Combating the Chair Hogs

[Phaedrus78]

About to head out on our first NCL cruise in two weeks, and I’ve noticed a few times on this board that it’s been mentioned that “chair hogs” are a problem. I didn’t run into any problem on our only other cruise (Carnival Glory), but we’re on the Epic, our first “mega-ship”. 

 

Are chair hogs usually a problem?  What do people do to combat that issue?  Is there a policy of any sort on NCL?

[Aesop081]

Yes they are a problem, Yes there is a policy, BUT hard to get anyone to do anything about it since no one in authority is going to sit around and wait and see if the chair gets used in the allowed time.  Self entitled, screw over others to satisfy yourself people are a real indicator of where our ?civilization? is going.

[Two Wheels Only]

It depends on how someone defines "chair hog". 

 

Yes, there is a policy but most people (with or without chair) don't know or care what it is. 

 

This thread will probably turn into "...get your own chair before others get theirs..." vs. "...just move their things and take the chair after a few minutes...".

 

30 minutes ago, Aesop081 said:

Self entitled, screw over others to satisfy yourself people are a real indicator of where our ?civilization? is going.

 

That can be applied to both of the above quotes. 

[tallnthensome]

Just get up earlier than the next guy..........NCL isn't going to do anything about it. In this day and age of cruising  one can't  sleep in until 10 AM and  then expect to have  two or more empty shiney  chairs just waiting for them next to the pool. 

[sverigecruiser]

3 hours ago, Phaedrus78 said:

About to head out on our first NCL cruise in two weeks, and I’ve noticed a few times on this board that it’s been mentioned that “chair hogs” are a problem. I didn’t run into any problem on our only other cruise (Carnival Glory), but we’re on the Epic, our first “mega-ship”. 

 

Are chair hogs usually a problem?  What do people do to combat that issue?  Is there a policy of any sort on NCL?

 

On our first cruise on the Epic we had a spasuite and walked over the pooldeck every morning when we went to the Haven for breakfast. A few times we saw the same family reserve a couple of chairs by the pool. We thought that maybe we should tell anyone, most likely the concierge, and have them remove their things if they were still there after our breakfast but we never did because we didn't wanted thoose chairs anyway.

 

[KateQ22003]

44 minutes ago, tallnthensome said:

Just get up earlier than the next guy..........NCL isn't going to do anything about it. In this day and age of cruising  one can't  sleep in until 10 AM and  then expect to have  two or more empty shiney  chairs just waiting for them next to the pool. 

This! I have always seen an abundance of lounge chairs available on every cruise I have ever been on. Are they right next to the pool? Probably not, but not everyone can be right on top of the pool. There are plenty of chairs on the deck above.

Edited January 10, 2019 by KateQ22003

[momofmab]

38 minutes ago, tallnthensome said:

Just get up earlier than the next guy..........NCL isn't going to do anything about it. In this day and age of cruising  one can't  sleep in until 10 AM and  then expect to have  two or more empty shiney  chairs just waiting for them next to the pool. 

 

Agreed.  It's unlikely to get any better, short of the cruise lines charging for a dedicated chair (which I'm sure will come soon).  Your choices are:  1. get up early enough to find the number of chairs you want, in the location you want; 2. be flexible about where the chairs are and be happy sharing one or two chairs, if that's all you can find; 3. move someone else's stuff and have a confrontation.

 

I noticed on my last cruise that the times that people got up to claim chairs got earlier and earlier as the cruise went on.  People clearly realized that coming on deck at 9am and trying to find 6 chairs together (or even 4) wasn't going to happen.  By the last sea day, the chair hogs were up there in the pitch black!

[pieshops]

Never a problem, I give it a half hour for them to come back , then pick the chairs I want up and move them to a different area lose the towels that were on it and I have my chairs   Fun to watch and see how long before someone co,was looking.  Last cruise it was 5 hours 

[4774Papa]

9 minutes ago, pieshops said:

Never a problem, I give it a half hour for them to come back , then pick the chairs I want up and move them to a different area lose the towels that were on it and I have my chairs   Fun to watch and see how long before someone co,was looking.  Last cruise it was 5 hours 

Like

[erdoran]

But the "chair hog police" can be just as bad.  I had the NERVE to get up from my poolside chair to get in the pool; 10 mins later someone took over my chair and told me "you aren't using your chair".  Ummm.....I'm at the pool, I got in the pool.....

 

Or went to the buffet to bring lunch BACK to my chair and had to fight off the chair police....

 

Or was (horrors) holding chairs for two family members, got told "you can't save chairs" and the police took over - five minutes later here come my family members.  I stupidly gave up my chair to them for doing such a bad job saving chairs.... (and these were on an upper deck, there was nothing remotely close to the pool)

 

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT a fan of chair hogs either, but there is a difference between a towel sitting on a chair all day, and someone legitimately using a chair who gets up for 10 or so mins to get food, go to the bathroom, use the pool, etc, etc.  At least be selective about taking over someone else's spot!

[jpcdds6]

Upside down thumbtacks work well.

[thistimeplease]

18 minutes ago, erdoran said:

But the "chair hog police" can be just as bad.  I had the NERVE to get up from my poolside chair to get in the pool; 10 mins later someone took over my chair and told me "you aren't using your chair".  Ummm.....I'm at the pool, I got in the pool.....

 

Or went to the buffet to bring lunch BACK to my chair and had to fight off the chair police....

 

Or was (horrors) holding chairs for two family members, got told "you can't save chairs" and the police took over - five minutes later here come my family members.  I stupidly gave up my chair to them for doing such a bad job saving chairs.... (and these were on an upper deck, there was nothing remotely close to the pool)

 

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT a fan of chair hogs either, but there is a difference between a towel sitting on a chair all day, and someone legitimately using a chair who gets up for 10 or so mins to get food, go to the bathroom, use the pool, etc, etc.  At least be selective about taking over someone else's spot!

 

I agree with you.  Last cruise dh and I got our chairs by the pool about 8 am next to a couple with a baby.  The mom went to change the baby and the dad went to get coffee.  They were gone about 10 minutes when people came over and started to remove all their items. My dh explained that they just left and the people didn't want to hear it, needless to say there was a confrontation when the mom and baby came back.  Attendants came and made the new people give the chairs back to mom, dad and baby.  After that we were too afraid to leave our spot as we didn't want anything like that to happen to us. 

[Markanddonna]

I'm an early morning riser married to someone who likes to sleep in, so I often take my kindle and books to the nice loungers to sit with my coffee. I like to plunk myself in the middle of a group of chairs (just to frustrate the chair hogs) and watch the chair hogs at work.  It is usually an older guy (the assigned early riser) who brings several towels, books, or whatever and sets up his stake with clips and such. He then leaves, probably scowling at me for taking up his prime seating. I stay maybe 60-90 minutes while the chair hogs are about their business. Most of them just trot off for breakfast and I never see them again, until the next day.

 

It is the same group of folks who do this day after day.

 

I watch this take place in realtime and can never understand how conniving some people can be. They obviously think themselves as outwitting everyone else, but they are just jerks. BTW- I hope some "late arrivals) appreciate the prime seating I manage to leave behind.

 

 

[erdoran]

I really do wish the cruise lines would PAY someone to be chair police and enforce their rules, use a timer or something.  I would GLADLY pay $10 or so more in fare to subsidize that person - $10/cruiser x at least 2k cruisers =$20k/cruise so it's profitable for NCL too!!  That would avoid the mother/baby situation.  If you are legitimately using a chair there is no reason you should NOT be able to leave it for 10, 15, even 20 mins for whatever reason.  

 

Why is it that the legit users get the hard time but the true chair hogs seem to be able to keep their spots?  For some reason no one messes with the towels on chairs, but the chairs with a bunch of stuff that ARE clearly being used seem to be the first ones the police go for!

[100th Meridian]

8 hours ago, Phaedrus78 said:

About to head out on our first NCL cruise in two weeks, and I’ve noticed a few times on this board that it’s been mentioned that “chair hogs” are a problem. I didn’t run into any problem on our only other cruise (Carnival Glory), but we’re on the Epic, our first “mega-ship”. 

 

Are chair hogs usually a problem?  What do people do to combat that issue?  Is there a policy of any sort on NCL?

Depends. If you want a chair near the pool or in a shaded area, those will be in demand. If you are looking on the sun deck, I never had a problem there. 

 

Our last cruise on the Spirit, they had a kids pool in the back of the ship and never had a problem finding chairs (granted it was In January and school was in session). 

 

I’m fine with people leaving their chairs for legitimate reasons (using pool, bathroom, grabbing something to quick to eat), I just don’t get the people who find the need to send someone early to reserve 8 chairs for a group who won’t be using the chairs for another couple hours, where all 8 are never using the chairs at the same time and where they hardly using it at all. It seems more of an issue I see at resorts then cruises though. 

 

 

[Phaedrus78]

4 hours ago, momofmab said:

I noticed on my last cruise that the times that people got up to claim chairs got earlier and earlier as the cruise went on.  People clearly realized that coming on deck at 9am and trying to find 6 chairs together (or even 4) wasn't going to happen.  By the last sea day, the chair hogs were up there in the pitch black!

 

That's insane.  I get hanging onto your seat if you're actively on the pool deck.  It's not like if my wife and I get a couple seats, we're not going to be heading over to the bar/taking a quick dip in the pool to cool off.  That's kind of the point.  

 

But if you're one person thinking you're about to be "reserving" multiple chairs while the rest of your group is off somewhere else, the likelihood is fairly low that I'm going to be respecting your claim.

[JamieLogical]

This thread makes me feel very fortunate that I see zero appeal in having a chair close to the pool in the first place....

[BirdTravels]

2 hours ago, erdoran said:

I really do wish the cruise lines would PAY someone to be chair police and enforce their rules, use a timer or something.  I would GLADLY pay $10 or so more in fare to subsidize that person - $10/cruiser x at least 2k cruisers =$20k/cruise so it's profitable for NCL too!!  That would avoid the mother/baby situation.  If you are legitimately using a chair there is no reason you should NOT be able to leave it for 10, 15, even 20 mins for whatever reason.  

 

Why is it that the legit users get the hard time but the true chair hogs seem to be able to keep their spots?  For some reason no one messes with the towels on chairs, but the chairs with a bunch of stuff that ARE clearly being used seem to be the first ones the police go for!

In the “good ‘ole days” you used to have to rent your wooden loungers and tip the lounger attendant to set them up. Just like on a beach. If we went back to the good ‘ole days, then we would undergo the wrath of the nickel-n-dime complainers. 

[erdoran]

Just now, BirdTravels said:

In the “good ‘ole days” you used to have to rent your wooden loungers and tip the lounger attendant to set them up. Just like on a beach. If we went back to the good ‘ole days, then we would undergo the wrath of the nickel-n-dime complainers. 

Yeah, I'm not looking for that at all.  That would be awful!  I'm looking for cruise lines to have some reasonable chair policy and enforce it.  Assuming it would take extra staff to do so, it would be well worth a small bump-up in my fare to make this happen.  

 

And think - is a rented lounger for the whole day?  How long until it is "unrented" and the attendant puts it away?  Although the ONE good thing - with that type of a system,  you better believe the cruise lines would have rules about "how long away is too long" and would enforce them.  Can you imagine though - you pay for the lounger, you tip the attendant (I assume that's not in the DSC), you enjoy for a while and then get up for say 20 mins....and someone has either taken over your lounger, or it has been put away-you think a dethroned chair hog would be mad?  I think the lounge renter would be MADDER!

[MCC retired]

Chair Hogs are a problem on every mass market cruise line, doing warm itineraries, that we have been on .

All have rules against reserving chairs , some attendants on other lines do enforce it only when pressured to do it but 

we found chair hogging out of control with zero enforcement on our recent NCL Epic cruise . Not just the pool area but 

every decent location. 

It is no wonder why everyone wants the Haven , the single main pool is a zoo on seas days.

[awreaper]

"I will finish with this regarding the pool area, on day two I woke early to mark four chairs for my family with towels and clips and bags, as this is how it's done on cruises. Upon arrival later that morning my chairs were now down to two, my bag was missing, and I almost got into a fight. Wow! what a cruise dream! "

 

Just saw this in another post.  This person was all upset because it didn't work out for them.  I guess they didn't get the memo that hogging chairs is not polite and frowned upon by most cruisers.  Maybe they learned a lesson.

[Trimone]

My next cruise only has one sea day, i don’t care much about the noisy out of tune music on deck anyway, I like a nice quiet alcove 

[JP4GA]

15 minutes ago, MCC retired said:

Chair Hogs are a problem on every mass market cruise line, doing warm itineraries, that we have been on .

All have rules against reserving chairs , some attendants on other lines do enforce it only when pressured to do it but 

we found chair hogging out of control with zero enforcement on our recent NCL Epic cruise . Not just the pool area but 

every decent location. 

It is no wonder why everyone wants the Haven , the single main pool is a zoo on seas days.

I agree.  We were on the Epic a few weeks ago. We are early risers and we went on deck at 7:45 and could not find 2 empty chairs on the sun deck or pool deck.  We ended up way in the back by the rock wall.  It was fine with us since we don't want full sun seating and we don't have to be right by the pool.  What made it crazy was most of the chairs did not have anyone in them until well after 10:00 am and some even later than that. 

[Two Wheels Only]

4 hours ago, erdoran said:

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT a fan of chair hogs either, but there is a difference between a towel sitting on a chair all day, and someone legitimately using a chair who gets up for 10 or so mins to get food, go to the bathroom, use the pool, etc, etc.  At least be selective about taking over someone else's spot!

 

According to the NCL dailies, you can take up to an hour to use the restroom, go for a swim, go to the bar, go to the buffet, etc. and you have NOT violated NCL policy. Most people don't know the policy and some simply (wrongly) move other people's items after arbitrarily selecting an amount of time...

 

5 hours ago, pieshops said:

Never a problem, I give it a half hour for them to come back , then pick the chairs I want up and move them to a different area lose the towels that were on it and I have my chairs

 

...see what I mean?

Edited January 10, 2019 by Two Wheels Only

[NLH Arizona]

My best chair hog story.  I was on the Pearl and was going up to Cagney's for breakfast at about 7:00am and there were towels and items on loungers already and people out putting items down.  What made it so funny to me is that it was raining.