Pool Towels on Cruise Ships - Please Help!

Charles wrote:

In article , Helen
wrote:

What if you leave your towel for a quick dip in the pool? or have just
dashed inside to the rest room? or to the Lido for an iced tea? I'd
sure hate to come dripping back from a swim to find my towel gone and
someone in my chair! Helen

They did not pick up the towels that fast. They still did remove them
as fast as they should be removed. There were a lot of chair hogs on
that cruise. If someone goes to breakfast, lunch or bingo, the chair
should be freed up and not hogged.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

If I have an "out of the way" chair in the shade, and I was there
reading my book all morning, and want to go to lunch, why can't I leave
a towel and book on it to save it for a half hour? If I plan to spend
the afternoon there, why can't I save it?

--Tom




In any case there were bins with
plenty of clean towels if anyone needed a new or dry towel.

--
Charles

Because when a significant number of people do this, there aren't enough
chairs, Tom. This is exactly why there is a problem.

Tom & Linda wrote:


Charles wrote:

In article , Helen
wrote:


What if you leave your towel for a quick dip in the pool? or have just
dashed inside to the rest room? or to the Lido for an iced tea? I'd
sure hate to come dripping back from a swim to find my towel gone and
someone in my chair! Helen

They did not pick up the towels that fast. They still did remove them
as fast as they should be removed. There were a lot of chair hogs on
that cruise. If someone goes to breakfast, lunch or bingo, the chair
should be freed up and not hogged.


I'm not sure I agree with that.

If I have an "out of the way" chair in the shade, and I was there
reading my book all morning, and want to go to lunch, why can't I leave
a towel and book on it to save it for a half hour? If I plan to spend
the afternoon there, why can't I save it?

--Tom





In any case there were bins with
plenty of clean towels if anyone needed a new or dry towel.

--
Charles

In article , Tom & Linda
wrote:

If I have an "out of the way" chair in the shade, and I was there
reading my book all morning, and want to go to lunch, why can't I leave
a towel and book on it to save it for a half hour? If I plan to spend
the afternoon there, why can't I save it?

Many times I have seen chairs with towels and stuff on them empty of
any human for hours. I have seen one person put towels on six or eight
chairs in the morning and return hours later. In the meantime others
can't find "unoccupied" chairs. If some people did not hog chairs there
would always be another available in the afternoon when you return from
lunch.

One nice thing on Summit. The pool attendents would take the towel off
an unoccupied lounge chair and move it to another location for me so I
never had to worry about someone returning after several hours and
saying anything, they had no idea where their saved chair went.

--
Charles

I agree. It has been two years since we last cruised, and since 1996 all of
our cruises have either been on Veendam or Statendam, and the last time we
sailed in 2001 towels in the cabin were white and towels at the pool were
blue.

We will be happy to include "The State of the Towel" in our review when we
come back from Hawaii, but let me say that we use the aft pool on a HAL
ship, and only in the morning so that when we are done after an hour or so
we return the towels and free the chairs.
--
DG in Cherry Hill, NJ


"Howard Garland" wrote in message
...
That's what I remember. And, I think it sucks!

Charles wrote:

In article , Howard Garland
wrote:


But can you get another towel by the pool, if you dont want to bring the
one from your room? As I remember (it's been over a year since I
cruised Princess), my trick was to get my towels from the gym on
Princess ships.


No you can't. You have to get the replacement from the cabin steward.
So I always request and get an extra towel from them the first day. I
like your trick though.

But I was in the chair all morning. And want the chair all afternoon.
Why do you have a problem with me saving it during lunch? Why should I
lose the chair when I was in it all morning. It's not like I left it
empty after putting a towel on it at 7:00 am.

--Tom

Howard and Eileen Garland wrote:

Because when a significant number of people do this, there aren't enough
chairs, Tom. This is exactly why there is a problem.

Tom & Linda wrote:


Charles wrote:

In article , Helen
wrote:


What if you leave your towel for a quick dip in the pool? or have just
dashed inside to the rest room? or to the Lido for an iced tea? I'd
sure hate to come dripping back from a swim to find my towel gone and
someone in my chair! Helen

They did not pick up the towels that fast. They still did remove them
as fast as they should be removed. There were a lot of chair hogs on
that cruise. If someone goes to breakfast, lunch or bingo, the chair
should be freed up and not hogged.


I'm not sure I agree with that.

If I have an "out of the way" chair in the shade, and I was there
reading my book all morning, and want to go to lunch, why can't I leave
a towel and book on it to save it for a half hour? If I plan to spend
the afternoon there, why can't I save it?

--Tom





In any case there were bins with
plenty of clean towels if anyone needed a new or dry towel.

--
Charles

Helen wrote:
I'd
sure hate to come dripping back from a swim to find my towel gone and
someone in my chair! Helen

This has happened to us, once or twice. We have come back from the
whirlpool and found someone in our chairs, our towels and belongings had
been moved.

sue

Charles wrote:

Many times I have seen chairs with towels and stuff on them empty of
any human for hours. I have seen one person put towels on six or eight
chairs in the morning and return hours later.

One morning on the Zenith I went up to the whirlpools, they are on a
separate deck. There was only a couple of people there and there were
lots of available chairs. There were two chairs with towels spead across
them, nicely tucked in and no one using them. Late in the afternoon I
went back to the whirlpool and those two chairs were exactly as they had
been in the morning, obviously saved and unused.

sue

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Howard, but on the RCCL's Navigator of the
Seas a couple of weeks ago we were issued pool towels IN THE ROOM, which were
only to be EXCHANGED (for a dry one, I guess) at the pool. You could request
one from a pool attendant, but they weren't out in the bins as they'd always
been before.

~ Peri

Howard Garland wrote:
In an earlier thread, I asked experienced rtc'ers to list those things
they would eliminate from today's mass-market cruise experience. One of
the respondants wrote:

Towels, on every lounge ,even though there are only three people in
the pool!
BILL
To which I responded:

" This comes from a practice first introduced by the Princess line many
years ago. They issue pool towels in your stateroom and provide no
fresh towels by the pool, thus making pax responsible for carrying
around their own towel. I complained like hell on my first Princess
cruise ... to no avail. Many years later, Carnival introduced the same
practice, which has continued despite my complaints to them. I feel so
strongly about this (because it does result in lots of empty but
reserved deck chairs) that I encourage all of you who are bothered by
this to write to the cruise lines about the practice and include
complaints on your comment cards. RCCL, Celebrity, and HAL have not yet
followed suit but I really think they unless they hear from repeat pax.
Although these lines still provide fresh towels and pull towels from
empty chairs, I have noticed on my last few cruises, that there are more
and more empty towel bins out on deck these days."

Pam responded to my post with the following:

"On my RCCL cruise, last week on the Enchantment... Towels were issued
in the stateroom. Same on Explorer, in March..."

I would like ask those of you who enjoy laying out around a cruise ship
pool (in or out of the sun), if you would be willing to paticipate in an
organized attempt (perhaps an e-mail campaign to the guest relations
depts. of all the majors) to get the lines to either change or refrain
from this cost-cutting practice.

Howard

Dick Goldhaber wrote:

I agree. It has been two years since we last cruised, and since 1996 all of
our cruises have either been on Veendam or Statendam, and the last time we
sailed in 2001 towels in the cabin were white and towels at the pool were
blue.

If I might ask, Dick. Why have ALL your cruises been on these two ships?

We will be happy to include "The State of the Towel" in our review when we
come back from Hawaii, but let me say that we use the aft pool on a HAL
ship, and only in the morning so that when we are done after an hour or so
we return the towels and free the chairs.

Always love the aft pools on HAL ships, where the Filipino deckhands go
out of their way to make you as comfortable as possible.

Howard

We fell in love with HAL's service on our first Hawaii cruise in 1997. This
will be our third Hawaii cruise and Statendam has been the ship in service
on the Hawaii run.

Coincidentally our first HAL cruise was in 1996, a fall foliage cruise on
Veendam, and we did two cruises in 2001, a quickie 7 day Caribbean cruise to
restore Danni's sanity after a tough couple of months as caregiver to my
mother-in-law. We had planned a Canal cruise for later in 2001 and both
times we were on Veendam.

From 1999 on we have used a travel agent that we first met in 1993 when she
worked for Rosenbluth and we booked through Prodigy. Because we have
special needs in that we travel with a guide dog, Susan has put Danni in
touch with people at Holland America who have catered to her needs. We get
to pick our table and have the refrigerator emptied so we have room for
bottled water and dog food. We always ask for room service to deliver two
juices the first day so that we have the ability to take our medicine when
we awake.

We have cruised RCI, Celebrity, and Crystal, and while we loved Crystal, HAL
comes close to matching them. We are not set against other lines, but right
now HAL has the cruises that match the places we want to go. I know that
Danni would love to go back to Alaska, and last I looked, Veendam was HAL's
ship in Alaska.

We look forward to meeting up with you and Eileen some day.
--
DG in Cherry Hill, NJ


"Howard Garland" wrote in message
...
Dick Goldhaber wrote:

I agree. It has been two years since we last cruised, and since 1996
all of
our cruises have either been on Veendam or Statendam, and the last time
we
sailed in 2001 towels in the cabin were white and towels at the pool
were
blue.

If I might ask, Dick. Why have ALL your cruises been on these two ships?

We will be happy to include "The State of the Towel" in our review when
we
come back from Hawaii, but let me say that we use the aft pool on a HAL
ship, and only in the morning so that when we are done after an hour or
so
we return the towels and free the chairs.

Always love the aft pools on HAL ships, where the Filipino deckhands go
out of their way to make you as comfortable as possible.

Howard