I have had multiple towel animals, I have had none. I tip sometimes, other times I don't.
I have been told by housekeeping that if you have a towel animal left for you, it is yours to take. We have a nice collection of them here at home.
But, if you have a housekeeper that doesn't know how to make a towel animal? No amount of tipping will get you one. Some housekeepers have other housekeepers make them for them..they they can leave them for the guests. But usually only those houekeepers that know how to make them, will leave them.
My funniest towel animal story??? I had taken my eldest dd, then 34, to WDW for her first time. We stayed at Pop for the first 2 nights. My dd had seen our collection of towel animals and was really hoping to find one in our room. Well, we got to our room and nothing!!! We had seen some in the windows on the way to our room, so were hoping to find one in our room. Well, dd figured it just wasn't her lucky day...she was sad (if you can imagine an adult being sad because she didn't get a folded up towel!!!!!) but got over it. We went outside to look out on the resort....we were talking about how funny it was that some rooms had towel animals and some didn't. She said that she really hoped that her next stay in WDW get her one. We heard someone laughing behind us....it was a housekeeper. She beckoned to us...and pointed to our window!!! Ummmm, there were two towel animals, sitting there. We hadn't gone past the window when we arrived, and we didn't open the drapes when we got inside...so never knew they were there. It was too funny!!
At my first Pop stay, we saw towel animals everywhere...except for the area our room was in. We continued seeing the darned things all over Pop, but not in bldg 2, 3rd floor!!! I had to assume that we had a housekeeper that didn't make them. Not to mention that our housekeeper was the slowest housekeeper we ever had. We are very tidy...even make up the beds before leaving for the day. All that has to be done is replace toileties and towels, and maybe swipe the counter. But, on a few occasions, we returned to the room after 2pm and the room wasn't made up yet!!! Drove me nuts. One time we returned at 3:15, the housekeeper was a few doors down from our end of the floor room. It took her until 4:30 to get to our room!!! Obviously she wasn't busy making up towel animals!!!! Oh, and we tipped every day..up until that point anyway.