2023-02-24 10:08:23

We have cruised with P&O twice now, along with Marella in the far east, Norwegian in the Mediterranean and MSC Christmas markets cruise. We preferred P & O's Iona to Arvia, sister ship but a little different. A lot less hassle with dining on Iona. The onboard app' to join virtual queues for dinner is rubbish & most people agreed, though just a few said they had no problem. You can't book ahead unless you are prepared to eat between 5pm & 5.45pm. Queues for restaurants were terrible, we had read this before going on the cruise. Food was generally reasonable if lacking in variations in the main restaurants. One or two meals were very good. Excursions are by our standards expensive, obviously that will be relative to how well off you are. There were a lot of sea days that were not necessary given the short distances, though to be fair we knew that before booking. The flights with Tui to & from Barbados were good & on time, well slightly late on the return, half an hour. Our cabin was fine and virtually all crew were very good. As seems normal it's almost impossible to get a sunbed on sea days unless you put a towel on one at the crack of dawn. They did announce they would remove towels & belongings after 30 minutes without people occupying the beds, unfortunately unless it's policed it won't work. We don't like lying in the sun for much more than 30 minutes but were not even able to do that. We did four P & O excursions which were generally OK. Swimming pools were mostly too full to get in, there were a reasonable number of children taken out of school for the cruise, though to be fair the second week was half term. Finished our holiday with one of us (me) getting what we assumed was norovirus, the vomiting bug. Given that it takes 1 to 2 days before becoming ill, it could have been ship or plane, I think the plane. Overall the holiday was generally enjoyable with mostly lovely warm weather & just a couple of rainy days, but not all day. We agree we enjoyed it, but wouldn't go again