A passenger on a Royal Caribbean cruise has posted a picture of the 30-minute sunbed rule being blatantly flaunted – and it has got passengers up in arms.
For those who don’t know, Royal Caribbean cruises have a hardline rule against people being allowed to reserve seats or sunbeds any other ways than just by sitting on them.
No towels, no little signs, no telling someone ‘that one’s taken’, nothing.
In addition to this, it is actually the rule on cruises that, if you leave a pool chair for 30 minutes, your stuff is getting chucked in lost and found and someone else is taken it.
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That is, in theory, the rule.
Of course, in actual fact, reserving pool seats is actually very common, and the picture showed a pool where near every single one was reserved.
Well, this has enraged people on the r/royalcaribbean subreddit.
One commented: “I watched a group of ladies go out at 9 am and put their towels out for the family (10 loungers) and use the toppers that say ‘No reserving lounge chairs’ to secure the towel to the lounger.
“A staff member up above watching, doing nothing. They did not actually use the seats till 1pm. Pissed me off. Some people are so entitled.”
Another commented: “They really need to deploy staff at the pools early in the morning, a few on each side of the pools who can just tell people as soon as they put stuff down and start to walk away that they can't do that.
“It would go a long way to start to kerb the behaviour. People will ignore signs, they would be way less inclined to ignore a person.
“I get that it's easy to just move stuff, but if I am on vacation, I don't want to be stressed over any confrontations or even have to have the conversation with someone that I did or did not move their stuff, even though they are 100% in the wrong.
“It is almost an impossible task to police this, but doing nothing and letting guests fend for themselves is not the answer.
“The pic above, 830am isn't that bad. Most ships I have been on, the pool deck looks like that at 7am on sea days.”
A third said: “Cruise lines should really do more about this. Chairs are for actively sitting in. It's not for reserving chairs for your entire family so you can come back to 2 hours later.
“Reserving it for 10 minutes so you can go to the restroom, or go get a refill on your drink. That's fine, but this isn't.”
While Carnival Cruise Lines have been praised for their approach to enforcing a 40 minute rule that sees items removed, it is clear that people are less than pleased with the enforcement on Royal Caribbean.
LADbible group has contacted Royal Caribbean Cruises for comment.
Topics: Royal Caribbean, Travel, Reddit, Holiday, Cruise Ship
Michael Slavin