How does tipping work

[mom2my3kids]

We are pretty much once in a lifetime vacationers. We went to WDW in 06, and are cruising in Nov. We had never been on a family vacation until our trip to the world in 06. We saved for 3 years. We've saved for 2 for the cruise. This will be the ONLY time we ever cruise, I'm sure, especially with 4 kids. However, when we set our budget to figure how much we needed to save to go, tipping was included. We knew what we were getting in to from researching the DCL website, reading the books and reading the boards. For us, it's just part of the cost to cruise, much like travel to the port. It meant we had to cut back to a 4 day instead of 7 day, or not go to the WDW parks beforehand, but I'm not going to let people wait on my family for days and not tip them.

Even if they made a good salary, they are in tipped positions on a cruise liner, and that's just what you are expected to do when you are cruising.....any cruise line and not just DCL from what I've read.

Ditto!!!

 

[dursin]

We are pretty much once in a lifetime vacationers. We went to WDW in 06, and are cruising in Nov. We had never been on a family vacation until our trip to the world in 06. We saved for 3 years. We've saved for 2 for the cruise. This will be the ONLY time we ever cruise, I'm sure, especially with 4 kids. However, when we set our budget to figure how much we needed to save to go, tipping was included. We knew what we were getting in to from researching the DCL website, reading the books and reading the boards. For us, it's just part of the cost to cruise, much like travel to the port. It meant we had to cut back to a 4 day instead of 7 day, or not go to the WDW parks beforehand, but I'm not going to let people wait on my family for days and not tip them.

Even if they made a good salary, they are in tipped positions on a cruise liner, and that's just what you are expected to do when you are cruising.....any cruise line and not just DCL from what I've read.

But what happens if something unforeseen happens after you book or even shortly before your vacation? I knew someone last year who lost his job about 40 days before his cruise date (a situation I could very well find myself in by the end of the year!). At that point it was too late to get a refund on the cruise so they cut ALL expenses to an absolute minumum....that meant excursions, alcohol, photos, souvenirs and yes, even the gratuities. I think in a case like that, I would likely do the same, but try to put something in the envelope, even if it was just like $20, along with a note apologizing and explaining why. Hoping it doesn't come to that for me though!

 

[Kurby]

well i do think we can count our selves lucky that we've all found this site and realize that tips are not included but others aren't so lucky and really how many people read all the fine print?

i've never heard of anyone tipping a maid/housekeeper even when i was one

 

[mmouse37]

i've never heard of anyone tipping a maid/housekeeper even when i was one

Really...you never heard of anyone tipping the maid??? Wow...my first job was a maid back in the seventies and even back then people would leave tips in the room.

I know how hard maids work so I always leave a tip in a hotel. Surprised, as a maid yourself, you never heard of tipping housekeeping.

 

[Kurby]

not lying here - i was never ever tipped as a maid and i was one for the final 2 years of high school in the 80's

maybe it's a Canadian thing don't know but i didn't hear about tipping maids until i saw it regarding mouse keeping at WDW.

i knew there was a lot of tipping on cruises but again didn't know the housekeeping was one of them.

 

[mmouse37]

not lying here - i was never ever tipped as a maid and i was one for the final 2 years of high school in the 80's

maybe it's a Canadian thing don't know but i didn't hear about tipping maids until i saw it regarding mouse keeping at WDW.

i knew there was a lot of tipping on cruises but again didn't know the housekeeping was one of them.

Never thought you were lying LOL!!! Maybe it is a Canadian thing.....I even remember as a child at hotels with my parents that they would leave something on the dresser the last day before we checked out.

 

[Mickeyhugger]

Never thought you were lying LOL!!! Maybe it is a Canadian thing.....I even remember as a child at hotels with my parents that they would leave something on the dresser the last day before we checked out.

My parents did the same thing

Rob

 

[Kurby]

would make sense if it's a canadian thing - or a general canadian thing - at least where hotel housekeeping is concerned as we do tip servers.

i know australia in general doesnt tip for most things and we are both part of the commonwealth. i'd love to know if other members of the commenwealth tip for all those positions.

 

[mmouse37]

would make sense if it's a canadian thing - or a general canadian thing - at least where hotel housekeeping is concerned as we do tip servers.

i know australia in general doesnt tip for most things and we are both part of the commonwealth. i'd love to know if other members of the commenwealth tip for all those positions.

Actually that would make some sense..... as we were in London in Feb and everyday I left some money on the dresser for the maid and every night it was still there....so they probably didn't realize it was for them. I finally put it an envelope and addressed it to housekeeping. Then the envelope was gone when we came back.

 

[Chelley00]

But what happens if something unforeseen happens after you book or even shortly before your vacation?

We also budgeted for trip insurance. With money being so tight, trip insurance was one thing we couldn't afford not to have. Again, this was an expense we built into our budget. It just meant we had to save harder and longer to be able to cover all the expenses that go into a cruise.

I would have loved to have vacationed last year, but it wasn't in the cards moneywise because of the necessities we budget on our vacations.

 

[dursin]

We also budgeted for trip insurance. With money being so tight, trip insurance was one thing we couldn't afford not to have. Again, this was an expense we built into our budget. It just meant we had to save harder and longer to be able to cover all the expenses that go into a cruise.

I would have loved to have vacationed last year, but it wasn't in the cards moneywise because of the necessities we budget on our vacations.

We always get trip insurance too, but I never bothered to check whether loss of job was a covered expense. If it's covered, that would give provide another option...cancel the entire trip and file a claim with the insurance company -or- continue with the trip, but make serious cutbacks to all additional expenses which may include gratuities. For now, I'm going to hope that I don't have to make that kind of decision!

 

[wwwosie]

It's really surprising to hear that some folks are shocked about having to tip servers in a cruise ship. Consider it a floating restaurant... when you go out to eat, most folks expect to tip.
In land based restaurants, the wages paid are lower because these are tipped positions...
As far as room stewards I can certainly understand why people are surprised about having to tip, but then again, they do provide a level of service much higher than standard housekeeping on land.
I made up rooms for a living as a teenager... hardest work I ever did... sometimes I was left something in the room, it was much appreciated.
As far as what to tip, yeah... do it within your possibilities... I understand that some of us have to save for years to do trips like this.

 

[dato63]

Hi - I want to make sure I understand this.

I followed the $ is per person based on your cruise - not per day. And they give you tip envelopes at the end of your cruise. So, to make sure I have this - you do not tip when you dine. You just wait until the end of your tirp and do all the tipping at once?

When you get the envelopes for the tips - is the suggested amount on them?

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

Hi - I want to make sure I understand this.

I followed the $ is per person based on your cruise - not per day. And they give you tip envelopes at the end of your cruise. So, to make sure I have this - you do not tip when you dine. You just wait until the end of your trip and do all the tipping at once?

When you get the envelopes for the tips - is the suggested amount on them?

You do all of the tipping at once on the last dinner of your cruise in the restaurant, and the same night for your stateroom host.

Normally the (suggested ) tip is quoted per day, per person on the cruise, as cruises are different lengths,

For example look at this site:-

http://cruisetip.tpkeller.com/

If you put in the no of nights on your cruise and the no of people it will tell you the suggested tip.

With your cruise tickets you will get an information page like this reminding you of the suggested tip, ( dont worry about the amounts for this, its a 15 night cruise)

 

[dato63]

You do all of the tipping at once on the last dinner of your cruise in the restaurant, and the same night for your stateroom host.

Normally the (suggested ) tip is quoted per day, per person on the cruise, as cruises are different lengths,

For example look at this site:-

http://cruisetip.tpkeller.com/

If you put in the no of nights on your cruise and the no of people it will tell you the suggested tip.

With your cruise tickets you will get an information page like this reminding you of the suggested tip, ( dont worry about the amounts for this, its a 15 night cruise)

That clears me up perfectly. Thank you. We're not going for a very long time - but I wanted to make sure I included enough in my budgeting.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

That clears me up perfectly. Thank you. We're not going for a very long time - but I wanted to make sure I included enough in my budgeting.

The Tip calculator quoted is very good to help you budget.

Have a great cruise!!!! Enjoy.

 

[llqool]

What happens if you are booked to eat at Palo on the last night of the cruise? We plan to prepay the tips on our credit card, so do we have to go track down our servers that night and give them the slips, or will they just get them anyway from guest services? And I don't want them to think that we are stiffing them a tip!

Also, I have heard about giving the counselors in the kids areas small gifts like candy, etc. b/c they will be allowed to keep that and they aren't allowed to keep some other types of tips. Is that a good idea? Any alternate suggestions? I don't want to buy a huge pack of phone cards, b/c I will have no use for them if we don't end up giving them all out.

 

[wuv tigger]

just in case.

We wanted to make sure that our kids could properly thank the servers for the hard work they did for our family.

 

[Happy4Disney]

What happens if you are booked to eat at Palo on the last night of the cruise? We plan to prepay the tips on our credit card, so do we have to go track down our servers that night and give them the slips, or will they just get them anyway from guest services? And I don't want them to think that we are stiffing them a tip!

Also, I have heard about giving the counselors in the kids areas small gifts like candy, etc. b/c they will be allowed to keep that and they aren't allowed to keep some other types of tips. Is that a good idea? Any alternate suggestions? I don't want to buy a huge pack of phone cards, b/c I will have no use for them if we don't end up giving them all out.

We just returned on Saturday. When you pay with your credit card you will get a printed "ticket" (just like the excursion and dining room rotation tickets) that you hand out, there are 4 of them. I had mine printed on Wednesday so I could have handed them out early if I needed to.

I'm sure the counselors would appreciate whatever you decided to give them; we gave them candy and they started handing it out and eating it right away. Phone cards sound great but I wouldn't know how many you'd need. I suppose you could just leave them all there and they could figure out how to share them.

 

[Doingitagain]

I had heard that if you ran your gratuities through your stateroom account early, the staff could see it credited to their accounts in advance (thus no "surprise" when they got the ticket in the envelope).