sparks1093

If the question is directed at me, I don't want to make it harder for them. If it is directed at someone else then I have no idea.

Read through the thread, you'll get an idea. 🙂

At the coffee bar that sells all of those cakes and such.

Nope.

Gratuities aren't subject to sales tax in any event but I've never been charged tax.

Personally I'd have the 4th while resolving to get Cheers next time round.

I haven't any sympathy for corporate either but removing the auto gratuitites and re-inventing the wheel by "reallocating the dollars as I see fit" doesn't hurt corporate at all, it hurts the employees who did their best to make your cruise vacation special. Do you think that the heartless corporation cares about their employees enough to lose any sleep over that?

I've cruised in the past few years and haven't noticed a decline in service, but be that as it may rather than taking it out on the crew complain to the cruise ship and to corporate about the decline in service. If they start receiving enough complaints then they will take action. If they don't receive the complaints and the ships continue to sail full then in their eyes there is no reason to change (because the ultimate complaint is taking your business elsewhere). As I've said you can call it whatever you want to call it, gratuities, daily service charge, resort fee, it is still the way that the staff gets paid.

I haven't an explanation at all, but that is hardly the point. Your contention is that smoking on balconies was banned because of the Star Princess fire and that isn't the case. You are free to think what you think of course, as am I and the world isn't going to end because we're of a different opinion.

Part of the problem is that you came in the middle of a conversation with another poster about the feasibility of just adding the tips to the fare or the charge. I brought up a specific example to show why it isn't so easy. Of course you don't think a bellhop deserves that kind of wages, but that too is irrelevant. I was a bellhop when I was a teenager and my job was to take a guests' bags to their room. There are a group of folks onboard the ship that do that every embarkation day and then reverse the process at the end of the cruise. No matter what you call them they do get a share of the auto gratuities to compensate them for their time in moving luggage since they normally work in another department.

And yet scientists in controlled laboratory conditions could not replicate the fire, as pointed out earlier in this thread.

Why would it take a private company so long to implement something? They don't need any outside permission, they can just implement it themselves.

Since I've never heard of them I'm going to guess they aren't strictly necessary as we've gotten along without them.

I am well aware that there are non-tipping cultures out there but we aren't discussing them. You might not feel that a bellhop is worth $50k per year, but I'm sure the folks who are doing that job and making that kind of money would ask you to mind your own business and not upset their apple cart.

It's not that easy- account for the slow season when there are fewer guests. Your $100 is going to quickly balloon into $500 or more. Plus you need to account for the people that will take their business elsewhere because the rates are lower.

So people on the other side also misunderstand how things work and my remarks would be directed at them as well.

I'll put it this way- I know a gentleman that works as a bellhop at a resort here in my state and has worked there since high school. He makes at least $50k in tips each year by a conservative reckoning. How much more would that resort need to raise their rates in order to give him that type of income? It's not as easy as you make it out to be.

*sigh* once again, YOU don't tip the person behind the scenes. You give your tip to the server and THEY tip out the person behind the scenes if that is the agreement exists in that establishment. If you remove your auto gratuities and tip your steward they are still obligated to turn those tips in so they can be properly distributed. You've just made it harder on them because they have to use their off time to deal with it.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that in those days behind the scenes folks were tipped out by those 4 particular crew members. That's the way tipping out works, the customer isn't aware of it.

This has been our experience as well. If you wish to receive your apps at once then all you need do is let the waitstaff know your preference.

I am more likely to carry my passport when I am visiting a country that requires me to have a passport, such as on our trips to Europe. When I'm on a closed looped cruise I choose to leave the passport in the safe for a number of reasons, including the fact that my passport is not necessary for me to be where I am. Something might go awry, sure, but that's largely within my control and the odds are very small. I traveled extensively (including Europe) without a passport before we got our passports in 2015 (much of it with the US Navy) so I tend not to hold passports in the same regard as others.

It all depends on what you mean by giving advice. Answering a simple question, such as does a US citizen on a closed loop cruise require a passport, isn't giving advice and most of us who respond to that question have learned to answer the question with enough information to cover most of the bases. As @njhorseman points out the government websites are inadequate in a number of ways and the cruise line websites can be little better. When someone asks "may I cruise on a closed loop cruise without a passport" there are potentially two questions being asked- 1) is it licit for me to cruise on a closed loop cruise without a passport and 2) is it prudent for me to cruise on a closed loop cruise without a passport. Many posters jump right to number 2 and that leads to giving advice since whether or not it is prudent is very much determined by facts none of us know OR is driven by a posters' own opinion (i.e. "I would never leave my country without a passport and you shouldn't either"). When it comes down to it people have a choice when it comes to what travel documentation to use in certain situations and it is not up to us to make that choice for them, because what they chose doesn't affect us.

Or the cruise lines do what they did and are doing- they make most of the ship non-smoking and have limited smoking areas for the smokers. I'm ok with that- I know where the smoking areas are and can avoid them.

A private company can and does act much faster than a bureaucratic government. No, smoking was banned on balconies for the same reason there are no more smoking/non-smoking areas in restaurants- because society has changed and smoking is no longer as accepted as it used to be (watch Jaws to be reminded of how prevalent and accepted it was- smoking in a hospital ER). I severed onboard several ships in the Navy and very few fires were caused by smoking. Post #19 is very telling. In any event, as interesting as this conversation is, on the vast majority of cruise lines smoking is not allowed on balconies and it doesn't really matter why.

According to Sir Google Princess banned balcony smoking in 2012. 6 years after Star Princess.