Angry Chair Hogs

[Canukcruisenewbie]

On my last cruise chair reserving was an issue as well, but also, there were guests who brought their mini blue tooth speakers out to listen to their country music and other styles. Drives me crazy. Don't they have consideration for those around them? Guess not. :-(

 

 

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[Fouremco]

On my last cruise chair reserving was an issue as well, but also, there were guests who brought their mini blue tooth speakers out to listen to their country music and other styles. Drives me crazy. Don't they have consideration for those around them? Guess not. :-(

Wouldn't a bluetooth jammer be nice? :cool:

[audome78]

I can't take credit for this photo, but I love it! I've tried unsuccesfully to capture another. Note the time is AM.

 

 

Photo is mine, but BillOh has exclusive rights to use it at any time. As a matter of fact, I was hoping you'd break it out on this thread! :D:D:D

 

Taken on the Freedom a few years ago.

[PoppyandNana]

As I said back in post #22, I really think that some people have no clue about this issue. There are certainly those that simply choose to ignore the rules, but I'm sure there are many like your friend who are simply unaware.

 

I can't believe these people are unaware of the negativity of their actions.

[gi_pam]

 

I just came off Harmony's Christmas cruise. This picture was taken at 8:30 am on day 7, sea day, main pool. My husband made me take this picture to share with Cruise Critic!

 

Hard to really get a feel, but if you look closely you see that almost every chair has a towel on it. Most have one tied to the arms. One towel saving two chairs, or a row of chairs with towels tied onto each pair of arms.

 

Now, what was weird was that I don't recall seeing a single notice saying that chairs can't be reserved or held for longer than "x" time. I didn't see a sign and I just skimmed the compasses and there wasn't anything in there. No announcements at shows about saving seats either, like on other cruises.

 

The sports pool was adult only and they were enforcing that. There were over 1800 kids on our sailing and the sports pool was usually not crowded. I sat by that pool for an afternoon and watched the attendant ask at least 4 families with kids to leave. One lady apparently didn't speak English and he led her to the sign (in several languages) and eventually got her to understand that she and her little guy had to leave.

 

But chair hogging/saving was in full force. At all the pools, in the Solarium and in the theatres. One lady was saving an entire row in the Aqua Theatre.

 

Annoying but we never had a problem finding a place to sit. There was lots of chairs.

 

 

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[TravelerThom]

...I don't recall seeing a single notice saying that chairs can't be reserved or held for longer than "x" time. I didn't see a sign and I just skimmed the compasses and there wasn't anything in there. No announcements at shows about saving seats either, like on other cruises...

IMO a case of the Cruise Director not doing his job.:mad: Was that Bobby Brown?

[gi_pam]

IMO a case of the Cruise Director not doing his job.:mad: Was that Bobby Brown?

 

 

 

Abe Hughes

 

 

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[Fouremco]

I can't believe these people are unaware of the negativity of their actions.

 

As the post following yours clearly points out, the rules aren't always readily available. Regulars on CC have to remember that their cruise knowledge is far more extensive than the average passenger's. Don't get me wrong, I know full well that many of the Chair Hogs know exactly what they are doing, but I believe that others have no clue.

 

Now, what was weird was that I don't recall seeing a single notice saying that chairs can't be reserved or held for longer than "x" time. I didn't see a sign and I just skimmed the compasses and there wasn't anything in there. No announcements at shows about saving seats either, like on other cruises.k

[aubreyc1988]

Last week on Allure my wife is in a lounger on deck 16 around 10-11:00AM. Some people asked about towels on chairs nearby and she and others nearby say they've been there at least an hour or more with no sign of anyone occupying them. The four people move the towels and lie down. Later some people show up and start raising HELL about it saying it was rude and wrong to take "their chairs". I showed up as this was happening, and it went downhill from there quickly. The chair hogs kept ranting and raving, pacing back and forth in front of these people. Then they started telling them that if they dared move for a minute their stuff would be gone. Then they sat down across from the people and proceeded to stare at them. It was beginning to feel like they were threatening and harassing those poor people. These were large, angry and quickly becoming scary people. Finally one of the by now victims fetched security. Soon there were 5 security staff talking to these bullies. They continued their ranting and raving, now directed at ship staff. I heard one of them tell security "I'm a tough guy!!". It literally took security close to THIRTY MINUTES to talk these people down and get them to move on.

 

It blows my mind that people could get so worked up about something like this during their VACATION instead of just moving on and enjoying their day. It was somewhat entertaining to watch, but also scary to see people become so unhinged in public.

 

I actually witnessed a similar scenario on NCL Escape. I got to an unpopular area at around 9am, sat down, watched the chair hogs come down and stake their territory. So at 11am when some people came by and asked if they could sit on the chairs next to me, I was like "BY ALL MEANS" so they moved the stuff and sat down. 2 hours later, the original family came by and it got heated, FAST, and it had nothing to do with the Caribbean sun! Security wasn't called, but I remember thinking "How is this worth the fuss and drama?"

 

Made for some good entertainment tho :D

[aubreyc1988]

I think moving a towel is one thing... if you actually move anyone's other items I think that should be considered stealing.

 

If someone is really desperate for your spot they should ask someone authorized to take action and not become cruise ship vigilante.

 

Plus, unless they've been standing there for half an hour watching your chair how do they know how long you've been gone?

 

Tom

 

Moving someones stuff aside is not stealing it. TAKING it with you is stealing.

 

That being said, they should ask staff to move it for them. But honestly, I am always surprised at what people leave with their chairs. the most i would ever leave on a chair is my crappy pair of 4.00 sunglasses that needs to be retired.

[OSUZorba]

This is a valid point. I will also add there will be more seats by the pool if they would put up a little cubby place for towels and shoes. So many times I go to the pool for an hour and want to swim and there is no place for my things. If you try and find an out of the way spot on a ledge for ground, someone will step on it. On Jewel you may see my towel on the back of the lion by the pool ;)

 

I agree, most of the time my wife and I grab a chair only as place to put our stuff while we are in the water. The nice thing is, it is usually fairly easy to find a solo chair, especially if you aren't picky about it.

 

If I ever got to a pool deck that looked like that picture on Harmony, I'd have zero issue taking the chairs, regardless of how long I had seen them empty. Those chair hogs aren't even trying.

 

I really want to know how many people end up paying for multiple beach towels from leaving them on chairs all day just to get picked up and moved by someone.

[Teeara]

I really want to know how many people end up paying for multiple beach towels from leaving them on chairs all day just to get picked up and moved by someone.

 

Serves them right if they do. And I hope it's a really BIG bill at the end of their cruise. Maybe that will teach them a lesson. But probably not.

[troykahack]

On my last cruise chair reserving was an issue as well, but also, there were guests who brought their mini blue tooth speakers out to listen to their country music and other styles. Drives me crazy. Don't they have consideration for those around them? Guess not. :-(

 

 

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They have wireless Bluetooth ear buds now. Maybe waterproof or resistant ones next.

 

 

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[momofmab]

There should be no saving, period. Passengers should be entitled to a chair for themselves, and that's it. If you want to sit with someone, they need to be with you, otherwise any empty chairs should be fair game. This saving of 8 chairs for the family that doesn't get up until 11am is insane. Also, don't take up a chair for your kids if they are going to be roaming around. Chairs should be for people who are actually going to sit in them. I agree with the comments that ships should have "cubbies" or lockers - somewhere to stow your stuff, if you're not going to actually sit on a chair.

 

The post-it notes and stickers are useless. I witnessed several ladies on an NCL cruise last year, informing everyone to remove the little yellow stickers that NCL staff had put on the chairs to track the time they sat empty. Everyone is hip to that. The cruise lines are very careful not to offend passengers - I think they'd rather not get involved in the chair hog issues. I watched an older woman practically have to harass NCL pool staff to get them involved in a situation where a man had been saving 8 chairs for 2 hours, and he wouldn't give her one of those chairs. I watched this man lurk in the shadows and jump out each time someone attempted to take a chair (he wasn't even sitting on one!) Who wants to spend their vacation getting into confrontations over a lounge chair?? My husband would think I was 18 kinds of crazy if I asked him to get up at 6am and stand guard over 8 empty chairs until I wandered down 2 hours later!

 

I don't believe for a second that some people are clueless when saving empty chairs. It's an issue of common courtesy. Some people step foot on a cruise ship and think they are "King of the World!"

[island lady]

I can't take credit for this photo, but I love it! I've tried unsuccesfully to capture another. Note the time is AM.

 

 

LOL!! Yup, looks very...very familiar! ;)

 

I wish the ships would go back to charging for the towels (not just port

days). That would put an end to the towel using chair hogs if they showed

up hours later and found their towels had been removed. :D

[lucymorgan]

Interesting thread and interesting problem - although I have almost never sat on a chair on the pool deck! Being from Oz with fair skin, I avoid the sun.

 

Perhaps there is a technology solution! My car complains if someone sits in a seat and doesn't fit their seatbelt. Parking metres have for years shown 'expired' if the money/time runs out.

 

Technology is so cheap now - we need a small device attached to a chair that detects when no-one is sitting on it and after 30 minutes shows 'expired' - meaning that it is open to anyone to use :) :) :)

[TravelerThom]

...I really want to know how many people end up paying for multiple beach towels from leaving them on chairs all day just to get picked up and moved by someone.

Trying to decide how to read "how many people":confused:

 

If that is "what is the number of people" who end up paying, probably very few. IF the charge is submitted to Accounting (and I doubt that happens), a whine to Guest Services will probably get it removed.

 

If that is "how do chair hogs justify" paying for towels that "walk", they either don't care (pretty much already indicated by being a chair hog) or they whine to Guest Services (see above).

 

Like almost everyone, I find checking out pool towels to be a minor pain. BUT if a $25 fee for missing towels was enforced it would cut down immensely on people leaving the used towel on the chair when they leave the pool (leaving the rest of us wondering is that chair in use or not?) as well as people hogging with towels (yeah, I know, they'd still use library books etc:mad:).

 

If I was king (hah!) RCI would actually enforce the $25 fee and give a corresponding $25 credit for each and every towel turned in. We'd get a $25 credit for every towel turned in from those chairs, thereby paying for our cruises and having thousands of dollars in credit on our accounts.:)

 

Thom

 

PS I'm in Florida, which has to be the world leader in grocery shopping carts left everywhere in the parking lot. The majority of people just abandon them beside their car after emptying them; when the wind blows be prepared for a cart smacking your car. Some actually put them behind the car next to them (you better check before pulling out). One of the reasons I occasionally shop at Aldi's is they have a $0.25 deposit on their shopping carts; that is sufficient to keep their parking lot entirely free of stray carts.

[gi_pam]

I wish the ships would go back to charging for the towels (not just port

days). That would put an end to the towel using chair hogs if they showed

up hours later and found their towels had been removed. :D

 

Harmony over Christmas - Pool towels were signed out and supposedly would be charged at $30 if not returned. Did not seem to make a difference. I couldn't believe the number of towels laying around.

 

I don't imagine people were being charged.

 

My husband and I went in a hot tub one evening, left two towels on a chair near the hot tub with our flip flops, his tshirt and my cover up. One of the cantilevered hot tubs so you can't really see the chairs from in the hot tub. Came out and one towel was missing. There were many, many towels laying around, so we just grabbed one of the random lost ones. This was something like 7:00 pm, so I don't think those were "chair hogging" towels, just abandoned.

 

Coming off Labadee, my husband had signed for 4 towels, but I stayed a little longer, so he returned 3 on his way back onto the ship. They checked all 4 back in, even though there were only 3 in the bundle. My husband told them he was returning 3, they checked all 4 in.

 

My daughter had one in her cabin for a couple of days, on her card. At some point, it got checked back in. I think when she came back off Labadee with my husband. So he returned 3 towels and 5 were credited back to our account.

Edited January 12, 2017 by gi_pam

[jpcello]

I'm an early riser. I love to go up to the pool deck before dawn and enjoy the sunrise and coffee. I can't tell you how many people who up before dawn, plop down their towels, and walk away. Just burns me.

 

One time on Oasis, my sister and I were trying to find deck chairs near the beach pool. She's disabled and that's the only pool that's easy for her to get in and out of. After wandering for a while, I went over to one of the staff, explained our situation, and he then proceeded to remove two towels that had been sitting on loungers for hours so we could have two seats together near the pool. They do help out (sometimes) :)

[aubreyc1988]

I'm an early riser. I love to go up to the pool deck before dawn and enjoy the sunrise and coffee. I can't tell you how many people who up before dawn, plop down their towels, and walk away. Just burns me.

 

it BURNS me up too! Especially when I get up early to get a chair to lay out in the sun. Let's say I am there 4 hours, and see some people come and go, but majority of those people NEVER come back to sit on their chairs. BURNS ME UP!

[SnorkelAway]

I hold chair hogs on the pool decks (and in other venues too but I will keep this about the pool decks) in contempt even though they really do not affect me because I normally do not seek to sit around the pools on the ships.

 

The real problem is that the chair hogs who are the true offenders not only are complete jerks who deny other cruisers a better cruise experience, but they also make it impossible for simple rules of courtesy and normal behavior to exist readily and easily among normal people of good faith. If a couple are sitting in two chairs and one goes into the pool or into the rest room or even to grab something to eat or drink, and is gone 15 minutes, does that make the other a chair hog for protecting their chair while they are gone - of course not. Can both jump in the pool or grab something to eat quickly and not worry about their chairs for a brief time - I think most agree that is OK. If mom brings her two kids to the pool and sets up a place of three chairs for the three of them and maybe the dad will show up, but winds up spending a lot of time in the water with the kids who are back and forth, is that real bad - not in my opinion. The problem is that it is not always apparent whether the "reserving" of the chairs is perfectly reasonably or utterly offensive.

 

What is simply rude and inexcusable (at least for me) are the people who have their scout go onto the pool deck and throw the towels, the t-shirts, the glasses, the books, the food plates, etc., on multiple chairs for people whom the scout does not even know are awake or have any intention whatever of wanting to sit on a chair next to the pool on the pool deck at any relevant time.

 

A basic difference is whether the person for whom a chair is "reserved" was there to reserve it themselves or at least was known with certainty to be on the way and arrives within a few minutes.The groups of 5 or 6 or 7 or more who have their scout up there reserving that many chairs for those still asleep - simply because they want their group to have their little area if in fact the group decides they want such an area - those are the people who destroy any civility and common decency with regard to the situation that exists because there are not as many lounge chairs on the pool decks in a decent spot as there are pax wanting the ability to have such a chair on many days of a cruise.

 

We once were one of the first off a ship on a private island - years ago - cannot remember which - may have been Labadee - and we were sitting in chairs under shade away from water - there was a hammock near where we were. It crossed my mind that maybe I could see later if I could use a hammock without hurting myself. Shortly after we arrived, a family group came by and the presumed father threw a towel and a pair of sunglasses (maybe something else too) into the hammock, but after a pause for conversation, they kept walking - I think to another beach or at least out of our sight - having left the stuff in the hammock. A couple times later in the morning, people asked others near the hammock if it was their stuff - the others did not know what the deal was and said they did not know who was "using" it - I started calling to them to just remove the stuff and use the hammock if they wanted - but they would just walk on, probably thinking I was nuts. About the third or fourth time, now in the afternoon, I started to get up and I was going to throw the stuff out of the hammock myself and make sure others had the opportunity to use it. My wife who knew what I was going to do "suggested" that I should not get involved and it was getting late anyway. Even by then we had been married long enough for me to know the meaning of such a "suggestion" and I found myself following the "suggestion." If that happened today, I would have helped the first person who asked about the hammock remove the stuff and throw it on the ground.

 

Actually, what usually amazes me more than the number of chair hogs, are the number of very polite, reasonable, nice people who do not want to challenge anyone's "reserving" of chairs. Nice people who go up to the one guy who is holding down a group of 6 chairs in the front row next to the pool with no sign of anyone but the one guy - who may not even be wearing a swim suit - who says that they are all reserved - and these nice people simply turn away and keep looking. If and when I see something like that, I want to intervene and try to help the nice ones and take on the jerk - but I rarely act on the impulse.

 

I know that this is a difficult issue for the cruise lines - but I think that they have to make serious efforts to deal with it for the benefit of all pax on the ship.

[tserface]

I think you make a valid point. I'd bet a lot of the people think this is just part of what you do on a cruise and there are probably discussions about who has to get up to save the chairs and about how if they don't get out their early they won't get a seat. It makes sense. Our culture revolves around standing in line, reserving spots at theaters and movies, getting to dinner early so as to get spot by the window, making appointments, etc. It wouldn't be a huge stretch for someone to think that if you want a place to sit you reserve early without really considering the time the chair is just sitting there empty.

 

Maybe they are not so evil. I think it falls on the cruise line to make this more apparent and if there are no signs then, technically there are not rules. There are lots of times in my life where I've done things, innocently, without realizing I was offending or impacting others. Of course, I try to change when I get a clue, but it's hard to know everything.

 

What if you went down the first day and noticed all the chairs were reserved. You might think, "Hey, I better get here early tomorrow and get a chair before their all gone again."

 

It wouldn't be that illogical. Nice signs and some instruction in the cruise information wouldn't hurt.

 

Tom

 

As the post following yours clearly points out, the rules aren't always readily available. Regulars on CC have to remember that their cruise knowledge is far more extensive than the average passenger's. Don't get me wrong, I know full well that many of the Chair Hogs know exactly what they are doing, but I believe that others have no clue.

[John&LaLa]

I think you make a valid point. I'd bet a lot of the people think this is just part of what you do on a cruise and there are probably discussions about who has to get up to save the chairs and about how if they don't get out their early they won't get a seat. It makes sense. Our culture revolves around standing in line, reserving spots at theaters and movies, getting to dinner early so as to get spot by the window, making appointments, etc. It wouldn't be a huge stretch for someone to think that if you want a place to sit you reserve early without really considering the time the chair is just sitting there empty.

 

Maybe they are not so evil. I think it falls on the cruise line to make this more apparent and if there are no signs then, technically there are not rules. There are lots of times in my life where I've done things, innocently, without realizing I was offending or impacting others. Of course, I try to change when I get a clue, but it's hard to know everything.

 

What if you went down the first day and noticed all the chairs were reserved. You might think, "Hey, I better get here early tomorrow and get a chair before their all gone again."

 

It wouldn't be that illogical. Nice signs and some instruction in the cruise information wouldn't hurt.

 

Tom

 

I am of the opinion that the pool rules are well publicized. Will be on MJ tomorrow and report back.

[tserface]

I bet if the cruise line offered $2 OBC for every "found" and returned towel the chairs would be cleared off most of the time.

 

Tom

[aubreyc1988]

I think you make a valid point. I'd bet a lot of the people think this is just part of what you do on a cruise and there are probably discussions about who has to get up to save the chairs and about how if they don't get out their early they won't get a seat. It makes sense. Our culture revolves around standing in line, reserving spots at theaters and movies, getting to dinner early so as to get spot by the window, making appointments, etc. It wouldn't be a huge stretch for someone to think that if you want a place to sit you reserve early without really considering the time the chair is just sitting there empty.

 

Maybe they are not so evil. I think it falls on the cruise line to make this more apparent and if there are no signs then, technically there are not rules. There are lots of times in my life where I've done things, innocently, without realizing I was offending or impacting others. Of course, I try to change when I get a clue, but it's hard to know everything.

 

What if you went down the first day and noticed all the chairs were reserved. You might think, "Hey, I better get here early tomorrow and get a chair before their all gone again."

 

It wouldn't be that illogical. Nice signs and some instruction in the cruise information wouldn't hurt.

 

Tom

 

I mean, it's one of those things that SHOULD be common sense. It's one thing if you leave your chair for 45 min - 1 hour to get lunch, but to just leave it with your crap on it for hours without returning...people KNOW that is rude and wrong. Even if it's not against the rules to do that (Which is in for certain time periods), it's just disheartening to see so many passengers act to selfishly and not think of others.