When you board a cruise ship, you're entering an environment full of shared spaces. Yes, you have your own cabin, but that's a sub-200 square foot space that's primarily for sleeping, showering, and getting ready.
Most of your time will be spent in public areas around other people and that can lead to problems as not everyone has the same idea as to how to share space with other people. In some cases, these are outliers like when someone decides that they can change their baby on a table in the coffee shop.
Related: Carnival Cruise Line bans a highly-requested onboard item
In other cases, however, the behaviors are more subtle. It's acceptable, for example, to save a seat at the bar for a friend while they take a bathroom break or if they're on their way down. It gets grey, however, when someone comes in half an hour before a live performer goes on and saves half a dozen seats for people who won't be arriving until after the show starts.
But, the biggest area that causes controversy on most cruise ships is the pool deck. It's common practice for people to put towels and some other personal items down on a chair to save it and then go do something else. Both Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) and Royal Caribbean technically ban saving chairs, but there's a lot of grey area.
Some people clearly violate the spirit of the rule and literally wake up early to place items on chairs and then go back to bed. In other cases, it's less obvious as the person might be running to get a drink, a snack, or they're actually in the pool. That's a situation made even more complicated by the fact that neither cruise line provides a place to leave your stuff that isn't a pool chair.
Both Royal Caribbean and Carnival have a stated policy that you can't leave chairs unattended and, if you do, they say they will remove your belongings to the towel station. In practice, those policies are rarely enforced, but Carnival is changing that.
Image source: Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Carnival has a bold pool deck solution
Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald has been sailing on the Carnival Horizon. During his trip he has been sharing a variety of videos — walkies as he calls them — showing various parts of his ship.
In a Feb. 19 video, Heald shared how the cruise line has been addressing the issue of people saving pool deck chairs.
"Obviously, we have some people who have put their towels down with some clip things and they are going to breakfast. So, it's very interesting that we are doing this, and we are doing our very, very best," said Heald as he walked over to a desk where a Carnival worker was holding a roll of stickers.
The stickers, which are headlined "Sharing is caring," have a space to fill in a time to inform people that they can't leave chairs unattended.
We stopped at 7:50 and found this chair empty...Hope you're having a great time...but for the benefit of all our guests we have a limit how long chairs can be left unattended. At 8:30 we will move your stuff to the towel hut for safekeeping.
"We are going to put these out. The crew do a wonderful job. The supervisor now is going to go and put these on. And, yes, if they're not back by that time we will remove it," he shared.
Heald acknowledged that there's no one ideal method for solving this problem.
"It's not a perfect system. It would be silly of me to suggest otherwise, but it's something that we need to do. Ever since I've been working on ships there are people desperate to get the chairs and that's why they put it down and they go back to bed. There's been a new drive from us to say, save a seat, go to breakfast, but if you're not back at a certain time you will have a sticker on your chair and it (your stuff) will be removed," he added.
Carnival passengers support the enforcement
Carnival passengers who commented on Heald's video seem to support the idea.
"Good! Those stickers need to be used way more often. I rarely see them," Judy Candella Studt wrote.
Many noted that they have seen chair hogging, but have never seen the policy actually being enforced.
"This is the first time I’m seeing these stickers and I’ve seen hundreds of lido chairs with only towels on them," posted Jeanne Marie.
Most posters seem to think that this is a fair solution to the problem.
"This should help a lot! I know a lot of people say to just take the towels off and throw them aside but sometimes someone just needs to go to the bathroom. This is a fair and polite way to do it," added Debra Triplett.
"It's the only way we can make it fair," Heald said.
Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024
