What's your chance of an upgrade after final payment?

[JuniorCruiser]

Gonna be sailing the Dawn in Jan,05 and was wondering after your final payment what the chances are getting an upgrade are? We have never been lucky enough to get an upgrade yet as far. How the heck is everybody else so lucky? Any hints? Thanks for your replies :)

~~Debbie~~

[VegasCath]

I wanted one, too. We just returned from the 9/26 sailing to the Mexican Riviera. I called NCL myself about 2 weeks prior to our trip. Their story is: 'we don't give free upgrades'. You can pay for one, of course. I called our TA, and they finally did offer an upgrade the week before we left. I guess they get more desperate to fill the ship closer to the sail date. Anyway, my story is sorta bad - they said we could have a mini suite for $400 something dollars more per person, and I told the TA to take it and call them back. When she called them back, they changed the price. It would now be $600 more per person. She told them she had quoted me - the customer - the price they gave her the first time - and they didn't stand by it. Said: "there's nothing we can do." So at that point, I felt like an idiot taking whatever number they decided to throw out and we didn't take the upgrade at all. But you know what, we were on Deck 5, our cabin was sorta small, but it was really nice, and it didn't detract from our trip at all.

[ute_fan]

My limited experience (only 2 cruises):

On our trip to Alaska on the Sun, we booked quite close to the final payment due date. We made our deposit, and about 2 weeks later sent in our final payment. I kept looking at the NCL website to see how full the ship was getting, what prices were doing, etc. About 1 month before we left, the price of a balcony cabin (BA category) dropped to the same price as the superior inside cabin we had already booked.

I called my TA, who contacted NCL, and was able to get our reservation switched over. Our total cost ended up being $80 -- $40 per person for the 3rd and 4th passengers in the cabin (no idea why, but I really didn't care), and we got our balcony cabin. :D

Is this usual? I have absolutely NO idea. Maybe we were just extraordinarily lucky! My advise, based on my experience, is to keep monitoring the prices of the cabins for your cruise and see what happens. By the way, the price only lowered for about 2-3 days, and I just happened to see it during that time frame, so check often.

[newmexicoNita]

[quote name='ute_fan']My limited experience (only 2 cruises):

On our trip to Alaska on the Sun, we booked quite close to the final payment due date. We made our deposit, and about 2 weeks later sent in our final payment. I kept looking at the NCL website to see how full the ship was getting, what prices were doing, etc. About 1 month before we left, the price of a balcony cabin (BA category) dropped to the same price as the superior inside cabin we had already booked.

I called my TA, who contacted NCL, and was able to get our reservation switched over. Our total cost ended up being $80 -- $40 per person for the 3rd and 4th passengers in the cabin (no idea why, but I really didn't care), and we got our balcony cabin. :D

Is this usual? I have absolutely NO idea. Maybe we were just extraordinarily lucky! My advise, based on my experience, is to keep monitoring the prices of the cabins for your cruise and see what happens. By the way, the price only lowered for about 2-3 days, and I just happened to see it during that time frame, so check often.[/QUOTE]

I don't know so much about after final payment, but NCL is usually very good about giving the lower price if the rates go down or offering upgrades at a very little increase in price. NMNita