Don't shoot the questioner!!!

[ivanova]

We also tipped extra for our wait staff and stateroom hostess. Could not imagine receiving better service. We tipped each of them approx $15 more (two people in the room). We just took all of our remaining US $ (excpet for $5 in singles to tip bus driver) and divided it up. The only thing we tipped UNDER was out head waiter. We had a table for 10 and not one person at our table could tell us his name and we had not seen him once, not even tip night! I think we gave him $5 total. We tipped everything in cash because at the time we were not sure if Disney charged a service fee to the staff for charged tips. Probably they don't, but we wanted our team to get every penny.
We also gave our stateroom hostess all the extra "stuff" I had packed. Unopened shampoo, toothpaste, facial cleanser, soap and tampons. (Why I brought two of everything I cannot explain except to say it was my first vacation and I WAY overpacked). I asked her if she could use them or if a friend could and she seemed very appreciative and told us these things were very expensive for them to pick up.

Their time off the ship for shopping is probably limited, so I would imagine that picking up items like that would be expensive for them. What a great idea.

As for the head server, I've been told by several CMs (not head servers themselves) that if your dining experience runs smoothly even though you don't phsyically see/meet the head server, he should be credited with running a smooth operation behind the scenes. On both of our cruises we knew our head server as well as our server & assist server, but I've read plenty here from people like you that never knew your head server existed.

 

[jrabbit]

I looked into the Repo cruise. It wasn't the amount of the tip at the end that concerned me, it was the amount of the actual cruise fare. Guess when we book cruises we need to consider all the money that will be going out...cruise fare, transportation, parking at the port, transfers, excursions, buying cruise wear, sticking the dog in the kennel, souveniers, paying the people who come and watch the cat and house, parking at the airport, alcoholic beverages, jackpot bingo, and, yes...TIPS!!

We've budgeted over 2x the normal amount of 7 night cruise for tipping. The actual cruise price we got was actually less than 20% more than our summer '03 7 night cruise (and going from a cat 10 to 9) so we feel that we have gotten a bargain for our 14 nights and days of fun, relaxation, food and excellent service!! Like you said, tipping is the least of the costs ... airfare from/to both coasts, someone taking care of the cat and trying to keep the grass green, DL beforehand and WDW afterwards. I can't believe how much we've budgeted and saved for this trip (way over $10K) and it still might not be enough --- but hey, we've got about 9 more months to save.

 

[rolyjp]

Yes, I agree. That wasn't very nice. Although the Head Server might not be around much, he is the "behind the scenes" boss who does earn his tips as much as the others who are serving. As for the host/hostess, we keep a very clean room so there isn't much for him/her to do, but we still feel that he/she deserves a tip. The one we didn't tip as recommended just didn't even do the minimum things (clean towels, soap) - and forget the cute towel animals and chocolates, and never had even a one from this hostess and forget asking for ice!! IF she couldn't figure out that we weren't happy with her after the third day I chased her down the hall to get clean towels and soap, then she could never figure it out!

Rae

What exactly does the Head Server do "behind the scene"? We saw him (it's always a he!!) at most two times on each of our 3 trips. On our first and second trip we only saw the guy at the last night, and we supposed it was because he expected a tip the next day.