What was your upgrade offer and what did you bid

[DougandLisa]

Hey All, 

We sail on January 5th, 2020 from San Juan on an 11 day aboard the Epic.  We received the upgrade option a few weeks back.  Finally got around to doing a bit of research to figure out what we would like to do. 

We are currently booked in a mini-suite on the 11th floor and have placed bids on the following:

H2 - High Fair on the meter (They are currently sold out, just bid in case of a last minute cancellation)

H4 - Mid Fair on the meter (currently 12 rooms available)

H5 - Low fair on the meter (currently 2 rooms available)

H9 - Low fair on the meter (currently 4 rooms available)

In our situation:

High fair is a couple hundred dollars (Cdn) above outright booking

Mid fair is a few hundred dollars (Cdn) less than outright booking

Low fair is about 600 dollars (Cdn) less than out right booking

We are silver members and will be gold after this cruise.  We have tried the upgrades 4 times previous without luck, however we have always bid in the "poor" section hoping to grab a bargain.  We have heard so many amazing things about the haven that we have to give it a try with a little more zeal this time as I'm growing more cantankerous as the years go by and "busyness" irritates me. :)

 

Will keep you all posted as to the outcome.

 

Doug

[khall]

Won my upgrade bid this morning for Breakaway cruise leaving Sunday.

Booked with CAS under a comped inside room and put bids in at 80 days out for a balcony and spa balcony pretty low.  About a week ago the cruise showed sold out and I called CAS to try to upgrade and they told me it was sold out. Last night decided to bump up my bids just in case because I really wasn't crazy about an inside room and was notified just before 10am this morning that I won my balcony bid for $330pp. Little pricey for a balcony probably but not bad for a comped cruise.  

[Stlcardsfan79]

89 days out and we have already received email to upgrade. 

[firstimecruiseronncl]

13 minutes ago, Stlcardsfan79 said:

89 days out and we have already received email to upgrade. 

97 days out and I just received mine too.

[bortzct]

I just got my Upgrade offer acceptance email today (34 days out) for my Dec 15th cruise on the new Encore!   My bid of $140pp to go from an Inside cabin to a Mid Ship Balcony.

I put in my initial bid and then have been lowering my bids as we got closer based on the fact that the cruise appeared to still have plenty of availability.

Here is my bid history:

Oct 4th offered $55pp Oceanview / $205 Balcony / $280 Spa Balcony

Oct 9th lowered to $45 Oceanview / $180 Balcony / $255 Spa Balcony

Oct 22nd lowered to $40 Oceanview / $140 Balcony(just above the poor range) / $210 Spa Balcony 

My inside cabin was comped by CAS (Casinos at Sea) or their version of comped which comes with a $140pp admin fee.  To pay for an upgrade with CAS from an Inside to a Balcony, they would have charged me another $500 pp which no way I was going to pay.   Well worth taking my chances on the Upgrade bid.

I had only won an upgrade one other time and that was not awarded until just 48 hours before the sailing date.  Surprised that they are already upgrading more than 30 days out.  They must be trying to free up insides.

So excited to sail on this new mega ship!

 

[travelgals]

Thanks Bortzct, congratulations, like your strategy, glad it worked for you!

Were all your final bids just above poor range or just the one you ended up with? 

[Donquiote60]

Good Question

[Greenpea2]

I am about 110 days out. Received my invite to upgrade. I am in the Haven and I just saw that every Haven category is sold out. I assume they send these invites in case there are cancellations?

[bortzct]

3 hours ago, travelgals said:

Thanks Bortzct, congratulations, like your strategy, glad it worked for you!

Were all your final bids just above poor range or just the one you ended up with? 

Thanks! My final round of bids were high Poor on the $40 Oceanview, lowest Fair on the $140 Balcony, and one third of the way up the Fair range for the Spa Balcony. 

[time391]

Today 11/11/19, I got my Upgrade acceptance email, I am heading on the NCL Escape this Friday 🙂 out of New York for Bermuda

 

I am upgrading from a Casino promotional Inside Cabin to a Spa Balcony, $305/pp. I had increased my bid from fair of $210 to low level of Good, around the start of November after seeing 12 rooms were still available on the NCL site.

 

Did I do the right thing? Or did I cave in too soon?

[travelgals]

Seems you did the right thing. Success! You got it vs bidding a bit less and not having gotten it. I think its best to bid the number you are willing to walk away from, not less. 

[wallaceralphl]

15 hours ago, Greenpea2 said:

I am about 110 days out. Received my invite to upgrade. I am in the Haven and I just saw that every Haven category is sold out. I assume they send these invites in case there are cancellations?

Interesting... Talking with a NCL agent re our upcoming sailing on Encore Jan 19th, he told us NCL sends out emails (and posts notifications on the NCL website) after final payment is submitted, and around 80 days before the sail date. We've submitted our "excellent" bids to up from a mini-suite to a Haven suite.... And there are suites available for this sailing date, so I'm unsure of why they would send opportunity to upgrade when there are none available?

[Greenpea2]

7 minutes ago, wallaceralphl said:

Interesting... Talking with a NCL agent re our upcoming sailing on Encore Jan 19th, he told us NCL sends out emails (and posts notifications on the NCL website) after final payment is submitted, and around 80 days before the sail date. We've submitted our "excellent" bids to up from a mini-suite to a Haven suite.... And there are suites available for this sailing date, so I'm unsure of why they would send opportunity to upgrade when there are none available?

It's got to be just in case there is a cancellation. They are are covering their bases. I'm also wondering if they send them earlier to people who booked Haven cabins. Not sure why I would get one earlier than most people otherwise. Interesting. 

[Nclgetawaymenhoney]

48 minutes ago, Greenpea2 said:

It's got to be just in case there is a cancellation. They are are covering their bases. I'm also wondering if they send them earlier to people who booked Haven cabins. Not sure why I would get one earlier than most people otherwise. Interesting. 

They also send it out even when sold out to data mine, it gives them valuable information for future cruises on bidding trends 

[prbffd28]

We just recieved the upgrade email yesterday, 90 days out, for the Encore sailing. We're already in a midship balcony on deck 10 so I'm interested to ask for opinions on if to bid at all and if so which option to try it on, not wanting to spend a crazy amount on top of my already somewhat pricey cruise. Thanks in advance!

[DinaS]

13 minutes ago, prbffd28 said:

We just recieved the upgrade email yesterday, 90 days out, for the Encore sailing. We're already in a midship balcony on deck 10 so I'm interested to ask for opinions on if to bid at all and if so which option to try it on, not wanting to spend a crazy amount on top of my already somewhat pricey cruise. Thanks in advance!

 

No one can tell you what you should bid on, or even how much you should bid.  If you are happy with the cabin you have (type and location), stay there.  If you want to spend some money, and gamble on a cabin in an unknown location, then figure out how much you are comfortable paying, and try it.

 

The worst that can happen is your bid is not accepted, or it is accepted, and you don't like the location of your new, more expensive cabin 🙂

[prbffd28]

5 minutes ago, DinaS said:

 

No one can tell you what you should bid on, or even how much you should bid.  If you are happy with the cabin you have (type and location), stay there.  If you want to spend some money, and gamble on a cabin in an unknown location, then figure out how much you are comfortable paying, and try it.

 

The worst that can happen is your bid is not accepted, or it is accepted, and you don't like the location of your new, more expensive cabin 🙂

You basically said exactly what I was thinking I would get for responses due to it being a pretty "common sense" post so I do appreciate it. I guess my thought by posting the questions was due to my wondering if bidding on a spa balcony or lower end Haven would be worth it. I suppose I probably should have worded my OP better!! Thanks again, pretty new to CC postings as you can tell!!

[DinaS]

1 hour ago, prbffd28 said:

You basically said exactly what I was thinking I would get for responses due to it being a pretty "common sense" post so I do appreciate it. I guess my thought by posting the questions was due to my wondering if bidding on a spa balcony or lower end Haven would be worth it. I suppose I probably should have worded my OP better!! Thanks again, pretty new to CC postings as you can tell!!

 

When we got our upgrade email for our last cruise, we bid really low offers on one category - only after checking out all the possible locations for any of those cabins.  

 

For example, we did NOT bid on a spa mini suite, because they are mainly under the pool deck.  We also didn't bid on any Haven forward 1 bedrooms cabins, because they all have smaller balconies (and we really enjoy our balcony).

 

We did bid low-ball on the Haven Courtyard penthouse, but didn't get it.  But we made sure we would be happy with any of those cabins in any location they would be.

Edited November 12, 2019 by DinaS

[Greenpea2]

1 hour ago, Nclgetawaymenhoney said:

They also send it out even when sold out to data mine, it gives them valuable information for future cruises on bidding trends 

That's an excellent point! Thank you. 

[fava]

We got our upgrade letter yesterday, 95 days out.  We are in an inside.

 

I did some mock bookings and it seems that the insides do not have many rooms left, and the higher room categories have many more rooms left.   NCL might be trying to create some openings at the low end so they don't have to report the category as sold out.  If that's the case we might expect that these offers might be accepted soon.

 

Also, by not selling out the insides it means that the "starting at" price on the search summary stays nice and low.

[prbffd28]

1 hour ago, DinaS said:

 

When we got our upgrade email for our last cruise, we bid really low offers on one category - only after checking out all the possible locations for any of those cabins.  

 

For example, we did NOT bid on a spa mini suite, because they are mainly under the pool deck.  We also didn't bid on any Haven forward 1 bedrooms cabins, because they all have smaller balconies (and we really enjoy our balcony).

 

We did bid low-ball on the Haven Courtyard penthouse, but didn't get it.  But we made sure we would be happy with any of those cabins in any location they would be.

Makes total sense, since I requested the specfic cabin we have due to its location, I like the mid-ship balconies that are at either end of the "bump outs" next to the angled balconies. These provide unobstructed views (either forward or aft) without having to look passed your neighbors balcony. Just a personal preference. I'll most likely stick with what I have until I can actually afford to pick my own Haven cabin someday!! Thanks again for your responses, always appreciated.

[MoeAndSue]

On 11/7/2019 at 6:12 PM, DougandLisa said:

Hey All, 

We sail on January 5th, 2020 from San Juan on an 11 day aboard the Epic.  We received the upgrade option a few weeks back.  Finally got around to doing a bit of research to figure out what we would like to do. 

We are currently booked in a mini-suite on the 11th floor and have placed bids on the following:

H2 - High Fair on the meter (They are currently sold out, just bid in case of a last minute cancellation)

H4 - Mid Fair on the meter (currently 12 rooms available)

H5 - Low fair on the meter (currently 2 rooms available)

H9 - Low fair on the meter (currently 4 rooms available)

In our situation:

High fair is a couple hundred dollars (Cdn) above outright booking

Mid fair is a few hundred dollars (Cdn) less than outright booking

Low fair is about 600 dollars (Cdn) less than out right booking

We are silver members and will be gold after this cruise.  We have tried the upgrades 4 times previous without luck, however we have always bid in the "poor" section hoping to grab a bargain.  We have heard so many amazing things about the haven that we have to give it a try with a little more zeal this time as I'm growing more cantankerous as the years go by and "busyness" irritates me. 🙂ug

Will keep you all posted as to the outcome.

 

Doug

Hi Doug!  Thanks for sharing this helpful information!  We are super happy with our Large Balcony room we chose but would love to get in on the Haven experience!  You said you've always bid in the "poor" zone which is what we have just done.  I'm going to assume we won't be accepted unless we push the meter upwards!  I'm interested in knowing when you say "above/less than out right booking" does that mean the current price of said cabin?

Good luck with your bids! Appreciate your insight!

MoeAndSue 

[ScottandRudy]

Just received my accepted upgrade email today.  We are leaving Saturday for 5 nights on the Sky. Booked an interior room and bid in the middle of the poor offer for a balcony. We are fine with interior but that if the deal was right we would not mind a balcony. As it has shown sold out of balcony rooms for the last 2 weeks I assumed we would just stay where we were. But surprise we are on a mid ship balcony! 😁

[CruiseKat90]

We booked through a travel agent around Sep. 20 of this year for a sail date around the beginning of December on the Breakaway. We got a mid-ship inside room, and were offered to bid to upgrade towards the very end of September. We bid the lowest possible amount for an Oceanview room ($70 CAD each) and a balcony ($135 CAD each) on Sep. 29, and we received confirmation on Nov. 11 that our bid for the balcony room had been accepted.

Side Note: One thing I find funny is that we were encouraged to up our bid near the end of October as our bids weren’t considered competitive (something along those lines). We decided we’d still be content with an inside room so didn’t make any further bids. Maybe there's an explanation for this, but without knowing, I just find it a little shady to encourage us to bid higher but yet they still end up choosing to accept our initial bid.

 

We were content either way, but I will say we are quite happy to have had our bid accepted 🙂

[mamashamiller]

On 11/12/2019 at 1:58 PM, fava said:

We got our upgrade letter yesterday, 95 days out.  We are in an inside.

 

I did some mock bookings and it seems that the insides do not have many rooms left, and the higher room categories have many more rooms left.   NCL might be trying to create some openings at the low end so they don't have to report the category as sold out.  If that's the case we might expect that these offers might be accepted soon.

 

Also, by not selling out the insides it means that the "starting at" price on the search summary stays nice and low.

I’m on the bliss in February about same days out as you

just put in Bid yesterday 

mill report back if I hear anything