Towel charges are back

[Ocean Boy]

I have not been a fan of the check out procedure for towels in the past but after cruising Allure last week I may have second thoughts about it. It seemed that many people were just leaving towels on their chairs when they were done with them and had no intentions of returning. So seats looked taken that really were not. I also noticed that the staff, at times, seemed to become quite quick to remove towels from seats where people were gone for just a short time.

 

So now there is the problem that if you leave your seat for just a short time the chances are good that your towels will have been picked up and someone else is in your seat. This means you now need to leave some personal belonging on your seat with the towels if you want the staff to realize that the chair is still being used.

 

It seems that sometimes ya just can't win.

[LetsGetWet!]

I didn't worry about the towels so much last year. It seems that every morning around 7 or 8 someone kindly left nice, clean towels on otherwise unattended deck chairs. I just helped myself to those and never had to sign one out.

Haha! Love it! :D

[edjny]

I love Royal Caribbean, but I fail to understand how they can be the only mainstream cruise line who has to totally inconvenience passengers in order to keep track of their towels.:rolleyes:

 

I am sorry.... People are pigs. On our last cruise on the Legend, people were grabbing 3-4 towels first thing in the morning and plopping them down on their selected chairs. Nothing new there, but they don't care. They just leave them there. If the crew did not pick them all up overnight, they would still be there the next morning marking "their" chairs. We saw towels dropped all over the ship because people did not care.

 

Welcome back to the $25 charge.

[squadron]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

 

Think it is a good idea- don't see why some think it is such an inconvenience. Help eliminate the problem of people being lax about bringing back towels when ashore and will discourage chair hogs from leaving towels on chairs for hours when they might get charged if towels are dumped into bin by staff.

[rontravel]

Maybe it's just me and the way I was raised but I don't have any problem going to the pool deck and signing out towels or not signing them out. Any way you look at it that towel does not belong to you. It is yours to use while on board or on shore excursions. You return it because it is the courteous thing to do.

It takes no more than 5 minutes to run out, get the towels and back to the cabin either signing out or not signing out. I've got nearly 600 nights sailing. Mostly Royal and Celebrity with a bunch of others thrown in.

Never had I had a towel issue regardless of how they were handed out. I just don't get it.

Heaven forbid that someone may have to carry a wet towel back to the pool deck. After all it might be a whole 6 flights of steps or a 20 second elevator ride.

Wow. The towel is dirty. Yeah and so are you. Covered in wet suit, slimy T shirt and tons of nice greasy sunblock.

What a society we have become.

Rules are rules. Get used to it.

Sorry if I went off a bit but come on folks. You're on a great ship in a great port and towels are an issue?

[starlake]

So this $25 fee is only if you don't return your towels? Can you get towels one day to be used the next day or do you have to return them the same day? It will be my first time sailing with RC. On Carnival they had them in the room and when you used them, they took the used ones and replaced them with new ones.

 

 

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Yes you can and you can just trade them. You can trade in 2 used towels for 2 new ones without the use of your seapass (or how many you have .:)

Edited March 10, 2014 by starlake

[LetsGetWet!]

Think it is a good idea- don't see why some think it is such an inconvenience. Help eliminate the problem of people being lax about bringing back towels when ashore and will discourage chair hogs from leaving towels on chairs for hours when they might get charged if towels are dumped into bin by staff.

 

Maybe it's just me and the way I was raised but I don't have any problem going to the pool deck and signing out towels or not signing them out. Any way you look at it that towel does not belong to you. It is yours to use while on board or on shore excursions. You return it because it is the courteous thing to do.

It takes no more than 5 minutes to run out, get the towels and back to the cabin either signing out or not signing out. I've got nearly 600 nights sailing. Mostly Royal and Celebrity with a bunch of others thrown in.

Never had I had a towel issue regardless of how they were handed out. I just don't get it.

Heaven forbid that someone may have to carry a wet towel back to the pool deck. After all it might be a whole 6 flights of steps or a 20 second elevator ride.

Wow. The towel is dirty. Yeah and so are you. Covered in wet suit, slimy T shirt and tons of nice greasy sunblock.

What a society we have become.

Rules are rules. Get used to it.

Sorry if I went off a bit but come on folks. You're on a great ship in a great port and towels are an issue?

As ryano and a couple others have explained, the REAL issue isn't the amount of time it takes to check them out and in, its the fact that they often mess up on the check out/in and you end up with improper charges on your credit card after the cruise which you have to call and deal with and which often take weeks to fix. THAT is the biggest aggravation of that system.

[TandK0826]

Ok, so I am still confused by the $25.00. Do they charge you that to use towels or is it charged if you don't return them?

[Ocean Boy]

Ok, so I am still confused by the $25.00. Do they charge you that to use towels or is it charged if you don't return them?

 

If you don't return them or the computer system says you didn't return them.

[LetsGetWet!]

Ok, so I am still confused by the $25.00. Do they charge you that to use towels or is it charged if you don't return them?

Its charged if you don't return them - or if you do return them and somehow they don't scan your card correctly when you do...

[Sunkissed Mommy]

I just sailed the Adventure and there were no signing out of towels.

The question keeps being raised why anyone would want to steal an RCI towel? Well, the vast majority would not - but let me tell you, when you have spent the day at the beach and your towel is soaking wet and heavy......would you think twice about bringing it back if you knew that it didn't matter? Believe me, I saw many a towel being left behind in St. Maarten :eek:

 

I am not the least bit surprised the charges are back.

 

I can't understand why people would purposely take the towels either. Except that I live in South Florida, and whenever I go to the beach I spot at least 2-3 people with "stolen" cruise line towels :(

[Ocean Boy]

I never had an issue with the checking out of towels. The towel stands were in convenient locations and it never took more than a minute out my day to check out/in towels. It reduces chair hogging, it reduces clutter of abandoned towels and it reduces theft/laziness of leaving towels ashore. I'd welcome the return to this policy fleet wide.

 

Really? The first time that we sailed Oasis for 3 days they had only one towel stand open for the entire pool deck and the solarium. It was not convenient at all.

[Loyal2RCCL]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

 

I'm glad it's back! it really cuts down on the chair hogs when they risk being charged $25 for a towel they leave out on an empty chair all day long.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

Really? The first time that we sailed Oasis for 3 days they had only one towel stand open for the entire pool deck and the solarium. It was not convenient at all.

 

Like I said I usually sail on Radiance/Vision class and find the towel stands very convenient. I sailed Mariner once and didn't care for the ship layout/design and don't remember any issues with towel procurement. I have never been on a Freedom or Oasis class ship so perhaps I'm in the wrong that all ships are like this.

[Dave85]

I have not been a fan of the check out procedure for towels in the past but after cruising Allure last week I may have second thoughts about it. It seemed that many people were just leaving towels on their chairs when they were done with them and had no intentions of returning. So seats looked taken that really were not. I also noticed that the staff, at times, seemed to become quite quick to remove towels from seats where people were gone for just a short time.

 

So now there is the problem that if you leave your seat for just a short time the chances are good that your towels will have been picked up and someone else is in your seat. This means you now need to leave some personal belonging on your seat with the towels if you want the staff to realize that the chair is still being used.

 

It seems that sometimes ya just can't win.

 

Unfortunate but certainly understandable on the crew's end. Short of putting stickers on the towels with the time written on them (impractical on a ship the size of Allure) I don't really know what else they can do when people are behaving like that.

 

...I actually did see that sticker policy happen some years ago, I cannot remember which ship or line. The good ol' days.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Dave85

[viking042900]

I love Royal Caribbean, but I fail to understand how they can be the only mainstream cruise line who has to totally inconvenience passengers in order to keep track of their towels.:rolleyes:

 

We sailed on the Carnival Fantasy in November and you had to sign out towels in the Serenity area. Not sure about the rest of the ship though.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

We sailed on the Carnival Fantasy in November and you had to sign out towels in the Serenity area. Not sure about the rest of the ship though.

 

I sailed both the Carnival Glory and Liberty last year. There were towel stations by main pool and in Serenity area on both ships. The process was all manual. Long handwritten lists. Took MUCH longer than the quick card scan on Royal. If I remember correctly the cabin steward left beach towels in our room for port days, but I could be wrong.

[Free2bMeForever]

Did a cruise on Carnival Dream last month. There were 2 pool/beach towels in the room for use and a checkout stand on the lido deck by the main pool. The sign on the lido deck said that staff members would pick up towels from chairs that were unused for 30 minutes for the convenience of other cruisers and that they could be retrieved from the towel stand. In the "Fun Times" (sorry I may have the name wrong), there was a notice that lost towels would be charged to sail and sign card. Not sure whether it works for the cruise line or not, but seemed reasonable to me.

 

By the way, staff members DID monitor the chairs for abuse!!!!!

[time4u2go]

They could work this into the perfect chair hog solution. Here's how:

 

Let people check out towels as they previously have (until fairly recently), with a $25 charge for unreturned towels. But then also allow people to return extra towels, and get like a $10 credit, much like getting a deposit back on Coke bottles used to work (and still does in some places?). The cruise line will have to pay out the $10 credits, but that's on a towel that won't be returned by someone, resulting in the cruise line getting $25 from the person that didn't return their towel. I think this could have a significant impact on chair hogs!

 

(Note: This is a JOKE.:D)

Edited March 11, 2014 by time4u2go

[Spurschick]

Like.

 

It's not a big issue to check out and return towels... or bring your own from home if you don't want to hassle it on the ship. It's too bad people can't be responsible enough so as to make this unnecessary, but it is what it is and it's not a big deal.

 

Tom

 

Agreed.

We check out towels if we go to the pool, as soon as we finish with them we check them straight back in. Solves two things, one we don't lose them and two we don't have to take damp wet towels back to the cabin. We get fresh the next time we go.

 

Whilst that may be time consuming to some, it takes no longer to check in and out on an as need basis as it does to switch out for fresh towels.

[Spurschick]

Just wondering in case anyone else mentioned this sorry if I missed, but has anyone thought it may be tied in to the fact this is spring break week?:confused:

[DrD]

Unfortunate but certainly understandable on the crew's end. Short of putting stickers on the towels with the time written on them (impractical on a ship the size of Allure) I don't really know what else they can do when people are behaving like that.

 

...I actually did see that sticker policy happen some years ago, I cannot remember which ship or line. The good ol' days.

 

Maybe they should give out the loungers in 4 hour shifts.

 

Give out a certain color towel.

 

When the shift is over all of that color towel vacates and the next shift takes over with different color towels, etc. Maybe just 2 colors and they alternate every 4 hours.

 

Any chair with wrong color towel is available.

 

They'd have to leave towels in your cabin, in 1 of the 2 colors and that's your "shift" for the cruise, you can only exchange for towel of the same color.

 

That way only half the passengers would have access to loungers at one time and everyone would have to vacate and collect their stuff at change of watch every 4 hours, so no one can monopolize a lounger longer than that.

 

We could even do a dog watch (2 two hours shifts such that your shift is not always the same 4 hours each day, so morning one day, afternoon the next, etc.)

 

They'd have to have signs around showing what color is up and how long till switch.

 

That's how Admiral Nelson would have done it!

[lady_cruiser]

We just sailed on The Navigator, March 2-9th and didn't have to sign out for our towels.

[deedeetoo]

Just wondering in case anyone else mentioned this sorry if I missed, but has anyone thought it may be tied in to the fact this is spring break week?:confused:

 

Is there such a thing as spring break week? I thought it was different everywhere. My kids are still over a month away from spring break.

 

But maybe this particular sailing had a demographic that the HD was worried about and that is why they are doing this. I will be quite happy if this is a temporary thing.

[Indiana Airhead]

I never had an issue with the checking out of towels. The towel stands were in convenient locations and it never took more than a minute out my day to check out/in towels. It reduces chair hogging, it reduces clutter of abandoned towels and it reduces theft/laziness of leaving towels ashore. I'd welcome the return to this policy fleet wide.

 

I agree with you.

 

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