Royal Caribbean
Enchantment of the Seas
Talk about a great first impression! The bf and I had a blast on our very first cruise experience. Even though the crew were probably trained to kiss our butts, it felt natural and not forced. They were all so nice and were always ready and willing to joke around. To show them how much we loved them, there's this tipping thing that they enforce upon all the guests. They leave these envelopes in your room on the last day so you can put the tip money in there and then personally hand it to whomever.
So here's the breakdown. There are four main people that will cater to you throughout the entire trip and are the only four people that you will be tipping. These are the suggested amounts:
Stateroom Attendant (they clean your room twice a day) - $3.50 per person per day
Head Waiter (he walks around and schmoozes with all the guests) - $0.75 per person per day
Main Waiter (he does regular waiter duties) - $3.50 per person per day
Assistant Waiter (assists the main waiter) - $2.00 per person per day
It sounds like a lot at first but in the end, we felt they deserved every penny and more! But we couldn't give them more cos we brokety-broke. We did give them a bit more than the suggested value because they were so awesome! They were prolly milkin' it as much as they could but that's how the game goes. Even though we were some what generous in our tips, the fruganese in us made it hard to actually hand over all that money!
This was Gabby our stateroom attendant. I forgot her real name because I called her Gabs the entire time. She was really deserving of the tip and we gave her a lot more than the other folks cos we were messy messy guests. For example: the rooms were so teeny tiny that when I bent down to pick something up from the floor, my biggo arse managed to knock down the pina colada that was sitting deliciously on this table. It splashed everywhere leaving a big sticky mess. The room smelled a lot better after that!
Max was the assistant waiter. We told him that the hundred forks and knives and spoons that he sets out were confusing and that we only needed one of each. Formal dining is so over-rated!
Our head waiter was this Russian guy who grew up in Romania. His name was Bogdan but I decided to call him 'The Bogey Man'. He told me that I ask a lot of questions which of course is undeniably true. One question I asked was if he was good at gymnastics. Hah! Stereotype much?!?
And the coolest waiter of all time?!? Vivek! He was the goofiest one out of all the waiters and we did our best to egg him on. Even though he's a superb waiter, he told us that he's actually going into information technology.
