first mega ship.

Suddenly you have to book for the theatres, because they can’t hold all of the passengers in one venue, even with three sittings.

On short port days we were queuing for ages to get back onto the ship, mainly because the local port security couldn’t keep up with everyone coming back to the ship all at once.

And I’ll come on to getting into dinner later!

It was like the ship couldn’t cope with the number of people on board.

As I say this is my first experience of such a large ship. I don’t know if its a P&O issue or a mega ship issue. Maybe ships have finally become big enough.

Of course as I have mentioned everyone has their own opinions. My first impression did not blow me away.

But hey, I didn’t hate it and I certainly got used to Iona over the next fortnight.

DINING EXPERIENCE

My other big gripe was the dining experience in the main dining rooms.

I’m not complaining about the food. That followed my general opinion of the ship, very nice, not much to get excited about, but nice.

The problem was getting a table.

I’m a solo traveller, so there is little appeal to me in sitting by myself having a pre dinner drink for ages while I wait for a table. I prefer to use that time being entertained after dinner, so I like to be in and out.

Freedom Dining

I love Freedom Dining on ships. Enjoy your day, get ready, go to dinner when you are ready, get a table….freedom to eat when you like!

Not on Iona. You are free to decide what time to book your tables at the start of the cruise or you can take your chances and get fed when you get fed.

They have a virtual queuing system, where you register your readiness for a table on a webpage on your phone and wait for your turn. You get a notification on your phone when your table is ready. Its a clever idea in theory, and certainly if you are in that leisurely pre-dinner drink loving group I can see it working well.

However I ditched the idea after a couple of days with long waits for a table and finding my dinner companions had just walked in with no wait.

Sharing or a table for one

The ship has four main dining rooms. Coral, Pearl, Aqua and Opal. Two are larger than the others and, although you could eat in any, the menu was the same and so I stuck with Coral.

It had a nice atmosphere.

The restaurants very much preferred you to have a shared table, of up to six or eight people generally.

A table for one or two was possible, but that’s when you really had to wait.

I had planned my evening one night early in the cruise around a lot of entertainment, so opted for a table for one. I waited an hour for a free table, so didn’t really get through dinner very quickly at all.

After a couple of shorter waits I discovered that if you were willing to share a table you could generally walk straight in, so for the rest of the cruise that’s what I did.

The trade off with sharing a table is that dinner usually takes ages. At least an hour and a half, if not two hours or more. You had to go early or risk not being out in time for the 9pm entertainment beginning. I only missed it once!! Again not really in the spirit of freedom dining.

However it certainly adds an extra dimension to your holiday as a solo cruiser if you get to share a meal and have good dinner companions. I was lucky most of the time and often had some lively conversations.

GOOD DINING ALTERNATIVES

Okay – enough of the negatives. This is not meant to be a bad, or even a poor review.

It’s not a bad ship by any means, and there were definitely things I liked a lot.

The Quays

The Quays is a great street food idea (albeit dumped on deck 8 along the busy main corridor to the Club House – but I’ve moaned about the ship’s design already!).

Three separate hatches served three different styles of food from lunchtime until evening. In fact there were breakfast options here too that I never got around to trying.

Excellent for fish & chips, Asian curries and delicious burgers!

This was perfect for lunch as the portions were not huge, although I did go for an excellent burger for tea one night when I was a bit later going out and had no chance of getting through the dining room in time for the shows.

The Limelight Club

The Limelight Club was a highlight of the cruise and well worth paying extra for.

For £35 you got a three course meal, that was definitely a few notches up from the food in the main dining room, followed by a brilliant show.

I saw the comedy entertainer La Voix. Fantastic.

The prices did vary depending on the artist doing the show and I heard it was a bit cheaper to book online before the cruise.

I don’t often do speciality dining, but I was glad I did this one.

The Olive Grove

The Olive Grove was also superb and free!

Just a shame it was almost always fully booked for dinner, though I got a cancellation once.

Book quickly!

The Mediterranean Trio starter was absolutely delicious, whilst there were a variety of styles of meals, including Greek, pizza and pasta. Some options came with a supplement, but there were plenty of included choices.

I would have eaten here more if I could have done.

The Beach House

I didn’t realise the Beach House had a £7.50 cover charge. The fee is really not well advertised.

The food was nice, with a Caribbean twist, but not worth paying extra for in my view.

That said I did see people having the steaks, which came with an additional supplement on top of the cover charge, and they did look amazing.

Speciality Restaurants

As I said I don’t generally do speciality restaurants, so it wouldn’t be fair to review them, other than to say there appeared to be a good choice of venues and I heard mostly favourable reports.

FORMAL NIGHT

Iona had two “black tie” formal nights, one per week, on my fortnight’s cruise.

Now over the years I have enjoyed the Captain’s reception and a black tie night on more than a few ships.

But modern tastes are changing and fewer people dress up and it seems to be a dying thing on a lot of cruise lines. On many its a non event these days.

Friends assured me P&O do black tie, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was that the case, but most people actually took part and went for full formal dress. I don’t think I’ve seen a night so well supported.

Unfortunately the size of the ship kicks in again, because there is no venue big enough to hold the Captain’s reception, so the traditional toast was done over the tannoy.

In fact I think its the first time in 26 cruises that I have never seen the captain at all in the entire cruise.

The formal night meal was upgraded to four courses and was quite nice. Everyone got a voucher for a free glass of fizz from any bar on the first formal night.

That aside though there was nothing particularly special about the evening.

I’m glad I have had chance to experience this cruising tradition over the years, because I have a suspicion it is not one that will last.

ENTERTAIN ME

As you’ll know if you’ve read some of my other posts one of the benefits of cruising as a solo is that you are entertained. Its one of the most important parts of a cruise for me.

Day Time

My cruise on Iona had 6 sea days.

Now I must say the daytime schedule was not jam packed during those days, but to be honest I didn’t really need it.

There were plenty of talks and presentations, some of them sales pitches in the shops. Something for everyone at least.

We were lucky to have wine expert Olly Smith on our cruise, so I enjoyed a couple of excellent wine talks. I like wine – that satisfied my interest, as did the talks on art from the gallery.

Meanwhile Iona has a four screen cinema, which had a really excellent choice of new films on over the cruise. Not really what I want to do on holiday, but a good backstop if you really couldn’t find anything to do.

Then of course there was the indoor pool in the Sky Dome, hot tubs and infinity pools at the back of the ship. I didn’t use them, but I did enjoy relaxing on a sun bed on one of the small sun terraces.

Headliners Theatre

As I was going through the online forms after booking I spotted that you could book for theatre shows. A novelty, as I usually just walk in.

I booked the 10.30pm show every night to be on the safe side. That’s what I’d do on any ship. In reality there were three performances in the main theatre each night and you wouldn’t have needed a booking to get in to the late show. I suppose its just in case everyone wanted to go to one particular show.

The evening entertainment was generally excellent, with a decent mix of stage shows and guest entertainers.

Sky Dome

In addition to the theatre there was an alternative show in a different venue around the ship.

The aerialists in the Sky Dome, the indoor pool area by day, were cancelled a couple of times due to sea conditions, but the shows I saw were certainly different.

They need to sort the acoustics in the Sky Dome, which were terrible and unfortunately let down the clearly talented singers who got lumbered with that venue on music nights.

710 Club

The 710 Club is a small venue designed by Gary Barlow.

For my cruise Iona’s four piece band played a variety of different genres of music in a kind of blues or jazz style, with a different theme each night.

You need to book the 710 Club too, although it was possible to sneak in last minute if bookers didn’t turn up (especially if you only need a seat for one!) or go to the after midnight show which was never full.

Fab! Definitely worth more than one visit.

The Club House

The Club House is the second largest venue on the ship and was host to the main party band and the late night disco, as well as the odd comedy show.

There was always something going on at night.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how much the entertainment has improved as it was probably the weakest point on my previous P&O cruise years ago.

Personally I was impressed.

SOLO TRAVEL ON IONA

On the first sea day I went to the solo meeting, advertised in the Crow’s Nest bar at 10am.

It was unhosted, so from past experience I expected to turn up and find a handful of solos to get to know.

In reality when I arrived there must have been 50 people if not more. The bar was packed, and also closed!!

Iona missed a trick not making more of the solo event, but people mingled regardless.

Meet ups were advertised every day after that and on port days there was a meeting time if solos wanted to go ashore together.

Being the fortnight before half term the age profile of the ship was a bit older and that was reflected in the solos group. There were also far more ladies than gents.

For me there weren’t quite enough people of my age group for the solo meets to be my thing this time.

But as I’ve mentioned I met lots of people sharing at dinner, including a few extra solos who hadn’t gone to the meet up.

Being solo you have to be sociable if you don’t want a week or so of your own company and I found it a really friendly and sociable ship.

Iona is most definitely a solo friendly ship if you are thinking of cruising alone.

OVERALL OPINION OF MY IONA CRUISE

I found myself wondering what P&O should change about Iona and ultimately decided nothing.

There were loads of people on this ship who are loyal to P&O and clearly love what they are getting.

The ship has a calm, quiet kind of quality about it, which is not necessarily what I’m looking for, but you could tell it was just what others wanted.

For me it was just a bit too sedate. I want a bit of lively excitement on my holidays. Other cruise lines I have sailed with are perhaps just more me.

I caught myself making comparisons. It took me a while to accept Iona for the ship it is, but once I got into the flow I really did enjoy it.

Would I sail on Iona or with P&O again? Yes, absolutely, though with my expectations now suitably managed.

This may not be the most exciting ship in the World, but I came home relaxed and having been well entertained, suitably full, and I’d seen some beautiful places.

As I said at the start, I had a very nice time.

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Watch the cabin tour at Gary Travels… in P&O Iona cabin 11415 on my YouTube Channel

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