How do Gratuities Work on a Disney Cruise?

If you have never cruised with Disney before, this may seem like a complicated topic, but we have broken down for you! For the most part, all of the tipping happens at the end of the cruise.

Typically you get a sheet of paper on the last night, with slips that have the standard gratuities listed (for each of the cast members listed below), with envelopes. You can pay the standard amount, add more (on paper or cash), or less. This will get charged to your room. If you want to increase your tips on paper, go to guest services (or the Concierge Host if you are sailing concierge) and they will take care of it. At the end I will include what we usually do. If you have pre-paid your gratuities, then you will be given a printed sheet with the prepaid amounts, and then you can make adjustments or add cash to the envelopes.

Standard Tips

Tips are calculated per guest in your room:

– Dining Room Server – $4.75 per person/per night

– Assistant Dining Room Server – $3.75 per person/per night

– Dining Room Head Server – $1.25 per person/per night

– Stateroom Host – $4.75 per person/per night

If you are concierge then there is one additional person

– Assistant Stateroom Host – $1.00 per person/per night

Non-Standard Tips

Bag Porters, Drinks/Bars, Room Service, Spa, Excursions, etc

The last time we sailed out of San Diego, they did not have bag porters, when we arrived, we just placed our bags in a certain location. When we have sailed out of other ports, we typically tip the bag Porter who takes our bags, a few $$. In Vancouver we stayed at the Pan Pacific Hotel which is at the port, the hotel bellman came to our room and took our bags directly to the ship so we tipped him two dollars per bag. In Port Canaveral they take them out of your car and we typically just get them a flat five dollars.

Anything you buy at a bar will have the gratuity already included and you just sign for it. You can add more if you wish, but it already has 18% gratuity added. Room service (the food is included, drinks may cost more), you will still have to sign for it and you can add the tip for the delivery when you sign.

You won’t need cash for any of this, but you can tip in cash if you would like to, many guests bring cash for this purpose.

You don’t tip after meals, with the exception being Palo/Remy/Enchante which are the additional $$ adult only restaurants.

You can also tip after your spa treatments, cash or on paper, but be sure to pay attention, an 18% gratuity may be included.

If you take an excursion, I would tip with cash.

Concierge

Concierge tipping has been a grey area until recently when Disney clarified this a bit. They recommend $8 per guest per night for the concierge hosts and servers. That money is divided among the staff by preset percentages, they don’t get equal percentages. For example, the lead concierge host gets a little more than the other concierge hosts, the servers and bartenders get less.

How we tip

I am not making recommendations, just sharing what we have done.

Our last cruise was in December on the Wonder, we stayed in a Concierge Royal Suite. We brought my parents, so there were 5 of us.

We doubled the standard tips for the Servers and Stateroom Host. We have not always done this, we took a 2 night cruise (a huge waste of time/money) and our servers were not very good, we just paid the standard. On this cruise, they were incredibly attentive so we tipped accordingly. On most of our previous cruises we have increased the tips by 50-100%.

We tipped $100/night ($20 for each of the five of us) for the concierge team, they were also incredibly helpful. To tip the concierge team just go to the host on duty and ask them to print out the tip sheet for you, then tell them how much you want to tip and they will take care of the rest. You just have to sign off on it.

I hope this is helpful, let me know if you have questions!