Sold out ship - Royal Up

[ElizaSTN]

Hi all - new to Royal.  we just booked a last minute cruise on EoS in February to join a larger family group…hadn’t planned on going but changed our mind.  We got the last cabin available - an inside.  
 

Even though the sailing is no longer available to book on the website I just got a Royal Up email to bid on a number of different cabin classes.  Is this something they do in case there are last minute cancellations or is there a chance some upgrades could be available?  I dread the inside cabin but don’t want to have false hope. 
 

thanks!!

[Ourusualbeach]

Just now, ElizaSTN said:

Hi all - new to Royal.  we just booked a last minute cruise on EoS in February to join a larger family group…hadn’t planned on going but changed our mind.  We got the last cabin available - an inside.  
 

Even though the sailing is no longer available to book on the website I just got a Royal Up email to bid on a number of different cabin classes.  Is this something they do in case there are last minute cancellations or is there a chance some upgrades could be available?  I dread the inside cabin but don’t want to have false hope. 
 

thanks!!

Yes, they keep offering bids in case of last minute cancellations. 

[teddie]

Yes.  Follow the link and place your bid on the cabins that are offered, even though the ship shows as "sold out".  I am new to Royal Up, so I am sure others will chime in.

 

Teddie

[Starry Eyes]

Our upcoming cruise was sold out, with only an occasional inside gty popping up over the couple weeks, so I did not expect my RoyalUp bids to succeed.  Eight days out my RoyalUp bid for a previously sold out category was granted😀.  In the closing days a few cabin are for sale, probably due the flight cancellations.

 

Neither you nor Royal Caribbean know if or when cancellations might occur.  While you should not get your hopes up, go ahead a place your bid if you are interested in the upgrade.

[Morecruisesplz]

37 minutes ago, ElizaSTN said:

Hi all - new to Royal.  we just booked a last minute cruise on EoS in February to join a larger family group…hadn’t planned on going but changed our mind.  We got the last cabin available - an inside.  
 

Even though the sailing is no longer available to book on the website I just got a Royal Up email to bid on a number of different cabin classes.  Is this something they do in case there are last minute cancellations or is there a chance some upgrades could be available?  I dread the inside cabin but don’t want to have false hope. 
 

thanks!!

Full isn't full. There are always cabins available. They want your inside to sell it for higher $s. Bid and cross your fingers. But if you end up in an inside, go and enjoy your cruise. Insides are great for sleeping /napping and you will only be there to sleep and shower.

 

[Morecruisesplz]

7 minutes ago, Starry Eyes said:

Our upcoming cruise was sold out, with only an occasional inside gty popping up over the couple weeks, so I did not expect my RoyalUp bids to succeed.  Eight days out my RoyalUp bid for a previously sold out category was granted😀.  In the closing days a few cabin are for sale, probably due the flight cancellations.

 

Neither you nor Royal Caribbean know if or when cancellations might occur.  While you should not get your hopes up, go ahead a place your bid if you are interested in the upgrade.

Congrats on your RU.

[resetjet]

Inside is hard on a sold out cruise.  If anything sbove opens up they shift up a category.  The inside however they may as well just resell the oceanview or balcony that remains.

[LVinTennessee]

Haven’t cruised in several years and am also new to Royal Up (which hasn’t even been offered yet for my upcoming cruise). I’ve read all that RC has on their website, but I like to be very very prepared. 
I am currently booked in a balcony room. If R U is offered, I will get to bid on one or more suites if available? And it is best to put in multiple bids to better your chances of getting at least one? I assume you get 1 bid per room type. And you only get one shot or you could change your bid amount if you change your mind about the amount? May be stupid questions, but I am a visual learner and having never seen a bid page, I can’t picture how it works….

[DaKahuna]

6 hours ago, LVinTennessee said:

Haven’t cruised in several years and am also new to Royal Up (which hasn’t even been offered yet for my upcoming cruise). I’ve read all that RC has on their website, but I like to be very very prepared. 
I am currently booked in a balcony room. If R U is offered, I will get to bid on one or more suites if available? And it is best to put in multiple bids to better your chances of getting at least one? I assume you get 1 bid per room type. And you only get one shot or you could change your bid amount if you change your mind about the amount? May be stupid questions, but I am a visual learner and having never seen a bid page, I can’t picture how it works….

 

 Unless you booked through one of the on-line travel agencies that do not participate, you should receive an offer to Royal Up after final payment is made. 

 

 You should receive an offer to bid on higher room types, including suites. 

 You can make one bid per type of room and can go in and change your bid until it is either not accepted, accepted, or until it is closed. 

 

 When I logged in just now to capture the below screenshot I was taken to a screen where an existing bid I have in place was shown and given the opportunity to modify my bid or to cancel it.  We sail Feb 18th. 

 

 Here is a screenshot of a partial Royal Up page for my sailing.

 

 

[LVinTennessee]

John, thank you so much for answering my questions and for the screenshot. That picture helps me so much!

[Biker19]

3 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

You should receive an offer to bid on higher room types, including suites.

What you can bid on depends on cabin category already booked - for example, someone with an inside usually won’t get an offer to bid on suites. 

[LVinTennessee]

7 minutes ago, DaKahuna said:

 

 Unless you booked through one of the on-line travel agencies that do not participate, you should receive an offer to Royal Up after final payment is made. 

 

 You should receive an offer to bid on higher room types, including suites. 

 You can make one bid per type of room and can go in and change your bid until it is either not accepted, accepted, or until it is closed. 

 

 When I logged in just now to capture the below screenshot I was taken to a screen where an existing bid I have in place was shown and given the opportunity to modify my bid or to cancel it.  We sail Feb 18th. 

 

 Here is a screenshot of a partial Royal Up page for my sailing.

 

 

How important is the bid strength meter when trying to formulate a bid amount?

[Mum2Mercury]

On 12/30/2022 at 12:46 PM, ElizaSTN said:

... I dread the inside cabin but don’t want to have false hope ... 

I'm not really answering your question, but don't dread the inside cabin!  When we were younger and traveled with our children, we always got a balcony -- Dad needed that spot "to disappear to" while the girls changed clothes.  But now that we're older, retired and cruising more often, we have come to LOVE inside cabins!  They're everything we need, have more storage than you might expect, and we've been very comfortable in them.  

 

My biggest tip for being comfortable "inside":  At night keep your TV turned to the bridge channel, and you'll have an idea of whether it's midnight or early morning, whether it's raining or not.  

On 12/30/2022 at 1:22 PM, Starry Eyes said:

... Neither you nor Royal Caribbean know if or when cancellations might occur.  While you should not get your hopes up, go ahead a place your bid if you are interested in the upgrade ... 

Yes, we have cancelled last-minute because of a sick child -- I always wondered who got that last-minute prime aft balcony.  When you're talking about a group of people this large, someone will have a last-minute emergency. 

 

One bit of encouragement:  Royal always wants to keep inside cabins available.  Why?  Because they're cheapest, and that low-low price brings people in.  

[Big_G]

We won an Owner's Suite on our Serenade back in November. It was a little awkward meeting the daughter of the people who originally booked it when she informed us her father was diagnosed with cancer and needed to start treatments 10 days before the start of the cruise.

 

So yes, they are counting on last minute openings.

[PIR8LUVR]

1 hour ago, LVinTennessee said:

How important is the bid strength meter when trying to formulate a bid amount?

It depends. I made a minimum bid on a Crown Loft Suite earlier this year and got it (about 5 days out). I’ve heard others say they bid $5 over the minimum and got it. I’m sure it depends on bids and availability. 

[GetToLivin]

We booked a Jr Suite on the current sailing we're on, NYE cruise so everything was showing as sold out in December. Even so I was given several suite categories to bid on and around 10 days out we won the 1 bedroom spacious aqua suite. I bid something competitive that I was comfortable with and I'm glad I did, it's an amazing room and I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to go back from this 🤣

 

My point, bid what you think the room is worth to you because you never know who will need to cancel. 

[DukeASUGirl]

6 hours ago, Biker19 said:

What you can bid on depends on cabin category already booked - for example, someone with an inside usually won’t get an offer to bid on suites. 

It allowed us to make a bid for a suite even though we had an Inside. We just weren't successful, and the minimum bid was WAY higher than the minimum bids for Outside or Balcony.

[Biker19]

2 hours ago, DukeASUGirl said:

It allowed us to make a bid for a suite even though we had an Inside.

How long ago was this? For a while during the COVID restart Royal Up offers were like this, but I think they went back to the pre-COVID norms (of limiting offers to two major categories above booked category) for several months now. 

[Starry Eyes]

20 hours ago, LVinTennessee said:

Haven’t cruised in several years and am also new to Royal Up (which hasn’t even been offered yet for my upcoming cruise). I’ve read all that RC has on their website, but I like to be very very prepared. 
I am currently booked in a balcony room. If R U is offered, I will get to bid on one or more suites if available? And it is best to put in multiple bids to better your chances of getting at least one? I assume you get 1 bid per room type. And you only get one shot or you could change your bid amount if you change your mind about the amount? May be stupid questions, but I am a visual learner and having never seen a bid page, I can’t picture how it works….

Starting in a balcony, you will probably be invited to bid on a junior suite and some full suites (you may or may not be invited to bid on all the full suites on the particular ship from a balcony).

I suspect the more category you bid on and the stronger those bids, the higher your odds of winning something.  You’ll have to decide what you want.  I suggest you not bid on any upgrade on which you are just lukewarm; if you win that bid, none of your other bids can win, so you probably won’t be particularly happy. For example, sometimes we have a nicely located balcony and we do not want to give it up for a random JS (we don’t want to risk our good location to get a poor location), so we don’t bid for a JS. OTOH, we decided the we’d rather be in full suite, regardless of location, than our balcony, so we bid on the suites.  On a different cruise if I did not love my balcony location, I might bid on that JS.  Weigh the decision each time.  Bid what feels right for you.

[Mum2Mercury]

Stating the obvious:  You can never know who else /how many people are bidding on the room you want, and that will vary from sailing to sailing.  

[DukeASUGirl]

7 hours ago, Biker19 said:

How long ago was this? For a while during the COVID restart Royal Up offers were like this, but I think they went back to the pre-COVID norms (of limiting offers to two major categories above booked category) for several months now. 

This past October, but admittedly people were canceling cruises left and right due to the hurricane. (We actually ended up canceling as well once Delta canceled our flight and couldn't get us there on time) So it could have been a completely unusual situation since they wanted to salvage the cruise as much as possible.

 

But there was a Suite Royal Up offer on the website for me when we checked it in mid-September (and I bid on it), about 2 weeks before the cruise. We didn't end up cancelling until Sept 30 (Oct 2 cruise), although I do understand that many Floridians began canceling around Sept 25/26 or so. But even so, the cancelations began about 10 days after we put in our unsuccessful bids.

Edited January 1, 2023 by DukeASUGirl

[orville99]

On 12/30/2022 at 12:46 PM, ElizaSTN said:

Even though the sailing is no longer available to book on the website I

We have won two RoyalUp bids on cruises that had previously shown as sold out (one to an Owners Suite, and one to  a Grand Suite), so it does happen.

[orville99]

16 hours ago, LVinTennessee said:

How important is the bid strength meter when trying to formulate a bid amount?

We have never bid more than the minimum for any category, and we have won six RoyalUp bids so far. There is apparently no logic to how the whole thing works.

[orville99]

8 hours ago, Biker19 said:

t I think they went back to the pre-COVID norms (of limiting offers to two major categories above booked category) for several months now. 

Pretty much matches our experience since the restart up to the bid we won last month is that if you start in a category below a suite, they will only give you an opportunity up to a JS, but if you start at a JS they will allow you to bid all the way up to the most expensive suites on the ship. Son was in an ocean view and the highest he was able to bid on was a balcony and a JS. His kids were in an interior and the highest he was able to bid on for them was a balcony (he bid on an OV for them). The funny part is that he won his bid to a balcony, and won the interior to OV for his kids - and they got the cabin he vacated due to his balcony win.

Edited January 1, 2023 by orville99

[Starry Eyes]

14 minutes ago, orville99 said:

Pretty much matches our experience since the restart up to the bid we won last month is that if you start in a category below a suite, they will only give you an opportunity up to a JS, but if you start at a JS they will allow you to bid all the way up to the most expensive suites on the ship. Son was in an ocean view and the highest he was able to bid on was a balcony and a JS. His kids were in an interior and the highest he was able to bid on for them was a balcony (he bid on an OV for them). The funny part is that he won his bid to a balcony, and won the interior to OV for his kids - and they got the cabin he vacated due to his balcony win.

It varies.  From an OV gty this week on Jewel of the Seas, I was invited to bid on one full suite (the 2 BR window suite) as well as balconies and upgraded OV cabin.  RCI.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Starry Eyes