We sailed out of Baltimore, MD last year on GOS to Tampa - that was a fun trip.  We did not know then that we would end up taking the repo from Tampa to Norfolk, VA, but hey we did and we are glad we did.  We flew down the morning of departure from Tampa and our flights were smooth, even with a small delay for some unknown reason.  We arrive in Tampa fairly early and took a taxi over to the pier, to our surprise there was a small line forming about 10 a.m. for people to board.  It was even more surprising that by 11 a.m. we were checked in and onboard having lunch in the Windjammer.  Getting onboard made us feel like we had never left the ship, we have sailed on GOS 6 times in the last 5 years, with the prior being less than 6 months ago.  We saw many staff members that we have met in the past and stopped briefly to chat.  As always the staff was great, from the housekeeping staff to the dining room personnel, they really treat you like you are family.  On past sailings we have normally stayed away from the nightly entertainment.  We realize that the production shows and headliner entertainers are not that appealing to us.  We like that we can watch it in our stateroom on the television the next day if we are trying to find something to do, after just pausing for a few seconds on that channel, we realize why we skip that venue.  Now we do have a tendency to attend and enjoy the other activities and events set up by the Cruise Director.  But this cruise was entirely different.   Before you read much farther, you should realize that this is going to be a very negative review about the Cruise Director and his staff, and I understand that many that sailed with us or have experience this Cruise Director in the past may have just loved him, but I must say, honestly I avoid him and his staff at all cost, as they began to make the trip extremely depressing.  This critique is truly how I feel and I felt that I should share it, just for the minority of folks that can relate.  In the past, during the sail-away party on the pool deck we had always met or saw the Cruise Director.  In this case there was a lady that we really never got her name or position, she was wearing a RC shirt and talking on the microphone.  We believed that this we the Cruise Director and became a little disappointed.  Our first impression was that this lady was fake.  She had this grin that was bigger than the Joker on Batman, and it seemed as if she was working extremely hard to sell us on the fact that she was pretending to be thrilled with what was going on.  We have always had the cruise staff teach line dancing and join in the group during this party.  While she did make an effort to do this, her dancing ability or lack thereof, was downright entertaining itself.  We believed she understood this as well so to still make herself feel like part of the excitement, she decided to talk the entire time on the microphone.  You can imagine doing the Electric Slide but the entire time you hear someone doing a commercial in the background - "it's electric" we have you royal bingo in the south pacific lounge tonight "boogie woogie", we have your art auctions in the Centrum this entire cruise, "here there and" don't forget to visit our bar staff to get your drink of the day.   This went on the entire time, well at least until we could take no more and went to the front of the ship were it was peaceful and most guest seemed to have gathered to watch us go under the Sunshine Bridge.  We skipped the welcome aboard show, again we are not much on the entertainment.  Although I wish we would have went after watching it briefly on the TV.  The next day while watching it, I realized that the lady was not our Cruise Director, she was our Activities Manager and was married to the Cruise Director.  The Cruise Director was John Blair, and for the life of me right now while typing this I do not remember her first name.  That is pretty said after seeing her and hearing her for 14 days.  But back to the point, John apparently came out during the welcome aboard show and he was basically the entertainment.  It was like a comedy show, he was trying so hard to get the crowd involved, and most of these people seemed thrilled at what he was doing.  He tried to sing the entire show.  He would sing YMCA, Mustang Sally, some depressing Neil Diamond song that I thought I was going to slice my wrist if I continued to have to listen along.  He kept telling us that his activities were being planned to make us all connect and become friends, because that is what it is all about, connecting and making friends on this cruise vacation, what a joke.  To get the crowd more involved he had balloons thrown out into the crowd, which seemed to be the focus of attention of the audience while John attempted to sing another song (the balloons will be referred to again later). During our Meet and Mingle gathering on the first day, John showed up, this was the first time I had seen him the entire cruise, this was actually before I got to see his act on the television as well.  This cruise was a Back 2 Back, Tampa to San Juan (7 nights) and San Juan to Norfolk (7 nights).  John stated that during our Meet and Mingle that there were many people doing the Back to Back and for that reason he had worked hard to change the entertainment for week two and we were going to be thrilled with what he was offering then.  Then he started to talk about this book he wrote and how he hypnotizes folks so they can relieve stress.  He said that he was doing a lecture towards the end of the first cruise and he would be changing his lecture some for the folks staying onboard for the second cruise.  That is when it began that we realized John's primary function was to get people to come to his lecture, forget the other activities, he was going to relieve all your stress by putting you to sleep.  This should not have been hard for him, since just listening to him for about 5 minutes found me snoring uncontrollably.  Surprisingly we felt as if John would really be pushing this book he wrote, but I honestly only heard him mention it about twice during the two weeks.  I really thought by the last day he was going to be on the pool deck autographing his book, but that never happened. One event that we have always taken part in on the GOS has been the 70's night Disco in the Viking Crown Lounge.  This has always been a lot of fun and you meet a lot of people and learn a lot of dances, especially that John Travolta Saturday Night Fever Dance that I still after six cruises do not have it down.  We made one of the worst mistakes of our entire cruise vacation by going to this.  John shows up and gets on his platform like many of the past Cruise Directors, but then he turns and talks to the television camera about how folks need to get out of their stateroom and come to the Studio 54 in the Viking Crown lounge, and come party with all their new friends.  This basically went on the entire time John was there.  All this and the recording would not be played until the next day on the stateroom television, that I just have a feeling is not the number one reason people take a cruise to sit in their staterooms and watch someone like John tell them about art, the dancing lounge, the explorer club for kids, a belly flop competition, ring toss and rock wall climbing at a midnight dance party.  So again taking after his wife, or maybe she takes after him, while you tried to enjoy and listen to the music to dance, John spent the entire time on the microphone.  After having to deal with this, we though please just let's do the dance so we can at least feel like we did something spectacular.  Well because of his lack of dancing skills (worse than his wife) he never did the dance.  He would only do things like the electric slide, so he could say on the microphone "go to the left, now to the right, visit Ben & Jerry's onboard for that sweet treat, now turn."  I think he really thought he was cutting a rug on his platform since he had dressed the part (bell bottoms and all), but he honestly was just moving his arms and they never really got above his shoulders in all of his excitement.  And guess what showed up to really to the entertaining -  the Balloons.  So the dancing stopped so everyone could throw, punch and kick balloons around the dance floor.  Needless to say we left and not sure what happened after that and we made it a pack amongst our group that no one would turn on the stateroom television from that point onward until the end of the cruise vacation. We stayed away from most of the entertainment at that point, but each time we say John and the Joker they seemed to be conducting themselves like politicians.  She seemed to have that eerie smile on her face as a way to support her husband, who you would have thought was running for President of the United States the way he was presenting himself around the ship.  And she wanted to be so perky, but you knew deep down she was miserable, maybe because of a failed marriage, maybe because they felt they should be in the unemployment line, maybe she just was fed up with the whole life a sea concept.  No matter what we just could never take her serious and often times set up a spot to watch her interact with guest with her fake demeanor and noticing she really did not remember a damn thing she told you or anything you said to her, it was just a game to her. Through the first week we learned that they had both been out of work actors (gee I wonder why) prior to getting a job as a husband and wife team on a cruise ship.  That actually happened many years ago.  Back then apparently the cruise staff did all the entertainment as there were no guest performers, singers and dancers or bands onboard.  So this is why I have to believe that most folks on this cruise and many others in the past, feel in love with John and loved what he had done.  These people had to be folks that just do not get out much, maybe they are saving up all year to take the cruise they cannot get out and experience life, so when they finally get onboard they think he is a superstar.  Someone must like what they are doing because they are still doing it.  Although I did hear one person boo him one night, and that may have happened more than I know since I did not go to most of the events he and/or his staffed arranged. Which brings me to the next point.  There was one event that we did try to get to, it was a small crowd and a great way to meet people, and that is the daily trivia.  In fact, there were many trivia set up most days.  There was generally one cruise staff person that did the trivia's and I never got her name but called her Jane Brady for obvious reasons.  She never seemed happy - it's always Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!  By week two she did actually crack a smile and everyone that had been playing for the last two weeks would applaud her loudly for just getting a small chuckle or smile from her.  She kept telling us that the trivia was picked out by the Joker and John would only allow them to give away key chains, highlighters and ink pens as prizes since there was an audit going on around the ship.  So finally one thing we somewhat enjoyed and there was no way for John or the Joker to screw that up, since that was the last place you would find them was in trivia (they would have had to keep their mouths shut, something they are not good at).  But you know someone on their side of the house seemed to mess that up, on more than one occasion, trivia was posted in the Cruise Compass and no staff member ever showed up to do it, so the group of about 20 - 25 of us that enjoyed playing were left like sitting ducks on more than one occasion.  We noticed this a few times around the ship that something was supposed to be happening and no one would show up to do the activity but the passengers.  In fact one night they had the bartenders dancing, they continued to say that they would be coming up in 15 minutes, then 5 minutes, an hour later the Cruise staff were gone and no dance had ever taken place.  We later learned it happened about an hour and a half after everyone was told it was going to happen and most folks had left the pool deck by that point.  On other cruises when we would go buy events you would normally see the Cruise Director and Activities Manager, but you would seldom see John or the Joker (maybe their marriage was not the issue, maybe it was great).  We had the young guys from the cruise staff doing the activities.  I have to give them kudos though they did an outstanding job, even though I am not sure it was their position to be doing some of the activities, you really would have expected your Cruise Director to be doing it and getting everyone involved.  Of course it may not have been a bad thing not to have seen them, in fact it probably made it much more enjoyable, I just wondered what they did all day.  I would soon find out. We did make plans to attend the Farewell show, of course this was just the first Farewell for us as we would be staying on the ship for the next week.  We had an opportunity to meet one of the guest performers on the outside deck just prior to the show.  It seems he was not a fan of John's either.  In fact, he told us that his act had been cut to only 3 minutes by John and another entertainer had to cut their planned act to 2 ½ minutes.  The reason, John had to have the show centered around him singing.  Again he would sing the depressing Neil Diamond song that I actually tuned out.  He tried to again sing the YMCA, Mustang Sally and some other corny stuff to make you dance.  The problem was he allowed one of the singers on the stage with him and that guy was outsinging him.  You could tell John had rehearsed that and realized it, so the guy only got to sing a few lines, and his primary purpose was to sing during the high notes with John since John was really screaming the notes.  This explained where John had been all week, he was rehearsing for his show, and the Joker was with him for support, in fact she sang one song as well and she actually sung a lot better than him, but you would never have convinced him of that.  And guess what the Balloons came back again, so the entire time you could not see that John was shaking on the stage (pretending it was dancing) because balloons were the center of the action with the passenger, all those except the ones allergic to latex.  The entertainment really did not change much for the next week.  John claimed that he brought a special production show to the ship with the RC singers and dancers. There were two the first week, he repeated one of them the second week and did another show.  Of course each ship has the three shows on them, we have seen them all before on GOS, but John wanted us to believe he made RC bring these expansive sets on board just for the consecutive cruisers.  Most of the guest entertainers changed, but we had seen them all before on one of the ships so we did not make it to any of their shows, except for three guys that played drums and did this florescent light show, we thought they were good and did go to their show.    John worked so hard at getting us a different variety of things to do on the second cruise, that he had no time to change his unclever jokes or fairly unentertaining stories.  In fact we knew his punch line and he would often times screw that up.  Overall the cruise was great.  We met many folks and truly enjoyed the rest and relaxation that we had while on the cruise thanks to all the beach breaks we did at the different port of calls.  We were able to sit at a table in the dining room with our same waitress from our very first cruise, and she was awesome like always.  The food quality has remained pretty much the same and they have added the Chop's Grille Filet to the menu for an additional fee, we never tried it.  We did notice that the prices of alcoholic beverages increased again.  The price has over doubled in the past 5 years.  The prices used to be comparable to land prices, but now they are similar to prices you would pay at a special function such as a baseball game or concert, were they know they can get you to pay the price if you really want it, and trust me there did not seem to be many people cutting back on the drinking just because the drink may have cost them $10.00, without the souvenir glass. We would certainly sail on the GOS again and probably will, although she is being replaced with the Enchantment next year.  We did learn that in the future we will really be looking at who the Cruise Director is, and if we see John and/or the Joker we are going to really push RC to either refund us or chose a different ship and sailing.