So - after spending an hour on the phone and receiving an email that did NOT acknowledge my request for being removed with a full refund as we requested...we received an email stating that we had cleared the list and assigning us a room. We are going - but I concur that the program is not as advertised, and therefore we have had an unnecessarily stressful experience.
Note: we did get an aft vista suite as our assigned room - so the cost savings is pretty significant!