Have you been to Howl at the Moon?

I'd say most non-Disney piano bars are "non-family-friendly", based on my experience. I have not been to the FL outpost of Howl at the Moon, but did just experience it aboard the Norwegian Epic. They were fine, not the best I've experienced nor the worst. How much you like a piano show is always a combination of the talent of the performers and the liveliness of the crowd; in my case, the crowd just wasn't living up to their end of the bargain.

I always feel bad in circumstances like that. If the crowd isn't playing along it must be REALLY unpleasant to be trying to do that kind of show. I suppose that to some degree you can say they should be doing more to get the crowd into it, but I feel like you're right that the crowd has a bit of an obligation to play along.

You'd be surprised how much of a role the audience plays in your enjoyment of just about anything with one.

Definitely a crowd-generated "good time." Thanks for the update SoloFriendly.

I have to ask..what exactly is a "dueling piano" bar..I imagine there are two pianos..and they duel?

Sort of. Usually, they just play requests, but sometimes they try to get the crowd to make dueling bids for and against songs. So Pianist A starts playing someone's request and Pianist B rags on it and tries to whip someone in the crowd into submitting a new request so A has to stop playing that song and B starts in on the new one, then A encourages the original requester to bid more to reinstate the 1st request. If that makes any sense. I've seen it becoming a bidding war. The highest I've seen people get is $100/request in Vegas. That was before the recession, of course. It can be fun, but I wouldn't want to spend the money that way.