Any Upgrade Bids Accepted Recently?

[dramasweetheart]

Looking to bid for a haven spa suite on the escape. Minimum bid is $650. Anyone have recommendations on how to maybe get your bid accepted?

[RocketMan275]

54 minutes ago, dramasweetheart said:

Looking to bid for a haven spa suite on the escape. Minimum bid is $650. Anyone have recommendations on how to maybe get your bid accepted?

Your odds increase as your bids increase.

[dramasweetheart]

Thank you

[Sydneyberlin]

So, I’m a bit confused now but maybe any of you can shed some light. We’re at 20 days from cruising and had bets in for almost every single Haven category, starting from mid fair to mostly good. One bet (for a lower Haven suite) we had set to the absolute possible max. 
 

Now today, all our bets went to “Expired” so that’s it but one (the single one at absolute max) is still at “pending”. Looking at NCL’s website, still ample availability, even for the ones where the betting is now expired.

 

Now my suspicion is that we have actually lost on that one “pending” as well but they keep us hanging there until the day of the cruise because we bet max so just in case there’s a last minute cancellation. It anyone has reason to think this is not the case and we are still in with a chance, please please pretty please shout.

 

Why I say this all feels “confusing”? Because I’ve read this entire thread over the past few weeks and somehow this doesn’t really fit what I’ve read (besides the overarching observation that this entire process is on purpose opaque and confusing- they’ve definitely succeeded in that!). First, 3 weeks ahead is rather early, especially for all those bets just “expiring”. Second, I don’t think I’ve ever read that they all expire but one category stays pending but maybe that’s actually normal and I’ve misunderstood so please correct me it wrong. 
 

But even more strange I find that all the “expired inventory” is still showing as available when you do a search and also that while just “pending”, I can actually not cancel my offer for this one remaining pending category anymore. Which I would actually consider doing now as I absolutely hate the idea of still having a tiny bit of hope to the last day before boarding when I know that most likely it’s over.

 

Maybe I’m just stuck in the final stages of the upgrade process- it sounds like it takes a while until people get actually assigned their new rooms etc.? 
 

Any thoughts/insights/speculation would be very useful to calm my nerves. I’m checking hourly to see whether the greyed out “Pending” changes into “Processing” or rather also “Expires” and I’d rather be done with the latter to be honest then nervously hoping for tue former.

 

Thanks all!

[mtncjx]

My understanding from posts I've read is if you still have one pending, that's a good sign you will get it. I don't follow it closely enough after I put bids in to know if it's been that way for me though.

[Sydneyberlin]

2 hours ago, mtncjx said:

My understanding from posts I've read is if you still have one pending, that's a good sign you will get it. I don't follow it closely enough after I put bids in to know if it's been that way for me though.

I’d love for you to be correct here. Makes me so nervous this situation, I wish I could keep myself from getting so worked up. Sigh.

[mtncjx]

1 hour ago, Sydneyberlin said:

I’d love for you to be correct here. Makes me so nervous this situation, I wish I could keep myself from getting so worked up. Sigh.

Good luck!

[Sydneyberlin]

10 minutes ago, mtncjx said:

Good luck!

Thank you- will report back once I find out!

[mscdivina2016]

8 hours ago, Sydneyberlin said:

I’d love for you to be correct here. Makes me so nervous this situation, I wish I could keep myself from getting so worked up. Sigh.

Had the same thing and the bidding went live. The one pending is probably sold out and they are holding on in case someone cancels.

 

The reason is your bids expired, not sorry you did not win an upgrade.

Watch your email for the live link.

 They are not assigning Haven's 3 weeks out. Only if your bid and payment is equal to what they are selling it for.

 I bid max on 7 categories before we went live.

[Mommapadraig]

11 hours ago, Sydneyberlin said:

So, I’m a bit confused now but maybe any of you can shed some light. We’re at 20 days from cruising and had bets in for almost every single Haven category, starting from mid fair to mostly good. One bet (for a lower Haven suite) we had set to the absolute possible max. 
 

Now today, all our bets went to “Expired” so that’s it but one (the single one at absolute max) is still at “pending”. Looking at NCL’s website, still ample availability, even for the ones where the betting is now expired.

 

Now my suspicion is that we have actually lost on that one “pending” as well but they keep us hanging there until the day of the cruise because we bet max so just in case there’s a last minute cancellation. It anyone has reason to think this is not the case and we are still in with a chance, please please pretty please shout.

 

Why I say this all feels “confusing”? Because I’ve read this entire thread over the past few weeks and somehow this doesn’t really fit what I’ve read (besides the overarching observation that this entire process is on purpose opaque and confusing- they’ve definitely succeeded in that!). First, 3 weeks ahead is rather early, especially for all those bets just “expiring”. Second, I don’t think I’ve ever read that they all expire but one category stays pending but maybe that’s actually normal and I’ve misunderstood so please correct me it wrong. 
 

But even more strange I find that all the “expired inventory” is still showing as available when you do a search and also that while just “pending”, I can actually not cancel my offer for this one remaining pending category anymore. Which I would actually consider doing now as I absolutely hate the idea of still having a tiny bit of hope to the last day before boarding when I know that most likely it’s over.

 

Maybe I’m just stuck in the final stages of the upgrade process- it sounds like it takes a while until people get actually assigned their new rooms etc.? 
 

Any thoughts/insights/speculation would be very useful to calm my nerves. I’m checking hourly to see whether the greyed out “Pending” changes into “Processing” or rather also “Expires” and I’d rather be done with the latter to be honest then nervously hoping for tue former.

 

Thanks all!

We are 25 days out and our bid was accepted a couple days ago. We bid the max and got it.contrary to what others have experienced I checked with our CC before bidding annd the max bid was 2,000 less than what I would pay if I upgraded directly with her. All of my other bids showed expired. Check your credit card! 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Mommapadraig
Adding info

[wolft927]

my experience winning bids, I have had all go expired then one still pending and about 3 hours later it went to processing and got the email saying congrats. So yes a good sign

[Mommapadraig]

8 hours ago, Sydneyberlin said:

I’d love for you to be correct here. Makes me so nervous this situation, I wish I could keep myself from getting so worked up. Sigh.

I understand! I couldn’t sleep after getting the email that we won the bid! 

[mscdivina2016]

4 hours ago, Mommapadraig said:

We are 25 days out and our bid was accepted a couple days ago. We bid the max and got it.contrary to what others have experienced I checked with our CC before bidding annd the max bid was 2,000 less than what I would pay if I upgraded directly with her. All of my other bids showed expired. Check your credit card! 

25 days + , wow impressive. 

 What ship and sailing is this for? This was for a Haven room?  I can see other categories that far out but a Haven. 

[BCOS]

We are 34 days from sailing.

 

Of the 8 2-br Havens, a dummy booking shows 5 available

Of the 10 2-br family suites, a dummy booking shows 4 available

 

When I looked at the upgrade opportunities last week, I only bid on the 2-br family (non-Haven), and at an amount pretty close to the lowest possible. There are four of us and we're booked in a Club Balcony Suite, so we'd appreciate the additional bedroom and bathroom. The bigger one-room suites with one bathroom were considerably higher priced and I wasn't convinced we'd have enough extra value, and the various Havens were more than we wanted to pay.

 

Today I looked at the upgrade opportunities again, and the 2-br Haven had an alert in red text saying there was a special lower price bidding opportunity, and the lowest possible amount was - I think - a little less than what the regular 2-br suite's minimum had been last week. So, I put in an offer for the 2-br Haven that's about $100 more than what we offered for the non-Haven version.

 

Also, I did NOT get an email about upgrading, however, when I log in I do have a message saying we're eligible... for what that's worth.

 

Realizing that there's no way to know what will happen until it happens, does anyone have experience with seeing that red-text announcement? Or with those ratios of availability (5 of 8 of the Havens; 4 of 10 of the regulars)?

[CAL7]

I think we're out of luck. 60 days out and NCL shows Haven cabins are totally sold out. I realize that cancellations will likely open up a few, but realistically, I think my odds are near zero. At a "good" bid, do I stand a chance? 

[Mommapadraig]

3 hours ago, mscdivina2016 said:

25 days + , wow impressive. 

 What ship and sailing is this for? This was for a Haven room?  I can see other categories that far out but a Haven. 

Yes ncl Epic 4/22. We got an aft Haven room. Another couple got a haven spa room on a bid upgrade. 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Mommapadraig

[wolft927]

12 minutes ago, Mommapadraig said:

Yes ncl Epic 4/22. We got an aft Haven room. Another couple got a haven spa room on a bid upgrade. 

We have the Haven aft on the Joy, only bid on the DOS since we didn’t want to lose out on balcony space. Cruise is 4/8 and all Havens sold out so we will be absolutely fine with our aft facing haven suite 

[Mommapadraig]

1 minute ago, wolft927 said:

We have the Haven aft on the Joy, only bid on the DOS since we didn’t want to lose out on balcony space. Cruise is 4/8 and all Havens sold out so we will be absolutely fine with our aft facing haven suite 

We are very excited about the aft room. Never stayed in one before. We’ve also never stayed outside of the haven proper.   The balcony is around 80 square feet.I’ve already requested a couple loungers. We do have a little hike to get to the forward elevators to get up to the haven but we think the walk will be good for us.

[Sydneyberlin]

Hi everyone- I’m finally posting what I was desperately hoping for weeks now: Yes, we got it, our first stay in the Haven ever 🥰

 

And I will hopefully fulfil the original purpose of this thread as I am happy to share in all detail how we won our upgrade bid, how much we bid and our rationale for all this. I might also be able to dispel some myths about the process but this might be not applicable to everyone. Which reminds me to ask- I’ve been on this forum for long enough to please ask people to not shoot me with a flamethrower only because your experiences might have been different or you disagree with a personal observation of mine. We’re all different but I have found this (and many other) threads extremely helpful over the years and my aim is to help back a little.

 

So: We’ve booked this cruise almost two years ago after having to cancel it twice due to Covid. We booked directly through our NCL consultant in Sydney, Australia but used to live in New Zealand at time of booking so our bills etc. are all in NZ$. Not sure if that matters but it seems that some things differ a fair bit between geographies and depending on where you live (from what I can see, pricing and bundling of offers is entirely different in the US, for example and of course so is tipping culture and other such topics). The cruise is on the Epic in two weeks and a bit and is a 15 nights Westbound Panama Canal itinerary departing Miami and ending up in LA. Our original category was a Club mini-suite which is our standard as we’re quite comfortable in that and it’s just about what we’re willing to spend initially.

 

Now- reading on here and elsewhere about the Haven made us VERY excited about the potential to upgrade and hearing/reading some of the stuff about cost cutting (the once daily service would be a disaster for us as we like to often sleep in till past breakfast time but then often one or both of us wants a nap pre-dinner so we already foresaw that every second day we might miss out completely) and, Encore-specific, the small public pool deck which would be a potential second disaster for us. When I say “disaster”, of course we’d still have a good time. But some things are more important to some people and others for others and for us, besides the booze (we always pay for the Plus package and definitely go to town as a result- not healthy, I know, but it’s vacation time), this is a nice fresh bed at least once but ideally twice a day and some relaxing time by the pool. 

[Sydneyberlin]

Sorry guys- continued from above.

 

We got the invite shortly after final payment for the initial cruise which seems to be the same for most of you posting on here. We read a lot of the threads here and considered VERY carefully how much to bet on which categories. And we did bet HIGH. Rationale for this was that it’s much easier for us to pay another chunk of money a few months after the initial cruise was due then paying it all at once. And reading about this new live bidding that people mention, we wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last ever chance for us to be upgraded. Also- it’s a long cruise at two whole weeks so every $ spent on a potential upgrade will go longer than on a shorter cruise if that makes sense. And of course, in the Caribbean and Mexico, a nice pool and a bigger balcony are extremely important. Speaking of balcony- this is an absolute highlight for us on any cruise and we tend to spend A LOT of time out there so a more spacious balcony was almost more important to us than the bigger cabin or the butler service. 
 

One thing we noticed was that we had booked a cruise at a great time: No school holidays so generally less people around and probably also less noisy kids too. But the ship overall hasn’t sold out and there were consistently about 15 or so Haven rooms still available. Prices only dropped a tiny bit around the 2 months mark and we also spoke to our NCL consultant about upgrading directly but no chance- a direct upgrade would still have been more than double of what we’ve now paid for the upgrade. So what did we bet? We soon noticed that the max bid for both the Haven penthouse suites and the one still available spa suites were exactly at the 2000 US$ mark, that’s around 3000 Aussie$ (per person). Some of the higher categories (aft or 2bedroom villas) went much higher than that so we put just about 2000 US on those which landed us in the fair to good region. But we never really counted on those as inventory wise, there were something like 2 aft villas and maybe 3 Family villas available still. Penthouse courtyard with large balcony, there were initially 9 which went down to 7 over the past few weeks. And for us- really, a 2 bedroom suite would be total overkill, we’d probably just use the second bedroom for our luggage, what a waste! No- that Courtyard penthouse, especially the one with a large balcony, was always our favourite and we also reckoned that this would be our best chance. So we maxed out the bid on this one category only, all the others were below Excellent. As a side note- all non Haven categories besides the Spa Mini-Suite were still wide available even after the slight price drop.

 

Now- at 21 days on the dot, around 7 or 8am Miami time which was very late evening but the day later here, I noticed something strange when doing my usual weekly inventory check by doing a dummy booking on NCL’s website: Suddenly, our own Club Mini-Suite as well as regular balcony staterooms had sold out. I suspected straight away that the upgrade process had started and contrary to what I would have expected, they’ve started this with the lower categories first. At that stage, nothing had changed to our bids on all those Haven categories but I had my alarm bells up.

 

Day 20 late night Miami time so very early the morning here in Australia (I know, it’s extremely confusing), I noticed that on the app, it suddenly said “not eligible for an upgrade”, the same way it used to say before we got the initial upgrade invitation. But on the web version, all my bids were showing as “Expired” with just the one (the one which we won in the end) being greyed out. No “processing” or any such thing. I thought at first this was bad news but luckily some kind folks here told me it might be the opposite rather so I kept my breath. Days clocked over to 19 days prior but no changes to this state until maybe 7am Miami time when it was time for me to go to sleep here in Australia. No charge yet on the credit card either btw.

 

Then, when getting up this morning (would have happened during the day Miami time), everything had changed: Website now says “Upgraded”, on the app it has the new stateroom number already and I also had both a congratulation email in my inbox as well as an automated updated cruise confirmation. I know some people mentioned this might all be delayed but in our case it went from a greyed out “Pending” to a win with new room number and all this overnight. Still no charge on our credit card showing up, interestingly.

 

So yea, that’s it, in all detail. Needless to say we’re now super excited and will open a bottle of our beloved French champagne tonight. Many more of those to come on the ship, no doubt 😛

[vacationut]

Debating on maxing the bid ($3k pp) for the owners suite. Currently one available for over $21k pp. It would be an absolute steal to get it for under $5k pp total if we did win it. 

[mscdivina2016]

8 hours ago, vacationut said:

Debating on maxing the bid ($3k pp) for the owners suite. Currently one available for over $21k pp. It would be an absolute steal to get it for under $5k pp total if we did win it. 

So you are currently booked into a Haven for under $4000 ($2000pp)for a week?

 

If max bid is $3000 pp it would be safe to say many will hit that and it's possible if that's the bid you are offered, those in higher categories will get a lesser amount.

 If they don't, they would have paid more and they still would be picked because it's all about revenue.

[vacationut]

2 hours ago, mscdivina2016 said:

So you are currently booked into a Haven for under $4000 ($2000pp)for a week?

 

If max bid is $3000 pp it would be safe to say many will hit that and it's possible if that's the bid you are offered, those in higher categories will get a lesser amount.

 If they don't, they would have paid more and they still would be picked because it's all about revenue.

Currently in a balcony for about $1600pp. 

 

I get they want to maximize profit. But if I bid $3000 (my max) and someone already in the Haven bids $2500 (their max), why wouldn't they take the extra $500 of my bid? NCL already got the amount for the cabin already. So the upgrade bid should just straight up be the bigger amount. At least that's how I assume it should work. But we all know about assuming. 

[sansroof]

16 minutes ago, vacationut said:

Currently in a balcony for about $1600pp. 

 

I get they want to maximize profit. But if I bid $3000 (my max) and someone already in the Haven bids $2500 (their max), why wouldn't they take the extra $500 of my bid? NCL already got the amount for the cabin already. So the upgrade bid should just straight up be the bigger amount. At least that's how I assume it should work. But we all know about assuming. 

They would rather take the bid from the Haven person because they can then also get $2000 or whatever from someone in a balcony bidding on a regular Haven room, whereas whatever an inside cabin might bid for an upgrade to your balcony would presumably be much loser.

[vacationut]

21 minutes ago, sansroof said:

They would rather take the bid from the Haven person because they can then also get $2000 or whatever from someone in a balcony bidding on a regular Haven room, whereas whatever an inside cabin might bid for an upgrade to your balcony would presumably be much loser.

Ah, I wasn't thinking WHOLE picture. And that's why I don't run the upgrade program. 🤣 Thanks for straightening me out. 

 

*I think I will bump my owner suite bid to max. It's fun to dream sometimes. 

Edited March 29, 2023 by vacationut