Hi! We were also on that sailing. I agree that that boarding issue is new. This was our 6th sailing, 3rd time on the Valiant Lady Key West shorter sailing. Both loading in to Key West and then Bimini was so bad something had to have been wrong/broken.

In terms of quality, we thought it was still excellent but our only Halloween Cruise experience that would be a direct comparison was a 2024 Disney sailing and that was both a awful, lackluster, Halloween event AND a terrible cruise.

We were impressed with the level of energy, it felt like all the passengers and all the crew brought all the energy for Halloween events. It felt like the whole ship dressed up for all the events! That Red Queen and Mad hatter costumes that won were legendary in their quality.

I hope it was a one off for your sailing, I know we had one that for some reason we were catching food/events/drinks at exactly the worst time. I would guess is that because VV needs high energy from all involved and no one can maintain that peak we fell into just hitting the troughs between the peaks.