I know this is an older post...
Gratuities are at the guest's discretion.
And the suggested amounts are not a minimum, they are 'in recognition of exceptional service'.
That is truly not how cruises work. It hasn’t been since before I took my first cruise in 2003 and it definitely isn’t now.
Gratuities are the bulk of the employee’ pay.
They then gave me a new receipt showing amount to give our to servers and hostess.
FYI you don’t have to give the receipt to them. The money will still make it to them.
We don't pre-pay anymore. We've found that sometimes service deserves more or less and don't want to mess with adjusting it on board.
So now you take it off once onboard then either deal with all cash at the end or go back to GS a second time. Call me crazy, but that sounds like two trips rather than one, and/or bringing a lot of extra cash.
Sometimes it can be hard to speak up, especially on a
Disney cruise. I wasn't particularly thrilled with our servers the cruise we took. I've read stories of people being blown away by their servers and feeling so sad to say good bye at the end, and I felt nothing close to that. I felt like the service was slow, they seemed harried, it was hard to get the drinks we wanted, I asked for things for kids and they never arrived, etc. And then at the end got the, "Weren't your servers EXCELLENT?" speech from the head waiter. I think he may stopped by once the first night and we never saw him again. I didn't really want to make a big deal, but by the end I definitely didn't feel they were excellent. We did keep tips the same though, it wasn't worth the effort of changing them.
You said nothing. You tipped the same.
You get that they had NO idea of the subpar service, right?
This is a fallacy.
Straight from
Disney Cruise Line site:
'Q. Is there an expected amount for gratuities, and how should I pay them?
A. It is customary to give gratuities in recognition of exceptional service,
The fact that mainstream cruises use gratuities as the bulk of the pay isn’t a fallacy.
Using Disney’s cute wording to justify behavior is short sighted.
they assured me I can removed the auto-gratuities in full from my bill and then tip as I please at the end of the cruise in cash.
And you’ll have accomplished the same thing with your trip to GS at the start and keeping cash, as you would have accomplished with a trip to GS to increase/decrease gratuities at the end.
I was reading the 'Concierge vs. non. Is it worth it?' thread and one poster was saying you have to know what is included so you can ask for it. Umm, no, if it is included and therefore paid for, it should be automatically provided. If it is not, it is a fail.
It’s not a fail to not have a 2 hour meeting to find out all the services available.
Believe what you like, but I am speaking from personal experience. My curmudgeon uncle was very determined about having guest services remove the standard gratuities. On a 3 night cruise there were calls, notes and one officer even stopped by our Palo table to follow up with him. He was frustrated with all of us for ordering beverages, due to the automatic tip on bar service.
Yep.
Even when I’ve done something out of their ordinary, I am asked about it. During our Disney cruises I was in prime weight-loss mode, and being very careful about food. I also didn’t have a big appetite, because of that.
I don’t typically get appetizers anyway, but especially not then. I remember our first night was at AP and I got the risotto as my meal, and truly found not finish it along with my salad and still have any room to try dessert. The server freaked. Asked 18 million times what was wrong. I didn’t *want* to talk about my weight loss woth my server, but I had to, to get him off my back.
Anything out of the ordinary, they will worry about.
I like to wait until the cruise to tip only because of one incident we had with a homophobic waiter. He was terrible and we were able to decrease his tip significantly due to his behavior at guest services.
Since you were able to decrease his tip just the same AND let his employers know of the issue, and you had prepaid, why decide to not prepay?