Selbourne

We only went to two shows on Iona, but they sound similar to those you watched on Princess. The graphics etc were very good indeed and definitely enhanced the shows. The singing was still a bit iffy though 😂 As for sound levels, we have never had issues with the sound being too loud on any of the P&O ships, even though a few people mention this regularly, and Iona was no different. However, we sit right at the back of the theatre, so maybe that’s why. Perhaps that’s the solution?

That makes a lot of sense and fits with my experience. The staff that we spoke to on Britannia and Ventura had done multiple contracts on different ships and they all, without exception, said that they didn’t like working on Iona or Arvia and neither did their friends (who were presumably in similar situations). Conversely, I recall talking to a few staff on Iona who were on their first ever contracts with P&O so were unable to make comparisons, although one said that her friends who had done multiple contracts preferred other ships. It’s very encouraging to hear you say that service, menus and MDR food still need work, as that must mean that this is on the radar at P&O and we will continue to see improvements in these areas.

That’s great to hear and many thanks for specifically feeding back on the lift etiquette, which was very much lacking on our cruise. You obviously had far more courteous passengers on your cruise! As I said in my summing up of our cruise, there’s a lot to like about Iona. Our cabin was great, the quality and choice of food venues was (mostly) very good, we enjoyed the 710 Club and, aside from the lifts being too small, wheelchair accessibility was very good. Interesting comments about service. We have been told by quite a few staff on the other ships that they and their friends really don’t like working on Iona and Arvia. In fairness, with one or two minor exceptions, we didn’t experience poor service on Iona, but the bars in particular were under staffed and the ship felt overcrowded. However, this was peak August school holidays and, as we know, cruise ships are unlike land based hotels in that they can’t flex their staff numbers up for peak periods, so it’s inevitable that service levels differ depending on how busy the ship is. I would be prepared to try Iona again out of school holidays, especially given how cheap some of her cruises can be, but I’ve just read your comments to my wife and she still isn’t keen. After our mammoth cruise on Aurora, which ends in March, we have no more P&O cruises booked, just two 14 nighters with Cunard. I’m keeping an eye on some future cruises on several P&O ships (other than Iona and Arvia) but they are all more than we are prepared to pay at present, so I might chance raising it again with her later next year. Time is a great healer 😂

I don’t think that I’ve tried Jam Shed. I will give it a go next month. Is it only available in the Glasshouse? I can’t see it on the MDR wine list that I took a photo of when on Ventura.

Yes, I’m also happy with the times, as long as we don’t end up with first sitting and can’t change it! Whilst we’ve been to Miami before, it wasn’t by ship. I think I’ve read that the cruise terminal isn’t easy for walking anywhere, even though it looks fairly central. Like you, I’m keen to have dinner ashore where we are in port during the evenings, as there will be quite a bit of repetition in the MDR over 65 nights and a change of scene (and menus) will be nice. My wife isn’t quite so sure though. She thinks we will get attacked or something, even though I’ve reminded her that we were walking around New York on our own at night until after midnight and didn’t feel in the slightest bit threatened 🙄😂

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Specific seats aren’t reserved. In the scenario that you describe, if you arrive just in time or a little late you will probably find that the theatre is full. Anyone who hasn’t booked will have been allowed in 5 minutes or so before the show starts if there are still empty seats. Thats why I was saying that on our Iona cruise people strolled up at the last minute and then got irritated that they couldn’t get a seat even though they had a booking. This is why I think the whole thing is a complete nonsense and why they should just revert to first come first served. Thankfully, they have already done that on some of the ships.

It’s meant to be 14 days, but some have found that they open for booking 15 days out. When we were on Iona they didn’t open until 12 days before, speciality restaurants having opened 14 days out.

I agree. We all understand that you can’t just turn up at a theatre at home, but that is to miss the point completely. The concept of spontaneity, versus the need to plan at home, was something that P&O used to proudly trumpet as a unique selling point of cruises. The irony is that the booking system for the theatre is fundamentally flawed. There is a false belief amongst many that by booking they can stay in a bar until the last minute and then just wander into the theatre. In reality, one of two things happens. Either there are no checks at the door so it’s simply first come first served, or 5-10 minutes before those who haven’t booked are allowed in if there are still empty seats. When we were on Iona in August we wandered along to the theatre a few nights, not overly bothered if we could get in or not and there were plenty of people either outside or stood at the back muttering that they had pre booked and couldn’t get a seat. Frankly, I’m amazed that P&O are still clinging on to it. The old system of first come first served worked fine!

I can’t imagine them doing that any more. Highly dangerous, even for pilots who are trained in doing it.

You’re a star. Thank you so much 👍

Good spot. I’d forgotten that the corner aft suites on Azura and Ventura don't have wrap around balconies. Still highly preferable to the midships ones though IMHO.

I’ve just looked for our January Aurora cruise and the ports show the times for all the other cruise ships but still just the vague ‘early morning, early evening etc’ descriptions for the P&O ships 🙄xx

Cabin stewards have more cabins to service these days, and whilst we very much prefer to have our cabin serviced whilst we are at breakfast that doesn’t always happen and it would never cross my mind to consider that worthy of a compliant.

On both our P&O Northern Light cruises we had proper overnights in Alta. We arrived on the first day, full overnight with the next full day in port and left in the early hours of the third day. So a proper overnight and a half overnight! In the second northerly port (Tromso on the first and Narvik on the second) they were ‘half’ overnights. Interestingly, we were going to book our first Saga cruise as the Northern Lights cruise in March 2025 but decided against it for a few reasons, but a major one was that there wasn’t a ‘proper’ overnight anywhere to match what we’d had with P&O.

It’s happened a couple of times to us on P&O. Both times the cabin steward. Really irritated me. I always score honestly and if they deserve 5 stars (which most do) I give them unprompted. The ones that asked were the not so good ones, and hassle like that made me even more determined to give an honest score!

Same here, for the same reasons, although the Northern Lights cruises are an exception as it’s far better viewing the lights from ashore away from the light pollution caused by the ship. We love Baltic cruises, but since St Petersburg has been removed from the itineraries they now seem to have two days in other places, mostly Copenhagen. This has deterred us from booking a number of potential cruises as we have no desire to spend 2 days there and consider it to be wasted time.

Whilst photos always exaggerate what the human eye sees (especially the brightness of the greens), you absolutely can see them as good as that photo and even better with the naked eye if you are lucky. We had two spectacular showings over two consecutive nights on our first Northern Lights cruise. It had been a bucket list thing for me for decades and we had an experience that I shall never forget (it was up there with a night time Space Shuttle launch that I was lucky enough to be able to watch once at Cape Canaveral). The second time we went the lights weren’t visible at all. It’s pot luck, although we were incredibly lucky the first time that a major solar flare left the sun a few days before our display, which was the cause of the intensity of display that we saw. I’m not exaggerating when I say that as I got off the coach at the football field in Alta, well away from the light pollution of the ship and town, the entire sky was full of the phenomenon, including greens and reds. Magical.

I had the same offer through yesterday. It says it can be combined with other offers but then in the small print it says that it can’t be combined with on board offers. Confusing.

I hope that also applies to the TVs in the accessible balcony cabins. If you recall, they didn’t fit the newer / larger wall mounted ones in the accessible balcony cabins on Aurora, they just replaced the tiny rubbish ones with marginally bigger rubbish ones!

Forgot to ask….are they fitting a modem / router in every single cabin? If so that should eliminate the issue that many report that the WiFi works well in public areas but is patchy in some cabins.

Just to give an alternative perspective, we used to book Suites but don’t any more as we no longer feel that they offer value for money. To qualify my comments, I should be upfront and say that my wife’s disability is now such that we have to use accessible cabins and these are around 50% bigger than standard cabins. The accessible Superior Deluxe balcony cabin that we had recently was in fact slightly bigger than the full suites, so the main benefit of the extra space is something that we no longer need to pay suite prices to enjoy (this being the only benefit of being in a position where a disability warrants an accessible cabin). We spend a lot of time in our cabin during the day on sea days, enjoying the quiet space, the views and the balcony. Many people don’t, in which case the extra space becomes superfluous. The aft corner suites have massive wrap around balconies and we have enjoyed those on several ships. Personally, I don’t think that the midships suites are worth it as they don’t have this unique feature. Also, the midships suites on Azura on Riviera deck can be problematic and are best avoided. They are directly under the open pool deck and you can be disturbed very early in the morning with the chairs and loungers being dragged around for cleaning etc. Friends stayed in one of these suites on Azura and it disturbed them so much that they have never booked another suite since. We are now Caribbean loyalty tier, so always benefit from priority embarkation and the priority boarders lunch, two other suite benefits that we used to enjoy but no longer need to pay for a suite to benefit from. The remaining benefits of having a suite are minor IMHO. We used to enjoy having breakfast in Epicurean, but that was ruined on a cruise when there was a noisy family with two unruly children and another couple with a baby who cried every breakfast time. In the end we stopped going to Epicurean and went to the main dining room as it was more relaxing! We found butlers to be intrusive, turning up doing nothing worthwhile other than trying to appear useful so that we’d tip them at the end of the cruise. They added virtually nothing to our suite experiences, other than a few meals on the balcony or in the suite, but all courses arrived at the same time so it wasn’t really as good a meal as being in a restaurant. Dining on the aft corner balcony whilst cruising down a fjord on a summer evening was magical though. We tend not to use room service, as we prefer going to the restaurants, but it’s free for suite guests. If P&O adopted the approach that Cunard does with Britannia Club and grills guests, and had a separate dining room where you have your own dedicated table for your sole use for ALL meals and an enhanced dinner menu with additional a’la carte options, then we might consider using suites again. However, given that we book accessible balcony cabins and are Caribbean loyalty tier, the remaining suite benefits with P&O are now so negligible for us it would be a complete waste of money. If you decide that you really want a suite on Azura, I’d strongly advise getting an aft corner suite with a wrap around balcony. You are then getting far more bang for your buck.

Thanks. Our next cruise has 28 ports of call, so I was hoping that I could take the lazy option and find one website that had them all 😂

Where do you find those? Somebody mentioned the ‘what's in port’ website but that seems to be as vague as the P&O info.

We’ve done the Northen Lights cruise twice on Aurora and both times we had a full overnight in Alta followed by a 1.30am departure the second night. As for the second ‘northern’ port (Tromso the first time and Narvik the second) they were also shown as overnights, but in reality were around 1.30am departures. I agree that this isn’t really overnights and P&O should be clearer, but we didn’t complain about it as we’d had great sightings of the Northen Lights on the first cruise and on the second cruise the weather was poor so the lights were never going to be visible anyway.