How, to whom and how much should be given for services on a cruise? Should the dinner servers be tipped at each meal or at the end?
Thanks first timer.

Several cruise lines now charge you $10 a day per person for tipping. This is added to your end of the cruise bill unless you choose to tip on your own. Luxury cruise lines include tipping in the original cruise price. If you tip on your own, you do it at the end of the cruise. As a guideline, cabin stewards and head waiters are suggested to get $3.75 a day per person and assistant waiters get $2.50. I personally like the practice of including the price in the original cruise fare or adding it to your final bill.

It varies depending on the line. Which cruiseline are you talking about tindiver?

Joan,
Royal Caribbean

With Royal Caribbean, you can pre-pay the bulk of your tips when you make your final payment or you can have them put on your credit card that you register with the ship. You'll get vouchers for the various people at the end of the cruise. Gratuity is included in the cost of any bar purchases. You'll need to tip the porters who take your bags when you check in ($2 per bag). You'll also need cash to tip room service, if you use it. I don't know how tipping works in the Spa.

Hi tindiver: You don't have to worry about this issue. It will be explained over and over again at every opportunity once you're on the ship. The pre-pay is the easiest option as you do nothing other than allow the charge on your account.
I'd say more, but everytime this issue pops up it starts a flurry of responses on both sides of the "tipping" issue.
The cruise documents that you'll receive prior to your cruise will also clearly outline tipping guidelines for you.
Have a great cruise.

I've never figured out how you know how much to tip in advance, before any services have been provided--how do you evaluate their quality? If the "tip" is actually a service charge, that's a different matter and should be include din the price of the cruise.

The "tip" actually acts as if it is a service charge. One thing that happened on some cruise lines, like NCL, that went to open seating at dinner is that waiters were not getting tips from loyal dinner following - since you ate at a different time each night at a different table you did not get the same waiter every night.

So the logical extension of that was to add a "tip" to bill to cover all service staff.

On a Bermuda cruise we left a small cash tip for cabin steward mid-trip and while service was already great, it got even better - little things like our cabin was cleaned first each AM when we went to breakfast - and he somehow knew that one of our 2 adjacent cabins had early risers and the other late sleepers!

We like early morning coffee in our room before going to breakfast an hour or so later. What would you tip for this service?

Good advice here already. For the room service coffee, $2 if for two people, each time it is ordered seems right to me.