DirtyDawg

Wonderful. You tip extra how you want to and I will tip extra how I want to. Isn't free will great!

Just an observation, but whining is Canada's second favorite participation sport! And it's fast closing in on hockey. 😉

But I don't think Guinness is in the drinks area of the bar menu. It is a food item! The best darn lunch or dinner you will ever have. And if you're Irish or of Irish decent, the best darn breakfast you will ever have too! 😁 Cheers!

That looks like a fantastic cruise! @vivienne-j when you are in St. John's you HAVE TO KISS THE COD! 💋 🐡 You will become a real Newfoundlander when you do! It's like being almost a God! 😉 But, and it's a BIG BUT, the COD only accepts Canadian cash for the smooch.

When we give an extra tip envelope at the end of the cruise I just give one to the head waiter for our table and tell him/her it's for the team. I don't know if they always share it or take all the tip for themselves. Do I care? No, it's not my job to police the tip distribution. If it is not shared, that's between the team members, the head waiter and the HR department of the cruise line. Now, if they want my advice on how to to organize and police tipping on their cruise line,I'd be happy to do it. My hourly consulting rate is quite reasonable compared to the big firms. Or perhaps a 2 week cruise in a suite for two for each 40 hours of work. Very reasonable indeed. 😉

Thanks for posting about this. Mrs Dawg wants a single cabin because my CPAP is broken and I can't get another for at least a few months due to the worldwide recall on them. One single for me and one single for Mrs. Dawg, two cabins for the price of one! 🥳 Anyone know if any ships are doing this around Christmas and New Years, 2022?

Of course not. 🤬 Wearing a Hawaiian Shirt is NOT acceptable on chic might! Put on a pair a pants and shoes with that shirt you uncouth lowlife! 😁😉

Salaries at via Rail are quite good. According to Indeed the average Attendant wage is $30.00 per hour. So you are not dealing with regular wait staff at a normal restaurant or a hotel room cleaner where the base compensation is usually minimum wage or below. Tip as you like, but your rail fare is already compensating the staff very well already.

Pringles, the ultimate food source; DRIED POTATOES, VEGETABLE OIL (CORN, COTTONSEED, HIGH OLEIC SOYBEAN, AND/OR SUNFLOWER OIL), DEGERMINATED YELLOW CORN FLOUR, CORNSTARCH, RICE FLOUR, MALTODEXTRIN, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT, WHEAT STARCH. Yummy!😋

Do you really want to get into the heads of those marketing geniuses at Celebrity? That's one very large rabbit hole you'd be going down. 😉

The Bermuda Development Corp. works really fast. 🏃‍♂️

It's an abomination that Potato chips are not available widely on Celebrity! I think my old cruising pal Willy Shakespeare summed it up the best. “A chip, a chip, my kingdom for a potato chip!” 😁

Didn't you hear? Bermuda just bought Greenland from Denmark. They traded the Triangle for it. 😁

But a self serve buffet is a pestilential pestiferous petri dish inside that floating regular petri dish! 😉

Only one thing is certain. If the Op does not request the gratuities be waived there is zero chance X would waive them. Will writing to management work? I highly doubt it but it's up to the OP to determine if it would be worth it to them to try given the long odds against. Lot's of folks sail on cruise ships and bet real money in the casino on long shots too. So think of the OP writing to management as just going to the casino a couple of months early. 😉

Were you writing all this down in real time or did you do it from memory each night? If you did it from memory your my new hero! 😁

I agree with the OP that this sucks. Try writing to Celebrity and see if they will waive the gratuity for you. If that doesn't work, I guess you could just cancel the specialty restaurants and don't give X the extra business. Good luck.

By nature I am also sceptical when any of our governments try to run anything. More so now that I've been part of the post secondary education system for the past few years. They tend to find the most inefficient, bureaucratically convoluted solutions to the simplest of problems. That said, I'm not getting my boxers in a twist over this one. The information gained might be useful. I don't know for sure because I'm not a profession in this field. The costs are relatively small. (Hey, after that 2020/21 Federal deficit of $ 314 billion everything else is relatively small). Sure it affects the tourist industry negatively but with inflation at it's current levels, do we really need any more aggregate demand in the economy in mid 2022 driving GDP and inflation even higher? So, I'm going to chill, enjoy our summer vacation in Ontari-ari-o and only worry about things I can actually do something about. Enjoy your summer everyone!

So if I ever switch to Princess I guess I'll have to change my screen name to DirtyPuppy. 😁

I've never sailed with Princess. Is it the cruise line for deadbeats who won't pay their bills? Funny , prior to reading this thread, I'd have picked another line for that distinction. 😉

and if you have a friend who is a lawyer who happens to love the expensive red wine you have in your wine cellar .... 😉

🤣 LOL! Good one! 🤣

Do retirees in the States not have to pay income tax? Is it some kind of law? I'm in Canada and I calculated what my income will likely be in a couple of years when I retire and I'll still be paying a big cheque to Ottawa each year. Maybe I'll have to start learning the words to The Star-Spangled Banner.

Hey people spend big money for 'art' on cruise ships too. Personally, I think the sea air kills some cruisers' brain cells! 😉

I quoted @iancal because this advice is crucial. Not all credit cards companies are the same with getting money back for non performance. There are different protection period limitations and different aggressiveness in getting their customers' made whole. We had 'lost' a deposit with a U.S. airline which had gone bankrupt, luckily we had used Amex and they they we like a dawg with a bone and fully recovered our deposit and pretty quickly too. Another time, a similar thing happened but we had used a bank credit card the they were like cute little puppy's dealing with the bankruptcy trustees and it took forever to get our deposit back.