Royal upgrade - success?

[cusematt4]

Hi all,

 

Has anyone had success at getting upgraded with the minimum bid?  

I imagine that’s difficult on popular sailings but am wondering if there may be a chance for a minimal upgrade (ie oceanview to spacious oceanview or balcony) by bidding the minimum for a 3 night sailing.

 

Thanks.

[firefly333]

There is a thread somewhere where people post if they won or not. Not usually but it can happen. It's a roll of the dice. 

[moesyk4]

Not the minim, but we just got back from the Oasis where we went from an interior guarantee to a Boardwalk balcony for 300 total. Not a bad deal at all!

[Tin can]

We have made three bids all maximum and nothing.

 

Maybe they were offering cabins that were not available, who knows..

[TeeRick]

We have an upgrade bid made for our Symphony cruise this weekend.  So far just crickets.  I think the ship is full.

[Denversail]

I got an email this morning that I still have time to bid for my cruise that is in 6 days. I think they wait until the last minute. Well at least for the suite bids.

[sandebeach]

We put in a bid slightly over minimum for a suite on Oasis, got our reject email the night before we sailed. 

[Starry Eyes]

Unless the minimums are set quite high (as they have been on some cruises lately though more reasonable for others), I’ve been bidding above the minimum.   Some bids are way above the minimum. Our bids above the minimum are generally rejected.  If you bud the minimum there is a chance your bid will be accepted, but your odds are probably rather low.
 

 For my party of two, I might not bother to bid on the upgrade from OV to spacious OV if I liked the location of my current OV cabin.  The spacious OV would probably gain us bunk beds that would not really enhance our cruise and we might not like the new location.   Larger parties likely feel differently about those bunk beds.  I would bid on the spacious OV if I did not like the location of my current OV cabin (gty assignment that did not thrill us, for example). I do bid on ultra spacious as they are much larger cabins.  Those are also rare cabins, so the upgrade is less likely.

 

I would not call OV to balcony a minimal upgrade, lol.  Many people value the upgrade to balcony.  I’d expect many people in inside cabins as well as those in OV cabins to bid on the balcony upgrade.   There are lots of balconies on the ship, so the chance of vacant balcony going to RoyalUp bidding is better.  If I had to guess though, odds are are the balconies will go to people who bid above the minimum.

Edited February 5 by Starry Eyes

[fpcruiser]

We always bid minimum or just a tick above. We have won upgrades on 4. Two of those were when the cruises were coming out of covid. Our cruise last month, we booked in inside guarantee and won a spacious ocean view with minimum bid. This was on Freedom.

[GetToLivin]

For our Dec 2022 cruise, I bid at the top of the "weak" level and went from a Junior Suite to a 1-bedroom Aqua Suite. Since RoyalUp came out that's been my only successful bid. 

[ShipDawg]

We have been awarded 3 royal ups. On symphony pre pandemic it took a 2/3 to get. On ovation this March just received notifications of upgrade for only $150 over minimum, however this was from GS to OS. 

[edrussell]

On the 3 Royal Up we have won they all were 10 more than the min.  Now they were won when ships were not sailing at full capacity.  Since most of our rooms are interior casino COMP we roll the dice on Royal Up and still follow the same bid strategy.  10 more than min.  If they win, they do, but we don't count on them.

 

[TeamCan]

3 hours ago, Starry Eyes said:

Unless the minimums are set quite high (as they have been on some cruises lately though more reasonable for others), I’ve been bidding above the minimum.   Some bids are way above the minimum. Our bids above the minimum are generally rejected.  If you bud the minimum there is a chance your bid will be accepted, but your odds are probably rather low.
 

 For my party of two, I might not bother to bid on the upgrade from OV to spacious OV if I liked the location of my current OV cabin.  The spacious OV would probably gain us bunk beds that would not really enhance our cruise and we might not like the new location.   Larger parties likely feel differently about those bunk beds.  I would bid on the spacious OV if I did not like the location of my current OV cabin (gty assignment that did not thrill us, for example). I do bid on ultra spacious as they are much larger cabins.  Those are also rare cabins, so the upgrade is less likely.

 

I would not call OV to balcony a minimal upgrade, lol.  Many people value the upgrade to balcony.  I’d expect many people in inside cabins as well as those in OV cabins to bid on the balcony upgrade.   There are lots of balconies on the ship, so the chance of vacant balcony going to RoyalUp bidding is better.  If I had to guess though, odds are are the balconies will go to people who bid above the minimum.

This! ...we might not like the new location. Location is important to us. I picked and like the cabin location for a Central Park balcony. We have enjoyed sailing in a CP balcony before. Although an OV balcony would be nice, I'm hesitant to bid for an OV balcony as we may get a cabin location that we're not as happy with.  Plus it's a short 4 day cruise.

For ships with obstructed view balconies (Quantum class), would you most likely be assigned an obstructed view with RoyalUp bidding?

Edited February 5 by TeamCan
RoyalUp bidding on an "Ocean view balcony"

[Ashland]

What other's have bid and or received, there is no way to compare this to what may or may not happen to you.

[wdwkings]

Sharing some data, from our experience, that we have shared on the other thread about the Royal Up.  We have had 3 successful Royal Up bids, not sure of the exact number of tries but we are probably around 33% success rate.
 

The chances of winning seem to be most dependent on how full a ship will be for that specific itinerary.  That means many Royal Up bids are fairly low odds.  Sailings that do have some open room provides the best chances, even if the room/suite inventory is bit dramatically large.  We tend to sail not during big holidays or main summertime seasons, so that more off season sailing probably helps.  All of our wins were confirmed about 3-5 weeks or so before sailing.  Not sure of the exact algorithm but that seems to play into success.  Waiting too long to bid might put you behind the first cascade of room reassignment.

[MichaelCMTX]

We're batting .500.  On our 13-night Adventure we bid $550ea to go from a GS to an OS and got accepted. Yes, that was considerably less than the difference at booking between a GS and OS.

 

Last trip on Voyager we basically bid just over the min (basically in case nobody else did) to go from OS to RS.  Not shockingly, that one failed.  

 

But you have to realize it's not a simple "high bid wins" math problem, because I'm sure their algorithm takes into account "if we do this upgrade, then what can we get our of their old cabin, and can we get something for their old cabin..." So it's a situation where maybe someone's bidding $xxxx to go from a JS to an OS, but there could be more money to be had from someone bidding $xxx for GS to OS and someone else bidding $xxx for JS to GS, etc.

 

Edited February 7 by MichaelCMTX

[cynthiaRae]

I will be on Freedom of the seas in a couple weeks and originally booked an interior cabin. I put in a bid for a promenade view interior just so I had a window for people watching lol. I bid the minimum which was $50 total and was awarded my upgrade exactly a month before sailing.

[Cactus527]

I just won my Royal Up on Freedom from a guarantee balcony (it had been assigned to me already as the basic balcony cabin) to a spacious balcony. Minimum bid was $45/person, I bid $75/person. I had been checking inventory right before the 45-day check-in mark and noticed quite a few of the spacious balconies and junior suites were still available, so I bid on both knowing that. I bid as soon as I got the RU email, and literally the next day I couldn't adjust it anymore because it said "pending" (the JS one said "expired"). Within 24 hours, RU confirmed my upgrade. 

 

As someone else said, I think it depends on inventory available as well as how popular the room you have at the moment will be for resale. I also looked at my budget and said I'm willing to spend X to do this but not more than that, and that was it. Good luck, because it's truly just luck with RU!

[MLAW]

I put in minimum bids from JS to four full suite categories for our Adventure cruise next week.  I received email yesterday that we won the bid for an owner suite.  The cruise was showing as sold out for over a month now so I was not expecting to win.  But minimum bids can win.

[Starry Eyes]

2 hours ago, Cactus527 said:

I just won my Royal Up on Freedom from a guarantee balcony (it had been assigned to me already as the basic balcony cabin) to a spacious balcony. Minimum bid was $45/person, I bid $75/person. I had been checking inventory right before the 45-day check-in mark and noticed quite a few of the spacious balconies and junior suites were still available, so I bid on both knowing that. I bid as soon as I got the RU email, and literally the next day I couldn't adjust it anymore because it said "pending" (the JS one said "expired"). Within 24 hours, RU confirmed my upgrade. 

 

As someone else said, I think it depends on inventory available as well as how popular the room you have at the moment will be for resale. I also looked at my budget and said I'm willing to spend X to do this but not more than that, and that was it. Good luck, because it's truly just luck with RU!

We all have our preferences, but personally unless I disliked my assigned gty balcony, I would not even bid on an upgrade from gty balcony to spacious balcony on Freedom class.  I’d have only bid on the JS.

Edited February 7 by Starry Eyes

[Tree_skier]

I finally won! 😃

 

After going 0/9 with the RoyalUp program I finally got a winner.  After all of our failures I had no expectation of winning especially on this sailing.  The ship has been sold out for a couple of weeks and people on the roll call have been posting emails from Royal with offers to sail on a different sailing or to downgrade their balcony to an OV.

 

This morning I got the email, 9 days from embarkation, that my offer for a JS had been accepted.  We got an aft facing JS too!  We were in a 4D standard balcony and bid $305 per person.  That was slightly above the absolute lowest you could bid. 

 

I am now 1/10 bidding for RoyalUps.  🙂 

[RFerrington]

48 minutes ago, Tree_skier said:

I finally won! 😃

 

After going 0/9 with the RoyalUp program I finally got a winner.  After all of our failures I had no expectation of winning especially on this sailing.  The ship has been sold out for a couple of weeks and people on the roll call have been posting emails from Royal with offers to sail on a different sailing or to downgrade their balcony to an OV.

 

This morning I got the email, 9 days from embarkation, that my offer for a JS had been accepted.  We got an aft facing JS too!  We were in a 4D standard balcony and bid $305 per person.  That was slightly above the absolute lowest you could bid. 

 

I am now 1/10 bidding for RoyalUps.  🙂 

Congratulations !!!  Enjoy that JS !!!