Carnival Cruise Guest Furious: “Cleaner Walked In On Us!”, Heald Explains

Every cruise line has its own version of the “do not disturb” sign. 

This conventional way of letting the cabin steward know to let passengers sleep in or be left alone for a while is not without its limits though.

Some cruise ships use magnets to put on the outside of the cabin door, and some modern ships even have an electronic system.  A passenger can simply hit a button inside the cabin to let the steward know they the room needs to be cleaned or they want to be left alone.

Carnival Cruise Line still uses the standard and true door hangers.  On one side it says “Snoozin’”.  It basically means the passenger does not want to be disturbed.

As a general rule, cabin stewards and crew respect these signs.  After all, who wants to wake up a cranky passenger who just wanted a few more minutes of seaside napping?

But in a recent instance on a Carnival ship, the passenger was upset by this apparent breach of trust.

Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald posted a message he received on his social media page revealing the complaint.

“How would you like it if the cabin cleaner walked in on you John Herald. Our cleaner knocked and walked in on us ignoring the do not disturb sign we had out. This was not acceptable. We took away the gratuity and gave it to other crew people. Is this how Carnival trains their workers?” the upset Carnival passenger wrote in.

The comment was made last week, but Heald was able to get some clarification on the exact situation.  As it turned out, things were not exactly as they had seemed.

“The reason I am sharing this post is because when it was made, early last week, it had lots of you adding your thoughts saying that this was indeed wrong and that it should not have happened. I have since spoken with the Housekeeping Manager who explained what had happened. The guests had their ‘Snoozin’ sign out for more than 24 hours. So it is company policy that we check the safety and well being of the guests and that is what happened here,” Heald posted to his social media page.

Cabin stewards are not in the habit of disregarding “do not disturb” signs and barging into cabins.  In this case it was necessary safety protocol that led to the attendant’s entrance.  A safety check after 24 hours is not unreasonable.

In fact, it would have been against procedure to keep skipping the cabin and not check on the passenger’s wellbeing.

Heald then stated that “The stateroom attendant did knock as they always do before entering and as there was no reply they entered the room with the floor supervisor also there.”  

He added, “The crew member was simply doing her job.”