A Week’s Cruise On Iona: Part 3: Food And Entertainment

So, we reach the third part of this series of posts about our time on Iona, and if the amount of time between the first part and this one (which I’m going to make the final part, I think) doesn’t give it away, then let me make it clear: it’s been a slog writing these. I mean, there have been other things going on in our lives that haven’t helped matters, but getting inspired to sit down and write about our week at sea on a ship we now nickname the S.S. General Disappointment hasn’t come easy. I’ve wanted to write up about our cruises in 2021 in sequence which has just kept pushing two markedly more-impressive cruises further behind schedule too. Very annoying.

In Part One of this Iona series, I talked about the embarkation process and the first couple of days on the ship. Part Two showed off the ship’s mostly bland decor and baffling design decisions. You’ve probably got a fair idea about what Part Three will cover because your reputation for reading words and comprehending them precedes you; food and entertainment, mostly because there’s nothing else to talk about. With this trip being seven days with no ports of call – something that sounded great in principle for a relaxing break during the pandemic – there’s only so much you can write. Had there been any stops, this might have been a whole different account. We might have seen the ship in a different light, rather than coming away with the sense that our break from work could have been better spent.

Dining On P&O Iona

The Glass House, the Olive Grove, and Sindhu were all covered in the first of this series, so jump back to that if you’d like to read about what we thought in detail and see some photos. If you can’t be bothered, or you’re here to hear what we thought about the other options, then in summary, and respectively for those three: Okay, Good, Okay. Sindhu was the best-looking location on the entire ship (see the second part for loads of photos), and the only complaint about the food from us really from those locations – despite the Good rating – was a long hair in my tagine. That said, another couple we spoke to, who had dined at Sindhu before, remarked that the quality of the food and general feel of the occasion was a huge let-down. We’ll come back to that later in this post.

For the remainder of this article I’ll take the days in sequence so you can see how we worked in getting to all the speciality (read: additional cost) dining spots on Iona. In fact, the one thing we didn’t do aboard was eat dinner in the main dining room. Perhaps that’s where we went wrong. Maybe that would have been the catalyst to thinking “Yeah! Iona is amazing!” I have my doubts, though, because I’m not a gibbering idiot.

Iona: Limelight Club

We’d been extremely lucky when getting on the ship (eventually) to just be able to get onto the booking system to book restaurants. I moan more about this insanely unfair system and how we’d met other people who hadn’t been so fortunate earlier in this series. We’d been able to pick off all the recommendations from seasoned P&O cruisers which is why we’d already ticked off Sindhu on the second day at sea and would be seeing what all the fuss was about at the Limelight Club on day three.

For a post talking about the food and entertainment on a cruise ship, it’s fitting that the Limelight Club covers all the bases. Unlike other venues on the vessel where you can eat or you can be entertained, the Limelight Club combines the two in a nightclub-like environment that includes a meal followed by some sort of show. This combination of food and a show was not something we’d experienced on any other cruise, and not only did it work well, this was by far the stand-out evening on Iona, and as a concept it’s something we’d love to see on other cruise lines.

This entire day was an interesting one. We’d started off winning the morning trivia, I’d gone to see Sue Holderness give a talk about her time in show business, we’d been distracted by the ship needing to turn around to assist in an emergency air evacuation, and we’d then won the afternoon trivia too.

The only blot on the day was thinking it would be nice to head to Anderson’s to see what their gin selection was like, then discovering that the abysmal drinks package we’d foolishly purchased wouldn’t even cover a drink in the bar. The range of gins also looked to be decidedly poorer than we recalled of other P&O ships, but that might have been the clouds forming in our minds obscuring our recollection of the menus.

To the Limelight Club, then.

Upon arrival we were shown to the table allocated for us. As you can see below, my view of the small stage area wasn’t ideal, with a column right in the way. Relax, though, because there’s food to eat first and we’d be able to shift our chairs a bit once that was over.

The food wasn’t the best food you’re going to have on a cruise ship. The thing about cruising is that all the food tends to be of a pretty high standard anyway so you have to put in extra effort to stand out. With the small surcharge for the evening in the Limelight Club you can tell that the majority of that shifts towards the special entertainment rather than the special food. The food was still very good, of course.

The entertainment was fabulous in the Limelight Club. In addition to the main act was the house band, an all-female group known as The Limelights. A lot of talent on display there, and there’s some video of them later in this post. The Limelights then formed the backing group for the main act itself, which can vary from cruise to cruise, but for us was the drag performer, La Voix. This was a thoroughly enjoyable evening; catty comments, jokes, and plenty of singing. I did take video. Quite a lot, in fact. Unfortunately, because there was a combination of backing tracks and stupidly accurate live performances from the band, it triggered the sort of Copyright Claim on YouTube that would require adverts placed on the video. I don’t like adverts, so I’ve selected a small portion that only means I can’t monetise the video (which is no hardship, since I never do).

After enjoying ourselves at the club, we felt like a bit more of the same so ended the evening (well, the early hours of the next morning) at the Club House. Located at the aft of Iona, this is the largest venue aboard, easily able to comfortably seat a good two-thirds of the people who turn up when the ship is only running at half-capacity. You do the maths. This is the place for lectures, comedy, music, and dancing.

We arrived in time to grab one of the only remaining seats in the place, just as the resident comedian started his act. I cannot do justice to just what a terrible comedy act it was, but I won’t share his name to save any embarrassment. People around us were laughing quite a bit because, of course, everyone’s different and everyone has different tastes, but mother-in-law jokes… Really? In the 21st century? For us it was an excruciating experience. For the Daily Mail readers around, a great old return to the good old days.

After the comedy there was singing from Rebecca Neale. This was much better, and it was followed by a disco, although the place was emptying fairly quickly by this time of the night. Quite where everyone was off to is anyone’s guess; there were no port stops. Of course, the DJ – one of those who feels his voice and observations are at least as important as the music – might have had something to do with that. The best part about the Club House was that we discovered that they did Whiskey Sours and that these were actually something that our terrible drinks package included.

Celebration Night And The Epicurean

The following day’s excitement came when we spotted some whales alongside Iona. One of the great things about having a balcony on a cruise ship.

The evening would be Iona’s Celebration Night.

Think of Celebration Night as a slightly informal, formal night. The expectation was to dress up, and since we’d booked dinner at the Epicurean, this suited us. A fancy meal for a fancy night. We hoped. After we’d dressed to impress we caught the start of a sunset from our room before heading down the stairs to the top of the atrium (the only place with any seats) with our free drink tokens in hand.

It took around ten minutes for us to be spotted, and there were a few grumblings from other couples and groups nearby, doing meerkat impressions as they looked around for any members of staff, but we eventually all got our complimentary glasses of fizz. We were quiet, with that resigned look of “Well, what do you expect from this cruise?” After our glasses had arrived we were approached by two members of staff – one male, one female, both in posh dress, both masked (of course) – who wanted to show us some close-up magic. This reminded us a lot of our cruise on Scarlet Lady and was a nice touch we’d not seen on other P&O ships. Part of one trick involved the female assistant tearing away at a piece of folded up card to eventually produce silhouette of Marilyn Monroe that we could keep. Again: nice.

The remainder of the time waiting for our dinner booking to come around was spent gazing out at the setting sun through Iona’s huge atrium windows, and the people walking outside to admire it in the open air.

Time to have some dinner at the Epicurean. We’ve dined at P&O’s fanciest establishment once before, on Azura in 2017. That was reasonable, not brilliant, but decent enough, and in a pleasant location. When we’d booked on embarkation day our expectations were high that everything would be that little bit better on the fleet’s newest ship, but as the days had passed some trepidation about what we might end up with started to creep in.

Let’s take a look at the Epicurean menu first:

It all looked lovely, and we quickly came to a decision and placed our orders as a small glass of something was delivered to whet the appetite, along with some bread rolls and butter. And so the waiting began.

The bottle of wine we ordered made an appearance at our table a mere thirty-one minutes after ordering while we’d mostly sat in silence. I say mostly, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Our starter courses turned up within another ten minutes, but this still put them at arriving close to forty minutes after ordering. We like relaxed pace dining when it’s somewhere fancy, but this was a glacial start to the evening.

I won’t bore you any further with how long the individual bits and pieces took to arrive at the table but can let you know that this meal took over two and a quarter hours to get through, in a restaurant that was, at best, half-full. Our main courses:

And finally, the palate cleanser, desserts, and sweet to finish.

Service, in addition to being slow enough for sloths to start tapping their wrists and making circular motions with their claws, was perfunctory. The restaurant was decidedly unimpressive in its look and location. The food in itself was simply not worth the additional cost.

But let’s return to that “mostly sat in silence” comment from earlier.

We became aware, as we sat there, sighing and looking around, waiting for anything to happen, that there was a noise above our heads. A rumbling, grating sound. Had it been constant, maybe we’d have got used to this intrusion into whatever sort of ambience there was, but it wasn’t. Had it been happening only occasionally then we might have passed it off as something taking place on the deck above. But it was not that either. I got my phone out and started the stopwatch just for something to do. Thirty seconds of rumbling, grating, clonking. Ninety seconds of silence. Thirty seconds of rumbling, grating, clonking. Ninety seconds of silence. Repeat. It was thirty and ninety seconds every time, throughout the entire meal.

“The air conditioning is terrible,” I told my wife. “If it is the air conditioning. Maybe it’s something else. How can they not know about this? How can it be this bad on a ship this new? How can they position people right under this racket?”

A gesture of defeat from her, so I waited until a member of the waiting staff turned up.

“Hi, can you confirm to me what that noise is?” I asked, pointing to some invisible thing in the air above our heads, just as it started up once more.

“Those are chairs stacked on the deck above,” she replied quickly. “Someone is probably just moving them.”

“But it’s constantly repeating at the same interval,” I answered in a puzzled tone. I pictured a person on the ship whose job it was to just slide a stack of chairs from one side of a deck to another with pauses inbetween.

“As the ship moves, the chairs move a little,” was the swift response. Practiced response, one could almost say.

After she’d left: “Well, that was a stinking pile of bullshit,” my wife stated, not needing any reply from me.

The Epicurean on P&O Iona, then. Pretty bloody awful experience all round. Our first encounter years before hadn’t impressed us immensely either and, like the couple who talked about Sindhu, we felt this was a restaurant that had done the exact opposite of improving.

Dining Room Lunch And Aerial Acrobatics

I mentioned earlier that we didn’t have dinner in the main dining room on Iona but we did do something that we rarely do on any cruises: we had lunch there. We even used the intranet site aboard ship to book into the virtual queue, which turned out to be pointless as fewer than a dozen of us were waiting to enter when the doors eventually opened several minutes late. A nice enough restaurant space greeted us but that stupidly slow service was there too, especially when factoring in how few people were having lunch at the same time. At lunch, if we’re going to have lunch, we’re used to grabbing something quick in the buffet or at one of the fast food joints around the pool when we’re on a ship. This lunch took over an hour. My chips were hot. My wife’s were not. If the goal was to persuade us not to bother with lunch in the main dining room on the ship then job well done, P&O. In fact, it makes you wonder whether the fact it was so empty was because everyone else had already come to that conclusion this far into the cruise.

The food itself was also… underwhelming. The buffet or one of the places on the Quays would have been a far better fit for us. It filled a hole, I suppose, and kept us going until the evening and our dining plans for then.

We grabbed our books for a read in the atrium where we could be near enough to the Glass House to grab some wine if the urge took us (it usually does), and that’s where we saw some of the aerial acrobats practising their skills for shows that I believe they put on in the Sky Dome. Since we only ever rushed through the Sky Dome when there was any kind of musical performance going on – terrible acoustics, unpleasant humidity thanks to the pool – I can’t be sure on this.

Bats And The Beach House

This evening gave us another new place to try out, but ahead of that we thought it would be nice to take a wander outside just after sunset. The temperature was nice, and we had a nice surprise to go with it as we suddenly saw a bat flying over our heads. We watched it for several minutes before I thought to grab my phone and see if I could catch any of its promenade deck laps. Just about. Ah, we do love bats. We have bats that fly up and down our garden at home, and it was lovely to see another one – maybe the same one! You don’t know! – out here in the Bay of Biscay with no sign of land anywhere.

The Beach House is P&O’s Caribbean-style dining location, present in some form or another on several ships in its fleet. We’d not been to one before because our cruises on P&O had been short and the food associated with the Caribbean isn’t one that we’ve ever found attractive, but since we’d tried Sindhu already – and that’s another style of food we don’t care much for – we thought it was worth giving this place a try. The good thing about a cruise and even paying a little extra for some speciality dining on some nights is that if you don’t like it, you’re still going to be able to find somewhere to get something else to ensure you don’t go hungry.

Like most of the design choices aboard Iona, the Beach House touches of pastel accent colours and bleached wood was subtle, trying to hit the target of Sophisticated, but landing short in Bit Bland, Mate. As for the food, though: it was okay. I might even go so far as to say I liked what I had, even if to my wife is was tolerable; just about acceptable. She has less adventurous taste buds than me, and mine aren’t exactly the Indiana Jones type.

We finished that evening off back in the Club House. Unfortunately, the comedian from earlier in the week was there again, but it was a different set, and while not terribly good or original in our opinion, at least eschewed the sort of dated jokes we’d suffered through previously.

The Keel And Cow, And Live Music On Iona

Our penultimate night aboard P&O Iona would hit the last of the additional charge restaurants on the ship, but ahead of that we spent the day wandering around and taking photos (they make up the bulk of the pictures in the second part of this Iona cruise series of posts), winning another quiz (we were getting quite giddy with all the wins), and having a quick lunch in the Quays area of the ship. This was where you could pick up American diner food, traditional fish and chips, or Asian fusion offerings at different times of the day. We went traditional here, and yes, this was very good. And complimentary, too!

Next to the Keel And Cow for the evening meal. This location was at the top of the atrium, so a buzz of noise was to be expected, but it’s one that suits the mood of what’s on offer. As you can probably guess from the name, you can anticipate meat (plenty was hanging up so you could view the various cuts) as well as whatever Iona has rammed and impaled in the ocean. P&O describe the place as a gastropub, and it does some reasonable beer there.

It wasn’t just a general white noise of conversations drifting up through the space and restaurant staff clanking plates, though, as we were treated to an unscheduled performance by the on-board shanty group below us. With our table right against the balcony we got an unusual view of the musicians. The video below is of Sea Hear singing Shanty Man.

The food – we both went for the fillet steak to compare it with Princess Cruises – was served with a side-holder containing onion rings and sauces. Yeah, Princess have nothing to worry about here, but that’s not to say that the food was bad; far from it. Very nice, not too extortionate an upcharge on what the cruise is already costing, and nice enough, and with a large enough menu, that we decided we’d come back the following night too.

After dinner we thought we’d see whether we could get into the Limelight Club after that evening’s show. It’s a place that opens up for live music late at night but it’s not the largest of venues and even on our cruise on Iona – I’ve mentioned this before – at half-capacity this had not been possible on any of the other nights. We got lucky on this occasion, though, so got to have a drink and hear some more from the fabulous Limelights.

We finished the evening, as usual, in the Club House, and we caught a little of singer Laura Miller belting out some tunes. A good voice and a fancy frock. What else do you need?

The Last Day On Iona

The final day of your cruise is a sad time because no matter what the cruise has been like, it’s better than being at work, right?

Hmmm.

Well, we certainly used to think that way, and I suppose we still do believe those words to be true, but to compare this particular cruise on Iona in a way that most veteran cruisers may understand, we were not disappointed that the holiday was coming to an end. There was none of that usual downturned lower lip and the putting-off of the packing away requirement. Circumstances definitely played a part. These were the Pandemic Times. However, we’d not felt like this on our other cruises in the months prior to this and we definitely didn’t feel like this on the cruises afterwards. Iona felt soulless, lacking vitality. A week on her with no ports stretched out that dull existence too far.

But, getting back to our last day on this ship…

An important part of this last day was exchanging our prize-winning stamps for a prize or prizes. When you’re used to winning pens and coasters and bottle-stoppers over and over and over again on a Princess ship then this is an area where P&O knocked it out of the park. A great system, offering different and very good quality prizes. We are now the proud owners of a P&O Cruises tumbler.

Our last evening meal on the ship was a second visit to the Keel And Cow to try out some of the other dishes on offer, as previously mentioned. Oof! Look at the size of that sausage!

We had no plans for a late night but still wanted to pay one last visit to the Club House for a final drink and to enjoy some music. A lot of people aboard clearly felt similarly about the first part of that as it wasn’t very busy in there when we turned up and it emptied out fairly rapidly after we arrived. You can see how empty the place was in the photos below, and that’s important, because I have a bad experience to impart to conclude this cruise on Iona.

Look. A dozen or so of us. Let’s say twenty of us, spread out around the entire space. Bar staff and waiters amounted to about the same so we could all have had one member of staff with us at all times to ensure we weren’t getting dehydrated. Obviously, we didn’t. It would’ve been awkward, to be fair. However, you might have imagined that staff might be on the ball, ready to assist at a moment’s notice, keeping an eye out on the passengers, giving them if not undivided, then certainly priority attention. After finishing some drinks we pushed the empty glasses to the edge of our table, making sure they and us were in clear view of the bar and all the staff gathered there, having a chat. And another waiting game began. After five minutes of not seeing one glance in our direction I pulled out my phone and started the timer on it. When the timer reached twenty minutes I walked up to the DJ booth.

“Hi, here for a request?”

“I certainly am!” I replied, holding up the still-running timer on the phone. “Do you think you could get Anyone From The Bar to play Let’s Serve That Couple Over There please?”

Give the DJ his due, he almost sprinted to the bar area to send someone our way. The member of staff appeared put-out that we’d interrupted their chat and the whole incident didn’t put us in mind to hang around any longer so we took that drink with us to our room. Just terrible service from P&O to finish of a generally disappointing cruise all round.

Iona: Conclusions

I’ve already summarised the good and bad points about Iona in this series so I’m not going to repeat myself.

That’s the end of the accounts of this week at sea on Iona. I swear we wanted to like it more than we did and, as you can see, there are nice elements to the ship and to the food and entertainment we experienced. It just doesn’t have a place in our hearts. If you’re going to cruise on Iona for the first time then I have no doubt that you’ll have a vastly different time aboard because you’re not me, you might be more easily-impressed, the world’s not the world it was, and you’ll just get more or less out of different things.

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