The Royal Up offers are likely a separate automated process without any regard to inventory. The oversold situation is likely limited to just a couple of categories (likely selling too many GTY bookings) - folks have won Royal Ups many times with a seemingly sold-out ship.
No, only O and I class have interior facing balconies.
There are none usually - that's mainly a Q class thing.
There may likely be no other cabins in the exact category to move to after assignment.
The offers start just inside final payment (90 days out) and come as late as the last week. You can keep going to the site and try it at any time between those dates.
It's very unlikely any existing booking would be affected - they only consider the rate at the time of booking. This issue is really quite minor - the chances of anyone being demoted (including changes with spouses/partners), despite reports here, are probably quite small.
Welcome to CC.
Itineraries change for a variety of reasons, including RCI IT glitches. If it was a true change your TA/RCI should have notified you. If really a change, the chances of it coming back are slim.
Not sure a supervisor acquiescing to a customer is the best indicator of a policy.
Biker, who also got some supervisor to approve extra points for sailing solo after the no show rules changed.
It makes no sense for even for an ignorant LA to come up with this rule - they obviously know kids under 18 get their parent's status. Why would an LA bother looking through some 25 year old D's C&A points record and go out of their way to call about a demotion?
Or, C&A actually changed the rules and this is how we are finding out.
There was never an announcement that someone sailing solo after no show second person wouldn't get extra points till folks started reporting it.
They usually are not. RCI IT has had problems with planner/app items for years with this issue. Even once on board the app may not work totally/completely, but it should not be cause for cancellation. The app upgrade to v 1.14 today mentioned some multi-port issue fix though not sure it was referring to this. It could be that they'll fix some issue before sailing and planner items will become available - keep checking.
There are probably a lot of things that are "good enough" that people never know about. Unless someone corners the chief engineer on the ship to provide details, we'll probably never know the true status of the propulsion system.