Upgrade email on sold out cruise

[CruzinInAutumn]

I booked thanksgiving week cause I heard it won’t be too packed holiday weeks. But my cruise is sold out! How come my upgrade advantage bid has not been denied if it’s sold out? Anyone experience similar? Is the ship truly sold out or do they keep some rooms open and still move people around? 
Cruising nov 22 - dec 2 out of NYC

 

would love to know your upgrade experience 

[BirdTravels]

Everyone will move up with upgrades. There are always last minute cancellations and rooms released which will allow a few upgrades to occur. We have cancelled week of cruise twice giving someone a very nice room. 

[rpb718]

Sold out doesn't necessarily mean all the rooms are sold, just the number of people on board has hit capacity.

 

Say for a simplistic example, a cruise ship only has room in their lifeboats for 2,000 folks in the event of an emergency.  Now say that ships has 1,000 cabins.  If every cabin has 2 people booked that is the 2,000.  The ship is full and all cabins are booked.

 

Now say maybe 1/2 the cabins have 2 people booked and 1/2 have 3 people booked.  That's 2,500 - so 500 people too many.  To get down to 2,000 you have to stop selling after only 333 cabins have been sold.  This leaves 166 cabins that would be empty.

 

Long story short - so even if a cruise is sold out there are empty cabins that can be bid on to move people around.

[xcell]

I'm assuming they are just trying to find out how much everyone is willing to pay for rooms -- collecting data is more important than upgrading.

 

Also depends on the room you are trying to get -- my upcoming room, all Haven rooms are sold out, so chances of a cancellation would be rare (not impossible).

 

And other factors would be type of room, as they can upgrade a 2 person room to anything, whereas there is a limit for a 4 person room (so I'd assume chances for a 4 person room to be upgraded would be much lower than a 2 person room).

 

[mjkacmom]

Any week kids have days off will be full.

[alchemist4]

I'm on this cruise. I was watching, and it actually had a fair amount of availability in the oceanview, balcony, and mini suites, but then suddenly one morning, everything was sold out except for inside rooms. I imagine they did a big upgrade sweep at that time and sold off the remaining inside. I have to say its fairly unlikely you'll get an upgrade, but you never know!