Little extras like mints on the pillow.

We just came back from a late summer cruise on the Norwegian Star. We notice that the line has cut out a lot of extras, like...

A) Mints on the pillows. Small I know, but the wife loved those mints. I would give mine to her.

B) Clean glasses in the bathroom. We went the whole week and they never changed out the bathroom glasses with clean ones. I thought that it was just a lazy Cabin Steward, but I heard other people complaining about the same thing.

C) Decks of cards. I love the cards with a cruise line logo on it, but I didn't see anyone get any cards the whole week. They are normally given out as prizes for trivia or other contests. The contest prizes were cheap key chains and you had to show up to trivia every day as only one set of key chains were given out to the best team of the week. I asked for a deck of cards at the reception desk but the ones they gave me did not have the NCL logo on it.

Everything seemed scaled back so badly. I thought that it would be all the cruise lines, but we went on a Princess ship since then and guess what, we got mints on the pillows and a deck of cards with the Princess logo on it.

has any one else noticed cruise lines cutting back?

We just came back from a late summer cruise on the Norwegian Star. We notice that the line has cut out a lot of extras, like...

A) Mints on the pillows. Small I know, but the wife loved those mints. I would give mine to her.

B) Clean glasses in the bathroom. We went the whole week and they never changed out the bathroom glasses with clean ones. I thought that it was just a lazy Cabin Steward, but I heard other people complaining about the same thing.

C) Decks of cards. I love the cards with a cruise line logo on it, but I didn't see anyone get any cards the whole week. They are normally given out as prizes for trivia or other contests. The contest prizes were cheap key chains and you had to show up to trivia every day as only one set of key chains were given out to the best team of the week. I asked for a deck of cards at the reception desk but the ones they gave me did not have the NCL logo on it.

Everything seemed scaled back so badly. I thought that it would be all the cruise lines, but we went on a Princess ship since then and guess what, we got mints on the pillows and a deck of cards with the Princess logo on it.

has any one else noticed cruise lines cutting back?

We've just come back from Carnival Freedom and we still had mint chocs on the pillow - but the chocolate was awfull. i also got 2 packs of free cards from the pursers desk when they were selling them for $6 in the shop. However, other things had been cheapened.

Royal Caribbean doesn't do mints anymore either (I mean...how expensive can MINTS be????)!!!!

They also used to give repeat customers/members of their Crown and Anchor Society a small gift with each cruise...NO MORE of that either!!!!

They have offered some really good fare of late, though, so I guess I could live without the mints and small gift, but didn't think the food was too good either, as compared with previous cruises, including one last year (fall, 2008). The Food Service was fine.

Royal Caribbean and NCL nixed the pillow chocolates, but HAL, Cunard, and Princess still seem to do them. I appreciate them - little touches go a long way.

Royal Caribbean and NCL nixed the pillow chocolates, but HAL, Cunard, and Princess still seem to do them. I appreciate them - little touches go a long way.

I just got back from the the NCL Star and had the chocolate mints the first 3 days of the cruise but no towel animals. Then the last 4 days had towel animals but no mints. Other cruise critic passengers said they had towel animals all week but no mints. So they still do carry them.

Not sure about the deck of cards, as I never asked, but Disney still does towel animals, mints, clean glasses, and as a silver member, we got a rather nice bookbag with a keychain and cute little mickey mouse goldfish crackers.

We just got back from the Carnival Liberty (our first cruise - LOVED it) and we had chocolate mints and towel animals every night. After asking for an ice bucket on our second or third day, our room steward kept it filled daily. He brought us clean glasses every day (as needed), as well. We were quite impressed with the room service (to be fair, we don't have a comparison...).

I was much more impressed with the quality of food in the MDR than I thought I would be. The Lido deck buffet was OK, but not amazing. The other lunch options - burritos/tacos or burgers - were REALLY good, so overall, no complaints there. Plenty of options, so I could always find something I liked.

My one real complaint is how early they closed the pools and hot tubs - by 11 pm. To me, that's the PERFECT time to go enjoy the whirlpool! I guess they'd rather have you in the casino. Do the other cruise lines close them that early?