We tipped the "recommended" amounts...

[desamnik]

last week when we departed the ship and I am now wondering if those recommended amounts are lower than great service should get?

I noticed our servers weren't as chipper as they had been on the other occasions that they served us, and have been feeling guilty for just tipping that amount.

They were fabulous to our family every dinner and really deserved a good tip.

In case we go on another one, I'd like to know what most people tip, the recommended amount, or more?

TIA

 

[sftnslky]

I'd like to know what most people tip, the recommended amount, or more? TIA

As you can guess this topic can, and usually does get very HEATED but as a rule of thumb for our family we typically tip the "recommended" amount for what we consider fair/good service. We ALWAYS tip more for GREAT service. We generally give $40+ more dollars to our room steward, and up to $100 more for our servers. And of course we ALWAYS tip for any room service that we order..usually $1 an item. We get $50 one dollar bills..and on our last room service order we give the person who delivers all the bills that are left.

 

[MassDisLovers]

You should not feel guilty for tipping the recommended amount. You gave a fair tip - and we all know that some people give none. If you cruise again, you may decide to give more (or less) than the recommended amount, but that's a personal decision and the recommended amount is always fine. If they weren't as "chipper" on the last morning it may just be because that tends to be a very busy, hectic day for them, I often find the servers a bit distracted on the last morning, I think they are already wondering what next week's people will be like. I wouldn't take it personally!

 

[BethA]

on the whole we have found at they very end-even when given a large tip-the CMs are distracted-probably preparing for all the turn around work with new guests. This may be expected, but it does make you feel bad after all the previous attention-almost like I got my money-now move on.

We tip more if we get excellent service. Have only had a few CMs we just tipped the rec amount.

 

[itutorfortravel]

As you can guess this topic can, and usually does get very HEATED but as a rule of thumb for our family we typically tip the "recommended" amount for what we consider fair/good service. We ALWAYS tip more for GREAT service. We generally give $40+ more dollars to our room steward, and up to $100 more for our servers. And of course we ALWAYS tip for any room service that we order..usually $1 an item. We get $50 one dollar bills..and on our last room service order we give the person who delivers all the bills that are left.

do you mean that you tip your servers each $100 more than recommended? i feel really bad then, we tipped about 20% - 25% more than recommended and thought we had been generous...our servers were great to us the last day, but i hope they didn't feel like we weren't generous enough...

 

[sftnslky]

do you mean that you tip your servers each $100 more than recommended? .our servers were great to us the last day, but i hope they didn't feel like we weren't generous enough...

No the $100 extra we typically divided up between our head server, asst server and the Maitred'. Generally we give the Maitred' an additional $10 or $20 ONLY if he has actually helped us or knows our name, finds out what we like or don't like, inquires about a missing family member etc... And in truth the only Maitred' we have ever tipped more to was Zan from Serbia [?] on the Magic last June. BTW Zan is actually married to AnnaMarie who is a SUPER server in Palo....xxxx my fingers that they are sucessful in starting their family. Then we usually tip more to our head server [Leo from India ROCKS!!!!] an additional $40 or $50 and then the asst server [Meg from England] an additional $25. Again this is just something our family does..we actually budget for the additional tips and if for some odd reason we dont' end up using them we put the dollars onto our next cruise.

 

[BethA]

usually we see the the dining room head only once or twice and do not tip extra--somehow they always show up the last night. We have had some make some changes for us, and one time when our asst server was not very good-he came every night to be sure everything was okay-so he got a good tip.

 

[dizkids]

Does DCL automatically add the recommended tip to your ob account and can this amount be adjusted once onboard? Was thinking if you wanted to give extra.

OR is it more customary to hand the tip to the servers/stewards, etc? Do you hand it all to them or only the extra?

 

[tvguy]

Does DCL automatically add the recommended tip to your ob account and can this amount be adjusted once onboard? Was thinking if you wanted to give extra.

OR is it more customary to hand the tip to the servers/stewards, etc? Do you hand it all to them or only the extra?

No, thank goodness Disney does not automatically add the tip to your account. We've found that adds up to a huge decline in service.
You decide how much you want to tip, and either give it in cash, or have it charged to your ob account.

 

[sftnslky]

Does DCL automatically add the recommended tip to your ob account and can this amount be adjusted once onboard? Was thinking if you wanted to give extra.

OR is it more customary to hand the tip to the servers/stewards, etc? Do you hand it all to them or only the extra?

Thank Goodness NO..We cruised on a diffrenet line and they automatically added the tips to your total.....the service was AWFUL..and not just a little AWFUL..it was EXTREMLEY apparent that they really didn't have to do anything to earn your tips. We went right down to the desk and had them take all the tips off and tipped what we wanted.

Yes, you will get a small envelope on the last night, you can either put cash in the envelope or you can "bill" the tips to your on board account..If you want to do that, then you simply go down to the customer service desk, tell them how much and who you want to tip. Then they give you a "ticket/voucher" to put in the tip envelope to hand to your server. Hope this helps.

 

[dizkids]

Thank you! I like the envelope idea : )

 

[tvguy]

Thank Goodness NO..We cruised on a diffrenet line and they automatically added the tips to your total.....the service was AWFUL..and not just a little AWFUL..it was EXTREMLEY apparent that they really didn't have to do anything to earn your tips. We went right down to the desk and had them take all the tips off and tipped what we wanted.

Yes, you will get a small envelope on the last night, you can either put cash in the envelope or you can "bill" the tips to your on board account..If you want to do that, then you simply go down to the customer service desk, tell them how much and who you want to tip. Then they give you a "ticket/voucher" to put in the tip envelope to hand to your server. Hope this helps.

Also, some lines that did automatic tips have changed that to a service change which can not be adjusted down if you receive poor service.

 

[leelip1982]

For a 7 day cruise between all the tipping it should equal about $500.00 for cruise.

 

[cats mom]

As you can guess this topic can, and usually does get very HEATED

So true, hopefully this thread will be the exception though.

For us...
if we feel the service was adequate = suggested tip
if we feel anyone went above and beyond = extra tip
we have never had to reduce the suggested tip amount for sub par service on DCL, but should the situation arise, we would.
Of course we would first try to address any issues we might be having before it got to that point.

I certainly don't think anyone should ever feel bad for tipping "just" the recommended amount.

This is certainly not the first time crew members seeming more distant on the last morning has come up, and I agree that they're probably just in switch over mode and getting ready for the next cruise.

 

[inkkognito]

Our philosphy is like Cat Mom's. We start out at the recommended amount and go up from there if the service warrants it, which it almost always does. In 68 cruises, I think we've gone below the recommended amount twice...can't remember why now, since it's be so long. We probably go over the recommended amount 80 to 90 percent of the time.

 

[itutorfortravel]

For a 7 day cruise between all the tipping it should equal about $500.00 for cruise.

Are you including room service and beverage tips in that too? And for how many people? We were 3 people, we did buy a few drinks and usually added $1 tip per drink on top of the 15% that was already added...for room service we tipped anywhere from $3 - $5, and we tipped about 20% - 25% above the recommended amount for our servers and stateroom host, but we didn't spend anywhere near $500 on tips! I thought we had been quite generous, too! Now I am wondering if we didn't do enough or do what is comparable to what most others do...

 

[Zeppelin]

usually we see the the dining room head only once or twice and do not tip extra--somehow they always show up the last night. We have had some make some changes for us, and one time when our asst server was not very good-he came every night to be sure everything was okay-so he got a good tip.

our dining room head came over and said "hello" every night and spent time with us...this is different from other cruises...we took a ten day Costa cruise on our honeymoon in 2000 to Greece and Italy....the ONLY time we saw or spoke to our dining room head was tip time...

I use the "reccomended" amount as a bottom number and work my way up from there depending on service....last year we requeated a waiter (Alit from Bali) and obviously felt endebtetted to give more $$$....

 

[dizkids]

I did 1 non-DCL cruise and in the dining room we had a head waiter and he had an assistant and then there was the maitre'd. Do we need envelopes for all of them?

 

[sftnslky]

I did 1 non-DCL cruise and in the dining room we had a head waiter and he had an assistant and then there was the maitre'd. Do we need envelopes for all of them?

Yep!! and you will also get an envelope for your cabin steward as well.

 

[inkkognito]

our dining room head came over and said "hello" every night and spent time with us...this is different from other cruises.

We got spoiled right from the start on DCL with head servers. On our very first Disney cruise, way back in Sept. 1998, we saw ours each night and mentioned that we planned to cruise again for our anniversary the following Feb. On the last night, he produced a Happy Anniversary cake and said it's never too early to celebrate! Overall we're really had great head servers on DCL. Very involved and visible and well deserving of their tips.