Lisa F
is a very wise woman
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2000
We wanted to try to upgrade at the port and before I left for our cruise, I really wished I could find some more info about the process. Here is how it worked for us:
We originally downgraded from a cat 10 secret porthole room to a cat 11 because the savings was almost $800, but we decided that if we could get a verandah room at the port for the difference, we would do it. They have a chart and the cost to upgrade from an inside room (ANY inside room, cat 12-10) to a verandah (I think cat 7-4) is $698 for the 7 day cruise (either one). They also had a cat 3 on the list and we asked how much it would cost to upgrade to that. She had to add some stuff together on the calculator and it actually came out to more than what the two charts said (the chart only has the price for an upgrade from a cat 4 to cats 1-3) and it came out to $1800. Even though this is a very good deal (would've been just over $3,000 for two people for a cat 3, or approximately 50% of the price it normally costs), we decided to go with just the cat 6 instead.
When we FIRST booked the cruise 2 years ago we were paying just over $3,000 for a cat 6. Then we downgraded to a cat 10 to save $1000 and were paying $2000. THen we downgraded again and with various rebates were paying around $1225 for a cat 11. With the upgrade at the port we ended up paying just under $2000 again only for a cat 6 this time, just a few doors down from the room we had originally booked. A lot of messing with the reservation but it was worth it to save the money. The cat 3 would've been awesome as well but the difference between the two more than paid our onboard bill and frankly I cannot recall a single moment when I even thought about that cat 3 once we got into our cat 6.
I highly recommend this method of upgrading if you want to save some money but there are a few things to know:
1) get to the port EARLY. There are very few upgrades and they go fast.
2) Check in on a regular line and then get right on the line to speak to the supervisor. Even if they have the sign up that the cruise is full, ask. They had that sign up but still had a limited number of rooms for upgrade, including a cat 3 and a couple of cat 2's! I'm not sure why they had the sign up
3) Be willing to stay in your original room. We loved our verandah but we had also decided that if we had to stay in a cat 11, we'd have just as good a time on the cruise. If you are not willing to stay in a lower cat then don't even bother trying this method because it's not surefire.
Once you make the change, the key to the world card that you have already been issued is recoded for the new room. All of your stuff will catch up with you eventually also, but we went down to our previous room (the room number on our luggage tags) and picked up our luggage much earlier than the rest of the stuff. Our stateroom host at some point realized that we weren't the people originally slated to be in the room and he asked what our original room number was. When we came back to change for dinner (late seating) our castaway club gift and meal tickets as well as our DU gift had caught up with us (and I had no idea we were getting the DU gift, what a great surprise!) Our luggage was really the only thing we needed right then so it was good that we could take care of that ourselves and whatever else was IN the cabin arrived at its leisure.
Overall the process was very painless and I would definately do it this way again.
Lisa
We originally downgraded from a cat 10 secret porthole room to a cat 11 because the savings was almost $800, but we decided that if we could get a verandah room at the port for the difference, we would do it. They have a chart and the cost to upgrade from an inside room (ANY inside room, cat 12-10) to a verandah (I think cat 7-4) is $698 for the 7 day cruise (either one). They also had a cat 3 on the list and we asked how much it would cost to upgrade to that. She had to add some stuff together on the calculator and it actually came out to more than what the two charts said (the chart only has the price for an upgrade from a cat 4 to cats 1-3) and it came out to $1800. Even though this is a very good deal (would've been just over $3,000 for two people for a cat 3, or approximately 50% of the price it normally costs), we decided to go with just the cat 6 instead.
When we FIRST booked the cruise 2 years ago we were paying just over $3,000 for a cat 6. Then we downgraded to a cat 10 to save $1000 and were paying $2000. THen we downgraded again and with various rebates were paying around $1225 for a cat 11. With the upgrade at the port we ended up paying just under $2000 again only for a cat 6 this time, just a few doors down from the room we had originally booked. A lot of messing with the reservation but it was worth it to save the money. The cat 3 would've been awesome as well but the difference between the two more than paid our onboard bill and frankly I cannot recall a single moment when I even thought about that cat 3 once we got into our cat 6.
I highly recommend this method of upgrading if you want to save some money but there are a few things to know:
1) get to the port EARLY. There are very few upgrades and they go fast.
2) Check in on a regular line and then get right on the line to speak to the supervisor. Even if they have the sign up that the cruise is full, ask. They had that sign up but still had a limited number of rooms for upgrade, including a cat 3 and a couple of cat 2's! I'm not sure why they had the sign up
3) Be willing to stay in your original room. We loved our verandah but we had also decided that if we had to stay in a cat 11, we'd have just as good a time on the cruise. If you are not willing to stay in a lower cat then don't even bother trying this method because it's not surefire.
Once you make the change, the key to the world card that you have already been issued is recoded for the new room. All of your stuff will catch up with you eventually also, but we went down to our previous room (the room number on our luggage tags) and picked up our luggage much earlier than the rest of the stuff. Our stateroom host at some point realized that we weren't the people originally slated to be in the room and he asked what our original room number was. When we came back to change for dinner (late seating) our castaway club gift and meal tickets as well as our DU gift had caught up with us (and I had no idea we were getting the DU gift, what a great surprise!) Our luggage was really the only thing we needed right then so it was good that we could take care of that ourselves and whatever else was IN the cabin arrived at its leisure.
Overall the process was very painless and I would definately do it this way again.
Lisa
Maybe around $1000? For us it was a difference of $1200 between the cat 6 upgrade we had already taken and a cat 3. Since we are a couple I do not know if the upgrade charge is per cabin no matter how many are in it OR if there is an additional charge for passengers over two.
