Lounge Hats

September 26th 2008 - Juicy tidbits on meals, ports.....Pull up a lounge chair Some people think it's perfectly acceptable to "save" a cruise a cruise ship lounge chair for an entire day, even if they barely use it; others think saving chairs for more than a few minutes is the height of rudeness-and the two groups have been known to come to blows.

But even if cruisers could agree on this, there's still the tricky issue of how, exactly, t mark a chair as in use. Many will leave a towel on the chair to stake their claim. But one towel looks like another, of course, which can be confusing.

Enter Darrell Bowman, an entrepreneur from Indiana who has invented the Lounge Hat, a covering that fits over cruise ship(or land resort)lounge chairs and tells others that the seat is taken. The product, which costs $17.99, comes in a bevy of designs (visit loungehats.com).

Not that he's encouraging people to save lounge chairs indefinitely. Bowman says the Lounge Hat is meant for times when you need to walk away for just a few minutes-such as to take a swim or grab a drink at the bar. "If someone is not using the lounge chair (at all), they shouldn't be saving it," he says.

Email this to a friend