We were just on the Star Princess (Alaska inside passage itinerary out of Seattle) in late August. On tips, we asked several of the waiters about this, and apparently the surcharge gets evenly split among all the crew on the ship. That didn't seem like a fair system as our head waiter and waiter in the dining room were fantastic and really went out of their way to take care of our table of 5, so we ended up giving them additional tips separately. We did not ask to have the surcharge removed. We just didn't separately tip our cabin attendant like we normally would have.