We had Joyce and Panya in the 8:30 LAP seating. Panya did some magic tricks for the kids and they adored him. Joyce was very polite and efficient and did a great job (side note: I missed 1 dinner for Palo and 1 dinner while sick).
We also saw Clive (from our last cruise) at the same seating - he was very funny again!
More details:
Best part of cruise - dh winning jackpot bingo!
Worst part of cruise - me and DD getting the flu!
Overall impressions:
1) the NYE party seemed incredible - due to being sick I went back to the room but I was impressed with the lithograph, dinner, champagne, special glasses, photographers, etc. Very nicely done
2) There were a TON of family groups aboard. This made people a little less friendly in general I think - they were more concerned with hanging with their families (totally understandable of course) than meeting new people. I kind of like the "regular" old cruise versus a holiday cruise for this reason - people are more open and outgoing on a non-holiday cruise
I will say that the elder folks in the groups we met were a riot - One grandfather had 19 familie members with him and he was so funny. We heard there was a group of 52 on board as well, all paid for by the grandparents (oh my!)
3) Our DS spent his 3rd time in the 5-7 age club and 3 times is too many. We were going to ask for him to be moved up to the 8-9's, but he was worried about being the youngest. The timing just worked out that our first cruise was when he had just turned 5 (the week before), 2nd cruise at just 6 and third cruise at 7.25. He was not as enchanted with the clubs as before. The 5-7's didn't spend as much time in the lab and that hurt too - he LOVEs the lab.
The movies started much later in the clubs (10:30 or so) which seemed too late for the little ones (3-5 or so).
We headed to the parks for 2 days afterwards and although we rebooked for Oct 15, we're debating a week at the parks versus the cruise. The kids just loved the parks and I think if you spend a week doing a little bit here and there it can be relaxing. We're really torn between the two choices now. We know we don't want a land/sea (too much packing/unpacking).
. Kathy
