So not sure I saw it here, but for any tip you give that over and above the normal rate, is the employee obligated to also put that into the tip pool to share among their co-workers or could they just pocket it. Reason why I say this is because our last cruise, which was a long time ago (due to having kids), our waiter at the dining room went way over and above for us every night (he was from Colombia and in fact from the same town as my wife). We only spoke in Spanish which made him happy. He had drinks always waiting for us when we arrived and always brought out extra items for us to try. Well the last night we had him, we gave him a really nice extra tip for everything he did. We told him to pocket it and buy something nice for himself. We really hope none of it went to the Maître d' since he tried a few times to switch us to a different area because of the extra attention the waiter gave us.