1. hmmm.....good question! dh always handled that, but i think he'd give them $5 (cash, too, i think, but can't be sure without asking him) a trip depending on how much food they brought.
2. photos? sure! got lots. need to find a way to share them, though. give me a couple days!
3. noise...yep, noise. the decks are metal, as you can imagine, so you will hear noise from just about anything, including a ping pong ball bouncing on deck (no lie!). we've been fortunate in that we were midships each time we were on deck 8. i imagine if you are under or close to under topsiders, it can be even noisier as they set up for the morning rush.
the noise was a bit of a blessing on our last cruise as i heard the running (yes, running) on deck an hour or so before they finally roused everyone to get on deck (in those lovely orange life vests) because the fire that started in the aft stacks was not under control. by that point, we were well aware that there was a problem, had dressed and put our kids in clothes so they wouldn't be cold if we had to evacuate (which we did for well over an hour). but that's another story, isn't it?
