"Saving" lounge chairs at a beach or pool

[audreyh1]

I like assigned seating. I haven't flown southwest in a long time because the airports aren't convenient.

I would rather pay for a nice private lanai with a great view all day than join the hoards on their beach or lounge chairs. Elitist? Maybe. But I truly don't like crowds or noise.

I never sit around a pool. That might be different if I had kids.

[Ian S]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaliKid Brings up a semi-related subject. I have heard that Southwest Airlines does NOT have an official policy on savings seats when boarding and thus they DO allow people to do that. So if you are in the "A" boarding group you can save seats for people in the "C" boarding group and everybody in between just has to pass those nice seats by. A few people on this thread would probably be throwing blows on the plane... on their way to a vacation fighting about beach chairs. Lol.

I've had a couple of encounters like that on SW where someone was saving a seat in the exit row which is the best seating on any SW plane. While I did not press the issue I made a snide comment about it and moved on. I might have made a scene if I had paid business fare though!

[utrecht]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 6miths Ah you are soooooo lucky! No just kidding, I seem to be one of the few who still enjoys flying commercial but even I admit that the experience has changed negatively over the past many years. Southwest Airlines pioneered what I like to refer to as 'Chaos Seating'. You are in a 'Group' depending on your ticket price and you line up in little herds (sorry Groups). Then each Group goes sequentially onto the plane and takes whatever seat is available. My understanding is that on smallish planes like SW uses, this is actually one of the more efficient ways to board. Even on big planes, most carriers don't board by specific rows anymore. They give you a group designation, which generally corresponds to your row area on the plane. It's all in the psychology. (And clearly I have to learn to post more succinctly!)

The groups arent based on ticket price. You can pay extra to get upgraded to group A, but mostly the groups and order within the groups is based on when you check in. If you check in at the airport you can bet you will be one of the last in the grouping order. If you check in online up to 24 hours before your flight you will be at the beginning of the order.

[COcheesehead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2017ish Weird. I don't think we've ever stayed somewhere with that type of a situation. If we did, and our planning failed to alert us to the fact that we were essentially required to stay in chairs around a bunch of other people, it would depend. If we were in the surf right in front of the chairs, no problem with keeping my kindle etc. on the chair. If we were departing for lunch, no. Can't imagine going out early and then leaving an empty beach only to come back when it was crowded, so that wouldn't happen either. So, I'm one of the "Other" votes.

I am with you. If we have to scheme to get a chair, I am not staying there.

[Free bird]

Are you actually entitled to a chair or lounger at a resort or on a cruise ship? You don't own the common area amenities. The corporation owns all the resources & property. You own whatever you brought with you. When you fly your entitled to one seat per person. If someone camps out in the bathroom or stands in the aisle it's up to the crew empowered by the corporation to manage & allocate resources at their discretion . At a resort your entitled to your room. That's it. The reason this issue is generating interest is because there is no right or wrong solution. The appearance of luxury vacations for the masses is no different than mass produced cars or any other trinket the capitalist system creates. Crowed cruise ships & resorts incredibly unappealing. Fighting over a chair that belongs to a corporation is mind boggling.

[Free bird]

Do grocery stores ever run out of shopping carts? Not likely. Are you entitled to a shopping cart at the grocery store? No. Providing a cart is good for business. The grocery store doesn't have your money yet. The resort & the cruise ships get your money up front. Good luck getting even a portion of your money back because you couldn't find a pool chair.

[NW-Bound]

Cruise ships have plenty of chairs on decks. The scarcity is only around the pool, since it is necessarily small. Even a land resort pool area has to be limited to allow room for lawn. And then, some spots may be more desirable than others.

We never stay around the pool when taking a cruise. Too rowdy, and the music is often too loud for our taste. We have no problem finding lounging chairs away from the crowd.

[Free bird]

Ok does anyone have a problem with shade hogs?

[JustCurious]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Free bird You don't own the common area amenities. The corporation owns all the resources & property. You own whatever you brought with you.

I agree. It is the beach chair hoarders who think they own the chair just because they put their towel on it...then they start referring to it as "our chair." News Flash... it wasn't your chair before you put your towel on it, and it's not your chair after.

[Free bird]

I think vacations can be therapeutic but also a recipe for disaster. Some people like overcrowded venues. I don't. Being overwhelmed on vacation defeats the whole purpose. Paradise is so crowded these days.

[audreyh1]

A lot of folks enjoy these mass produced vacations because they can be inexpensive, and it requires very little planning if you head to a specific resort destination or cruise.

But it certainly doesn't represent the universe of travel. Nice venues with some privacy can be found. It might cost a bit more...

[Free bird]

Stack em deep sell em cheap. If I can't do it right I won't do it at all.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 But it certainly doesn't represent the universe of travel. Nice venues with some privacy can be found. It might cost a bit more...

Or it may just be off the beaten path.

The issue is that many vacationers like rowdy and crowded places. They may complain about it, but they do not want go to more quiet locations.

[audreyh1]

This past trip to Hawaii we were in an extremely popular beach destination area - not surprising as it's extremely scenic with nice weather and great beaches/ocean front. Lots of resorts. But the places we stayed at were quiet and secluded. Of course we were too busy snorkeling to do any beach sitting. And the best lounge chairs were on our own lanai with a great view so we didn't have to worry about "reserving" anything.

It's a commons problem. [As in tragedy of the commons]

[NW-Bound]

You went to Maui, as I remember. Maui does not have any beach as busy and crowded as in Oahu, such as Waikiki, Turtle Bay, or Waimea. And even these are nowhere as bad as some beaches in Europe that I have only seen photos of.

The one we stayed in Maui had its own little beach. Not a single swimmer there. We did not go in either, as we were going on a snorkeling trip later.

PS. Malibu Beach and Fort Lauderdale are awful too. Great for youngsters to ogle each other, but I did not mingle with the crowd even when I was young, so certainly not now.

[daylatedollarshort]

We found what we thought was a nice, secluded beach once in Hawaii, but oddly there were all these helicopters with SWAT type people inside buzzing overhead and police everywhere. We didn't understand why at the time, but later in the hotel room on the news we saw the president and his family were vacationing nearby.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound You went to Maui, as I remember. Maui does not have any beach as busy and crowded as in Oahu, such as Waikiki, Turtle Bay, or Waimea. And even these are nowhere as bad as some beaches in Europe that I have only seen photos of. The one we stayed in Maui had its own little beach. Not a single swimmer there. We did not go in either, as we were going on a snorkeling trip later. PS. Malibu Beach and Fort Lauderdale are awful too. Great for youngsters to ogle each other, but I did not mingle with the crowd even when I was young, so certainly not now.

But there were several high rise hotel/condos down the beach from us and we walked through a couple (beach boardwalk) that had numerous rows of lounge chairs surrounding the pools - pretty full by mid day. It was a very busy area. Nice to stay there yet not be aware of the crowding unless you drove somewhere or walked past the huge resorts.

Waikiki? I don't see the point.

[NW-Bound]

A lot of first-time visitors to Hawaii stay in Waikiki. It's eponymous of Hawaii. In our 1st trip to Hawaii 30 years ago, of course we had to stay in Waikiki. I have since come back once.

In Maui, we stayed further north of Ka'anapali, which has a group of hotels and resorts. Our area was quiet and surrounded by residential homes, and did not have the restaurant choices like in Ka'anapali, so we did have to go there to eat with the crowd. It's OK to go into touristy areas, and look at the shops, stands selling knick-knacks. I am a tourist too.

We had the choice to stay south, in Wailea. This, I later found out, appeared very quiet, perhaps too quiet. When I travel, I like something a bit less quiet than my high-country home. It's for a change of scenery.

[NW-Bound]

Even my 2nd visit to Waikiki was 20 years ago. I wonder how it has changed since.

My recent visit to Maui was just last year. My 1st visit to Maui was almost 30 years ago. I hardly recognized the place. The group of hotels at Ka'anapali did not exist then, nor did the boardwalk. I could not locate the hotel I stayed in. It must have been demolished. Tried to find the old restaurant we ate in Lahaina. It was right on the water. Could not find it either. A bit sad because I wanted to relive the old visit with my dear wife. She barely remembered that dinner. Why am I the only one with "superior memory"?

[Revlefty]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort We found what we thought was a nice, secluded beach once in Hawaii, but oddly there were all these helicopters with SWAT type people inside buzzing overhead and police everywhere. We didn't understand why at the time, but later in the hotel room on the news we saw the president and his family were vacationing nearby.

I bet they had no problem getting a beach chair! One of those guys in the dark glasses probably just "found" chairs that were suddenly available.