Day 1 35 day Caribbean cruise on P&O's cruise ship Iona Jan 3rd 2026

Описание: Hi we are the Cree family

My name is Dizzi Cree and my Husband is Ralph Cree
We Home educate our two sons Ocean and Solar cree!
We live near weymouth in a historic manor house called Moignes court!
we rent it out for holidays and run a quirky glamping business but in the winter we go on adventures!

We are very lucky as we are about to head off on an adventure on a cruise ship to the Caribbean for 35 days!!

After a easy journey down from Moignes Court to Southampton, we got within 1 mile of the Cruise port and the traffic Was at a standstill so the last 1 mile took us 45 minutes. Once we finally got to the car drop-off, we had to wait another 15 minutes for our turn to have our Van looked at photos taken and our keys handed over.

Next we loaded our nine bags onto the trolleys and headed to the baggage drop-off which had another queue! We dropped them onto the conveyor belt and headed over to the check-in desk and security. That part wasn’t too bad but this was definitely the busiest check-in we’ve done so far on the four cruises to date.

Finally we walked up the gangway and got very excited as we entered Iona. It feels like a second home now as this is the same ship we’ve been on for all of our cruises so far.
We’ve headed to our muster station which was at the casino and then up to the room to watch security video.
Two of our cases were missing when we got to our room, but i didn’t worry too much and started to unpack.
The boys went off swimming so that I could set up the room and put everything away then later we all met up in the sky doom and had our celebratory embarkation cocktail while looking at the view of Southampton out of the Windows. It was a beautiful sunny sunset evening and it felt really magical to be back.

Then back to the room and found the two cases were still not there so we had a chat with our Room Steward and she went and had a look for us. Luckily she found them as the tags had somehow come off but luckily she recognise them from our description.

After unpacking those last two bags I finally felt like I could relax and a wave of elation hit me “you’ve actually made it and your on the ship! we’re all well and we’re about to head off to Sunny warm climate for a whole month”!
I’m looking forward to telling you about how we manage travelling like this as a family of four people and giving you all our tips and hints for how to manage in small spaces and also how to enjoy holiday holidays like this at low prices. It certainly does help being home educated because it means you can go out of term but this cruise for 35 days has it cost us total for all four of us £3899.!

That includes all our food, entertainment, cinema, for swimming pools and 16 hot tubs and loads and loads of educational workshops and guest speakers.