Upgrade Fairy

[dam1050]

I must say that I'm surprised to see how many people have been upgraded on this board....I think that's really good.

 

I was offered one upgrade once on Princess (who seem to have far too many categories much the same) -- however it did not appear to be much of a difference between the balcony cabin I'd already booked and was not in as good a location, so I declined.

 

Have never received an upgrade on Celebrity, HAL, NCL, or RCI cruises I've sailed, but have also never tried for a "guarantee" ... perhaps I should ?

 

Thanks for taking part in the polls ...

 

Dave

[Phil_W]

We were upgraded to a suite on Wind Surf on our honeymoon. Our agent told us that she was putting "honeymoon" on every comment field she could find because that is usually good for upgrades on the cruise/hotels/airlines/etc.

 

We'll be on the 7/31 Zuiderdam but no upgrades. Perhaps we should have called it another honeymoon. :)

[drdaddy]

Had a very interesting upgrade last year on Explorer of the Seas. We booked cabin 1688. This is top deck, corner, aft. Huge cabin for the same price as others in the category. Many people die for this one. Well, 10 days before the cruise, someone on our Roll Call thread said everyone should check their cabin numbers. She had the mirror image cabin as we did. Well, lo and behold, RCCL "upgraded" us one category. They called it a suite but due to the configuration of the cabin we had, we did not want this. They did not even tellus about the upgrade. We only found out when our online forms had a new cabin number. Very bad experience and it took ALOT of yelling to get this cabin back. Never got an answer as to the reason.

 

Revneal, those upgrades from inside to out. Were they guarantees or just luck?

 

And to all. These upgrades. Were y'all previous cruisers (especially interested in HAL)? We have an inside gurantee and we are anxioulsly awaiting our assignment. We leave 8/28.

 

Hi, MattR! I think we have spoken quite a bit in the past.

 

Thanks, all.

[Guest alexMD]

Hi,

 

I wanted to say how impressed I am with HAL. I had a SS (Superior Verandah) Suite booked on the New Year's cruise and just got upgraded to a "S" (Deluxe Verandah) and given a refund. I just got the news from my TA today.

[jhannah]

That's fantastic! Good for you. I'm guessing this is because of the promo they're running on S suites. Just curious ... did your TA find this for you, or did you have to prompt him/her to investigate?

[Jeal]

jhannah - what promotion is being run on S suites? And, where would I find it?

[jhannah]

I think I was mistakenly thinking of Promo 5069 what offered free business class airfare for booking a suite on certain Prinsendam or Westerdam sailings. I mixed this in with seeing where S suites are just less than $200 more than SS on HAL's website for our sailing.

[Jeal]

Thanks for letting me know. We are booked on the Zaandam for New Year's - category A. I haven't noticed that suites were going down in price but maybe alexMD will shed some light on this. We like where our cabin is located so don't really care about the upgrade but thought if there was a promotion we would contact our TA about it. I love this board. I have gotten tons of useful info on it including the info about the $100 shipboard credit that we notified our TA about for this sailing.

[Roadwork]

We have been upgraded many times on various cruise lines. On Holland we went from an ROS to a C twice. Once we booked a C and got upgraded to a mini suite. We were happy cruisers.

[1cruiselvr]

I don't think you can compare upgrades from different cruiselines, as each one practices a different upgrade method, some being more generous than others. Also, some cruiselines offer upgrades at the pier for a reduced price and others do not. So I wonder if the original poster of the upgrade question is generally curious or is asking specifically about HAL upgrades because there is a difference. HAL sails full most of the time. It has a very loyal suite/balcony clientele so your chances of an upgrade to that category is substantially less than other cruiselines. Also HAL ships are smaller in comparison to some of the larger ships that sail in other cruiselines. The larger the ship, the more cabins potentially open for last minute freebie upgrades.

Happy Sailing!