Okay, rather than spreading the text data I have across rows in a repeating panel, I just store it all in one cell in the table (where each row corresponds to a set of themed text data) and display it as a single item (i.e., convert it to BlobMedia and set it to a label’s text).
Storing and displaying the data in this way allows the text-based data to display instantly when the page loads. Much better than 15 seconds of loading time. This seems to solve my issue and so I’m left thinking that perhaps the repeating panel is better for a very small amount of rows (that need to be kept separate in the db). Feel free to correct me of course.
Allan