Brit travelling on US cruise shares 'strange' tipping rule people have 'never seen before'

Ah, the age-old tipping debate. How much should you tip? Should always tip? Why is it so different in the US compared to the UK?

Tipping culture always seems to spark conversation and it’s fair to say we’ve all got our own opinions on it.

But this Brit travelling on a US cruise shared a ‘strange’ tipping rule people have ‘never seen before’.

Setting up the YouTube video, she wrote: “I've cruised with most of the mainstream cruise lines but I've never had anything like this in my cabin before."

Coming back from her first Disney Cruise, popular cruise blogger Emma Cruises explained that the big US cruise line do ‘automatic gratuities’.

Youtube/Emma Cruises

She explained the idea behind this is so that passengers ‘don’t have to give tips to the crew because they’ve automatically been added to your account’.

So, instead of guests having to constantly whip out cash to give to staff, the tips ‘automatically come off your card’.

Emma explained that most cruise lines in the UK ‘tend to add in the cost of gratuities to the cruise fare’, which she prefers.

She said that on any other cruise she goes on, she never has to give tips a second thought because you ‘don’t have’ to pay out extra cash to the staff if you don’t want to – it’s already been covered.

“On Disney, they have automatic gratuities, so I was a bit confused when I came back to my room and I saw a letter and it said ‘you’ve paid your automatic gratuities’.”

Youtube/Emma Cruises

And then it was followed by some odd instructions. Emma had to then take a piece of paper, ‘rip it up into everybody’s names and how much money you’re giving them’.

Then she had to put them into separate envelopes and give them to each person. “I just found that really strange,” she said.

She said she thought the whole point in the automatic gratuities was avoiding the ‘awkward thing of handing over cash’.

Emma didn’t ‘know how to act’ with the envelopes and just found it very ‘strange’ and ‘awkward’.

And in the comments, even many Americans said they find it ‘really strange’ and would find it ‘very uncomfortable and awkward’.

Others noted that the practice is simply done to maintain a ‘cruise tradition’ of tipping servers despite it automatically being paid.

Another added: “Tipping is so deeply engrained into our psyche as Americans that we often do it automatically without thinking twice.

"Disney probably does this because many people from the United States might feel obligated to tip extra if they don't physically hand something to the staff.”

LADbible has contacted Disney for a comment.

Topics: Travel, Cruise Ship, Money

Jess Battison

Jess is an Entertainment Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include keeping up with the Twitter girlies, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021 and has previously worked at MyLondon.

@jessbattison_