Iona Review

Too many people on one ship

Review for the British Isles & Western Europe Cruise on Iona
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terrydlm
10+ Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Dec 2022

Firstly, I know this review is a 1st world problem. I am aware that I am lucky to have gone on a cruise at all which we worked for to go on.

I Am also aware that other people on the same cruise might have had a different experience to what we had but this is our experience.

A little background on us. I am 49 years old and my girlfriend is 42 yo.

Cabin Review

When we got to our stateroom our luggage was waiting outside for us. Also, our door keys/cards were in the letter box.

Our stateroom was nice but smaller to what we are used too on smaller ships.

Iona is still only a couple of years old being launched in October 2020 and her maiden voyage on the 7th August 2021 so everything is still fresh and new and we liked the finish of the room, and everything looked good quality.

The layout of the room was good and things like the electrical sockets being the English 3 pin type was great. USB sockets by the bed too are a good idea. Kettle in the stateroom to make coffee and tear are also a great idea. Saves from having to wait in the queues at Costa!

The balcony door is also a great design as it slides open instead of being like a traditional door that opens inwards or outwards. This saves space and also prevents balcony doors from slamming.

The settee was quite big which was nice.

The bathroom was nice and light, and it had a great shower with glass doors and no horrible clingy shower curtain. The water pressure from the shower was also great at all times. It never seemed to drop off even when it would have been peak shower time.

While its true the bathroom is small, but I really don’t mind as I would rather have a smaller bathroom and a slightly larger bedroom room. I am not sure how larger people would get on though.

The wardrobes were a little narrow and the cupboards at the end of the bed were wide but very narrow.

Things like the space around the bed were less than we have experienced. Again, no big issue and I suppose that’s a result of having so many people and therefore staterooms on 1 ship.

The light outside the bathroom so you can see at night is a great touch especially with the slightly smaller walkways on this ship.

As we had an extended balcony that was awesome. It was so big. The downside as we knew it would be was that we could not use it much at this time of year as it was so cold. This would be a great sized balcony in the summer though, assuming you don’t mind being overlooked by many other balconies.

I have since seen a stateroom layout which looks like it works much better. Our stateroom layout was when you walk though the door the bathroom was on the righthand side. Then you had the settee on the right and then the bed and then the balcony.

The other stateroom I saw was on a YouTube video which admittedly was for P and O Arvia and this had the settee next to the balcony door. You could sit on the settee and look out of the balcony. This layout makes more sense to me, and I assume that there are some staterooms like this on Iona as Iona and Arvia are sister ships.

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