I haven't booked a balcony guarantee on a ship with neighborhood balconies before, but I think we are going to roll the dice with Icon and save the $400.
For those who book balcony guarantees on Oasis class ships, do you generally get the lowest cost neighborhood balcony (obstructed view if possible) or do you find yourself slotted randomly?
The cheapest balcony cabins on Icon are deck 14 central park balconies (which we are fine with - downside is they are right under the pool deck which I've heard makes for noisy early mornings as crew drag lounge chairs back into place) but there really aren't that many of them in the grand scheme of things (under 50 total cabins), next up are surf side balconies which are much more plentiful and we are also fine with in theory (downside, may be loud at peak times since surf side seems like it will be a destination for active young kids), though there are several obstructed view cabins per deck and we don't really know what that means. As long as we can actively use the balcony and it's not reduced in size by a giant pastel surf board or palm tree or something, I don't think we care about an obstruction.
I also remember reading that it's possible to switch your cabin once assigned to an open cabin of the same category? I imagine Icon will be sailing sold out, so probably not an option, but is this possible (switch from obstructed to non obstructed if available)?