How is the bidding system doing? Any comments?

[1cruiselvr]

10 minutes ago, I object 2 said:

We board the Discovery in 3 days.  We booked an MB category mini suite and placed bid for a Reserve Class mini and penthouse suite.  When I checked the Medallion app just now, the cabin and deck are showing "Pending".   Does anyone know if this means one of our bids could be in the process of being accepted?   Our deck and cabin number have been listed before.   Crossing our fingers!   

No. Everyone that bids is in pending status until it's rejected or accepted 

[I object 2]

Just now, 1cruiselvr said:

No. Everyone that bids is in pending status until it's rejected or accepted 

 

Thanks.  Good to know.  Our deck/cabin has been listed on the Medallion app until this evening.  It surprised me when it changed to pending.

[1cruiselvr]

13 minutes ago, I object 2 said:

We board the Discovery in 3 days.  We booked an MB category mini suite and placed bid for a Reserve Class mini and penthouse suite.  When I checked the Medallion app just now, the cabin and deck are showing "Pending".   Does anyone know if this means one of our bids could be in the process of being accepted?   Our deck and cabin number have been listed before.   Crossing our fingers!   

No. Everyone's status is pending until accepted or rejected. It has nothing to do with acceptance. 

[tutumomickey]

17 minutes ago, 1cruiselvr said:

No. Everyone's status is pending until accepted or rejected. It has nothing to do with acceptance. 

I think you misunderstood. It is not just their bid that is listed as pending but their actual cabin number. They previously had an assigned cabin number that has now been replaced with pending. This does not happen to everyone. It does not mean, your bid has been accepted but, it could. Or they could be in the process of finalizing cabin assignments especially at 72 hours out.

[JeffM1]

32 minutes ago, tutumomickey said:

I think you misunderstood. It is not just their bid that is listed as pending but their actual cabin number. They previously had an assigned cabin number that has now been replaced with pending. This does not happen to everyone. It does not mean, your bid has been accepted but, it could. Or they could be in the process of finalizing cabin assignments especially at 72 hours out.

Well you are correct.  I went back and reread the post by "I object 2" and he did say the cabin number in his app was showing pending, not his original purchased cabin.  That IS different from my case.  I went to the bidding site and my two bids are still showing as pending.  But in the app it is showing my original purchased cabin.  My app is not showing pending.  So maybe "I object 2" is getting lucky.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

Bid $250pp the day the email came (think it was $50pp over minimum). Today received notice of upgrade - 27 days before departure. DW deluxe obstructed balcony deck 8 mid to MB mini suite deck 12 mid. Very happy with price to upgrade and location.
 

For comparative purposes this is an 11 day med cruise on Enchanted. 

[HiCCCs]

I 

49 minutes ago, tutumomickey said:

I think you misunderstood. It is not just their bid that is listed as pending but their actual cabin number. They previously had an assigned cabin number that has now been replaced with pending. This does not happen to everyone. It does not mean, your bid has been accepted but, it could. Or they could be in the process of finalizing cabin assignments especially at 72 hours out.

Right....I think there is misunderstanding. On the "Upgrade" page it shows pending. But on my Princess Medallion app it has my original Cabin Number assigned--it doesn't say pending on the Princess app. But I sure do wish it did!!!

[trbarton]

I’m on a 14 day cruise, solo, & looked into bidding for a mini-suit. The minimum price was $325 which I thought was good until I saw that I would have to pay double, $650. WOW…I didn’t realize that solos have to pay double. No thanks!

 

Tom😀

[HiCCCs]

9 hours ago, trbarton said:

I’m on a 14 day cruise, solo, & looked into bidding for a mini-suit. The minimum price was $325 which I thought was good until I saw that I would have to pay double, $650. WOW…I didn’t realize that solos have to pay double. No thanks!

 

Tom😀

That's right!!  Traveling solo gets you double the rewards...but also double the price for the perks. I found it reasonable on my B2B (less than $350 total) to try upgrading from a balcony to a mini-suite. I'm hoping I'll win....but so far no news with 16 days from sailing.

[JeffM1]

On 10/4/2023 at 6:02 PM, I object 2 said:

 

Thanks.  Good to know.  Our deck/cabin has been listed on the Medallion app until this evening.  It surprised me when it changed to pending.

So it is one day out from sailing and my bid on the bidding site always said pending even 30 minutes ago.  Just now got emails saying our bid was not accepted 😞 😞 .  Did your bid get accepted?

[I object 2]

1 hour ago, JeffM1 said:

So it is one day out from sailing and my bid on the bidding site always said pending even 30 minutes ago.  Just now got emails saying our bid was not accepted 😞 😞 .  Did your bid get accepted?

Hi Jeff.  We’re in the same boat….or should I say ship?  LOL  Just received an email from Princess notifying us both bids were rejected.  We’re OK with that as we’re happy with the cabin we chose.  We wanted to give the bidding process a try.

[JeffM1]

7 minutes ago, I object 2 said:

Hi Jeff.  We’re in the same boat….or should I say ship?  LOL  Just received an email from Princess notifying us both bids were rejected.  We’re OK with that as we’re happy with the cabin we chose.  We wanted to give the bidding process a try.

We are OK too.  We normally don't bid as we usually travel with another couple (family) so if one got upgraded and the other did not, we'd have a problem.  They had to cancel so we thought we would give it a try.  Oh well... drinks on Princess (I have plenty of OBC)!

[no1racefan1]

On 9/30/2023 at 6:00 PM, stevenr597 said:

What I was trying to say that if you had selected a guaranteed room in the upgrade category at the time you did the booking, would it have been a significantly higher price than initially booking a lesser category and then entering the bidding process.  

In one case you know at the start of your booking that you will get a room in either that category or at a higher level.  In the other, there may be savings, but one may not know until the last minute if they will get an upgrade.

Just wondering. 

 

I think it depends on what you'd be happy with. For our cruise next year, I booked the cheapest interior I could find, because we're trying to keep costs down. A balcony room is currently over $1,000pp more than an interior.

 

If/when upgrade bidding opens up, I'm hoping there's an option to bid for either an oceanview or balcony room at significantly less than $1,000pp. But if not, we're satisfied with our interior room. 

[KKB]

Had a COUNTER offer for our upcoming cruise...had never seen that!

We had an interior booked & made offers on OVs to balconies, no more than $260pp bid. 

($500ish more for a balcony is our general point)

Email came offering Mini suite window (no balcony) for $350pp.

Well, it is a 12 day N. Europe cruise, and we realized that the balcony might not get much use; plus our $500 threshold is on 7 day cruises so we thought why not.

So we took it & got it 2 wks before embarkation.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

40 minutes ago, KKB said:

Had a COUNTER offer for our upcoming cruise...had never seen that!

We had an interior booked & made offers on OVs to balconies, no more than $260pp bid. 

($500ish more for a balcony is our general point)

Email came offering Mini suite window (no balcony) for $350pp.

Well, it is a 12 day N. Europe cruise, and we realized that the balcony might not get much use; plus our $500 threshold is on 7 day cruises so we thought why not.

So we took it & got it 2 wks before embarkation.

$700 to move from inside to a mini is an absolute STEAL!  Congrats on the upgrade!

[BamaVol]

53 minutes ago, KKB said:

Had a COUNTER offer for our upcoming cruise...had never seen that!

We had an interior booked & made offers on OVs to balconies, no more than $260pp bid. 

($500ish more for a balcony is our general point)

Email came offering Mini suite window (no balcony) for $350pp.

Well, it is a 12 day N. Europe cruise, and we realized that the balcony might not get much use; plus our $500 threshold is on 7 day cruises so we thought why not.

So we took it & got it 2 wks before embarkation.

Well done!  I’d have made the same decision.

[KKB]

1 hour ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

$700 to move from inside to a mini is an absolute STEAL!  Congrats on the upgrade!

I have to backpedal...we had an OV originally.

I still feel it was a solid price for a 12 day upgrade.😉

[photomikey]

I placed several bids, some literal minimum bids, weeks ago when we went 60 days out.

 

We are coming up on 30 days out next week, and I clicked through to check my bids.

 

I realize this is all spitting into the wind, and nobody knows, but I'm curious to get some reactions:  The minimum bids I submitted are now below the low threshold of bidding.  I.e. you couldn't make that bid now because it is too low.  Should I bump it up with the idea that I can't win when it's below the threshold, or should I stay the course with the low bid so I can feel morally superior that I got a particular stateroom cheaper than anyone could at this date?

[no1racefan1]

8 hours ago, photomikey said:

I placed several bids, some literal minimum bids, weeks ago when we went 60 days out.

 

We are coming up on 30 days out next week, and I clicked through to check my bids.

 

I realize this is all spitting into the wind, and nobody knows, but I'm curious to get some reactions:  The minimum bids I submitted are now below the low threshold of bidding.  I.e. you couldn't make that bid now because it is too low.  Should I bump it up with the idea that I can't win when it's below the threshold, or should I stay the course with the low bid so I can feel morally superior that I got a particular stateroom cheaper than anyone could at this date?

Interesting. I don't know, although I suspect, that means there is high demand, i.e. a lot of bids, and they are going to try to capture higher bidders. Thus you likely wouldn't win your bids if enough people are also bidding in the same category.

 

Depends if you really want the upgrade--bid higher. If you're happy either way, wait and see what happens so you can tell the rest of us 😄

[BamaVol]

On 10/9/2023 at 12:37 AM, photomikey said:

I placed several bids, some literal minimum bids, weeks ago when we went 60 days out.

 

We are coming up on 30 days out next week, and I clicked through to check my bids.

 

I realize this is all spitting into the wind, and nobody knows, but I'm curious to get some reactions:  The minimum bids I submitted are now below the low threshold of bidding.  I.e. you couldn't make that bid now because it is too low.  Should I bump it up with the idea that I can't win when it's below the threshold, or should I stay the course with the low bid so I can feel morally superior that I got a particular stateroom cheaper than anyone could at this date?

Different situation, but when I reached the 30 days to go mark without success, I bumped my bids up a notch and heard within 24 hours.

[L11]

We currently have an ME mini suite, a casino comp. Conventional wisdom seems to be that upgrade offers are extended for 4 categories above your assigned category. We seem to have beaten the odds on this one. We have been offered to upgrade to: a forward facing Club class mini suite, a regular club class mini suite, a premium suite, an aft facing vista suite, a regular vista suite, a penthouse suite and a sky suite (forgive me if those are not in order, but there are 7). I placed a total of 6 bids. I passed on the sky suite since the starting bit was $6130 per person--ouch. Not all of those categories are currently available for my sailing but we will see what happens. Maybe I got such a wide range of offers because of my casino status? Only princess knows for sure I guess. I will be happy with whatever I get, if anything. We sail in around 55 days so I probably won't know anything for a few weeks.

[BamaVol]

33 minutes ago, L11 said:

We currently have an ME mini suite, a casino comp. Conventional wisdom seems to be that upgrade offers are extended for 4 categories above your assigned category. We seem to have beaten the odds on this one. We have been offered to upgrade to: a forward facing Club class mini suite, a regular club class mini suite, a premium suite, an aft facing vista suite, a regular vista suite, a penthouse suite and a sky suite (forgive me if those are not in order, but there are 7). I placed a total of 6 bids. I passed on the sky suite since the starting bit was $6130 per person--ouch. Not all of those categories are currently available for my sailing but we will see what happens. Maybe I got such a wide range of offers because of my casino status? Only princess knows for sure I guess. I will be happy with whatever I get, if anything. We sail in around 55 days so I probably won't know anything for a few weeks.

Good luck.  Let us know so we can celebrate your success with you.

[HiCCCs]

On 10/9/2023 at 2:37 PM, photomikey said:

I placed several bids, some literal minimum bids, weeks ago when we went 60 days out.

 

We are coming up on 30 days out next week, and I clicked through to check my bids.

 

I realize this is all spitting into the wind, and nobody knows, but I'm curious to get some reactions:  The minimum bids I submitted are now below the low threshold of bidding.  I.e. you couldn't make that bid now because it is too low.  Should I bump it up with the idea that I can't win when it's below the threshold, or should I stay the course with the low bid so I can feel morally superior that I got a particular stateroom cheaper than anyone could at this date?

That's an interesting observation. Two weeks back I had gone in and "played around" with the bids on my B2B and saw that I had to increase the bid because the original bid wasn't available. But then I thought maybe it's a promotion gimmick.....I didn't cancel my original bid...I just attempted to modify it...and the only way to modify it was to increase the bid. I wonder what would happen if I cancelled the bid and then tried to bid again. Would it drop back down and be able to make the lower/original bid. Does that make sense?

 

Anyone have experience with that?

[deja moo]

  I have a solo gty inside cabin booked for 14 nights the end of November and bid on a balcony about a month ago and the minimum bid was $200, so I bid $225 ($450 total). I checked my bid today and now the minimum bid has now dropped down to $150. I am wondering if I should lower my bid, or just let it ride and figure I will have a better shot at a balcony.

[trinitygirl]

32 days out from my 15 day TA, my bid to upgrade from guarantee mini suite to a premium suite has been accepted!  I was given FCC for Covid isolation on the Enchanted in August so I bid the whole amount which was the very minimum bid, and it worked!  Surprised and delighted.