Towel Animals

[awhcruiser]

My mom is going on her second cruise on HAL in October.   Do the stewards still make towel animals?  She's on the Oosterdam.

[GlennG]

Yes.  The special towel folding still happens on Holland America Ships.  My wife really appreciates the efforts of our room stewards.

[awhcruiser]

1 minute ago, GlennG said:

Yes.  The special towel folding still happens on Holland America Ships.  My wife really appreciates the efforts of our room stewards.

Thanks for your quick reply!  

[kwb101]

And they're very creative: usually at least once per voyage, we can't tell what the critter is.

Since your mom likes them, she may want to check the daily schedule for a towel-folding demo. We've seen it a couple of times, and it's a fun half hour. HAL has published a book on towel folding, and it's on sale onboard. 

Edited July 30, 2019 by kwb101

[awhcruiser]

6 minutes ago, kwb101 said:

And they're very creative: usually at least once per voyage, we can't tell what the critter is.

Since your mom likes them, she may want to check the daily schedule for a towel-folding demo. We've seen it a couple of times, and it's a fun half hour. HAL has published a book on towel folding, and it's on sale onboard. 

I will let her know.  Thanks for the information.

[Randyk47]

My wife used to think the towel animal were cute until one day they took her nightgown out of a drawer and incorporated it in one of animals.   She was not a happy camper....maybe not a happy cruiser would be more appropriate.  Let’s just say there were no more towel creations for the rest of that cruise.

[awhcruiser]

15 minutes ago, Randyk47 said:

My wife used to think the towel animal were cute until one day they took her nightgown out of a drawer and incorporated it in one of animals.   She was not a happy camper....maybe not a happy cruiser would be more appropriate.  Let’s just say there were no more towel creations for the rest of that cruise.

Wow.  That is not good!  

[Krazy Kruizers]

1 hour ago, Randyk47 said:

My wife used to think the towel animal were cute until one day they took her nightgown out of a drawer and incorporated it in one of animals.   She was not a happy camper....maybe not a happy cruiser would be more appropriate.  Let’s just say there were no more towel creations for the rest of that cruise.

 

I would not be happy if the stewards went through our drawers to find my nightgown to make something out of it.

[racnwdow]

I had heard RCI used nightgowns occasionally.  So I purposely left mine out and it was used to make something cute.

[Loreto]

We are just off the Oosterdam and enjoyed great towel animals.  They had an onboard towel folding class/demonstration in the daily program, and I think HAL still has a hardcover book, The Art of Towel Folding.

 

Enjoy the cruise!

Karen

[Shmoo here]

6 hours ago, Randyk47 said:

My wife used to think the towel animal were cute until one day they took her nightgown out of a drawer and incorporated it in one of animals.   She was not a happy camper....maybe not a happy cruiser would be more appropriate.  Let’s just say there were no more towel creations for the rest of that cruise.

While we've had towel animals that incorporated some of our things, they were always items we'd left out (sunglasses, books, hats).  Never had a steward go into our drawers and get things.

[Randyk47]

8 minutes ago, Shmoo here said:

While we've had towel animals that incorporated some of our things, they were always items we'd left out (sunglasses, books, hats).  Never had a steward go into our drawers and get things.

 

Which is what kind of irritated my wife.  The nightgown she had been wearing was hanging in the dressing area (we were in an NS on the Volendam).   The one they used was clean and was folded in a drawer for later in our 12-day cruise.  In the past indeed they had use things like sunglasses, caps, etc., that were out in the open.  No issue with that. 

[daisy-mae]

As much as I enjoy the creativity exhibited by our cabin steward, I would be happy with only one or two towel animals per cruise. Since we will not be using the towels and face cloths, it seems rather excessive - and wasteful - to add to the enormous volume of laundry that is processed on board on a daily basis.

[awhcruiser]

51 minutes ago, daisy-mae said:

As much as I enjoy the creativity exhibited by our cabin steward, I would be happy with only one or two towel animals per cruise. Since we will not be using the towels and face cloths, it seems rather excessive - and wasteful - to add to the enormous volume of laundry that is processed on board on a daily basis.

Something to think about...

[SilvertoGold]

On the Westerdam in June it was announced by the CD that towel animals would be showing up only on Gala Nights, but we had one every night.

[RuthC]

1 hour ago, daisy-mae said:

As much as I enjoy the creativity exhibited by our cabin steward, I would be happy with only one or two towel animals per cruise. Since we will not be using the towels and face cloths, it seems rather excessive - and wasteful - to add to the enormous volume of laundry that is processed on board on a daily basis.

I don't believe the towel animals are made anew every night, nor that the towels used are washed the next day.
More than once my menagerie has grown too large for my cabin, and I have taken them apart. The creases where they were folded are just too deep to have been recently made. One time the look on the steward's face made me think he was frustrated he was going to have to make them all over again.

 

I suspect the towel animals are made, then stored, for reuse with the next group of passengers. It would save the stewards a lot of time if they did it that way.

[kwb101]

We have seen the steward making the day's critter, and the towels are in a container under the bed. We move them off the bed and put them on a flat surface to admire. They've always been reused the next night.

On Maasdam in May, we noticed (in port) yp that a couple of OV cabins had one or more towel creations on their windowsills. 

[Lovely other]

On my last cruise my steward made me an elephant part way through the first week whom I kept by my bed for the entire cruise. I got other critters each night (some of undetermined species😂) but that elephant was my cabin mate and I grew quite attached to him 😆

[cayman09]

Had a different one every night of our 14 day transatlantic in May.

[dfish]

5 hours ago, Randyk47 said:

 

Which is what kind of irritated my wife.  The nightgown she had been wearing was hanging in the dressing area (we were in an NS on the Volendam).   The one they used was clean and was folded in a drawer for later in our 12-day cruise.  In the past indeed they had use things like sunglasses, caps, etc., that were out in the open.  No issue with that. 

The room stewards didn't do the dressing on our towel monkeys.  We did.  The stewards were hysterically laughing when we returned to our room one day.  They had their supervisor with them, who thought the monkeys were a riot.  

 

[ithaca gal]

I can understand being displeased about using the nightgown from the drawer, but ……….. I would love it.  First world problems.

[rajkr74]

To add to this towel animal conversation, on our South Pacific cruise on the Maasdam this year we had an explosion of towel animals by the Lido Pool area.  It was pretty cool.

 

 

 

 

 

[Cruising-along]

42 minutes ago, rajkr74 said:

To add to this towel animal conversation, on our South Pacific cruise on the Maasdam this year we had an explosion of towel animals by the Lido Pool area.  It was pretty cool.

We had the same on the VOV last summer.  Our cabin stewards made sure we knew to look out by the Lido Pool when we went to breakfast. 

[Chinook Wind]

5 hours ago, Lovely other said:

On my last cruise my steward made me an elephant part way through the first week whom I kept by my bed for the entire cruise. I got other critters each night (some of undetermined species😂) but that elephant was my cabin mate and I grew quite attached to him 😆

I love your post!

We had a similar experience on my last cruise on the Amsterdam...the stewards made the most awesome penguin and we asked them if it was possible to only make penguins from then on.  By the end of our 17-night cruise we had a veritable line up of penguins! 🐧🐧🐧 I was inspired one day by my bath towel that I had put on the floor after showering...rolled it up into a tube, borrowed a couple of "eyes" from a penguin and made a forked tongue out of some paper....and left it for them on our bathroom floor 😆  They love it and said it was the first time a passenger had made one for them! lol

Edited July 31, 2019 by Chinook Wind

[Randyk47]

9 hours ago, ithaca gal said:

I can understand being displeased about using the nightgown from the drawer, but ……….. I would love it.  First world problems.

 

I think the issue for my wife was that they had gone into our drawers and not so much that it was her nightgown.   Right or wrong she felt it was an invasion of her privacy.