Changing staterooms

[cinmouse]

Okay, so our 1st DC is next month 4 Days on the Wonder. After we watched the Disney Cruiseline Special last night, my husband decided he may want a room with a view. This will be our 3rd cruise and I got sea sick on the other 2, so I booked a Cat 11 (there are only 3 of us) middle of the ship, deck 6.
So...I checked and there is still space on our cruise, should I called the TA and see what the price is to change now or wait & see if we can upgrade at port?

 

[kcashner]

If you make the change now, you will know you have it. If you wait to upgrade at the port, it may or may not be available. However, if it is available, it will be cheaper. Are you within 30 days of cruising (what I'm getting at is whether or not the gty rooms have been assigned). This will affect availability at the port.

 

[HallsofVA]

If you're concerned about room location and want to pick a room that you feel will work better for you location wise (to minimize seasickness) then you're probably better off trying to upgrade ahead of time, if the cost isn't too prohibitive for you. As the PP said, that will allow you to pick a specific stateroom.

I'm a firm believer in upgrading at port, and I believe it's probably easier to do that these days with the economy the way it is. On our Eastern cruise in December, while there were almost no suites available for upgrade, there seemed to be lots of choices at the lower levels. And it's always much cheaper. You can always work with the supervisor to understand where each available room is located before you commit. But before you go for the upgrade at port strategy, I'm a firm believer that you have to be fully willing to sail in the room you've booked since upgrades are not a guarantee.

 

[ehagerty]

I'm a firm believer in upgrading at port, and I believe it's probably easier to do that these days with the economy the way it is.

Do you have information and / or an opinion as to whether the port-upgrades are better early the day of check-in - or more "fire-sale-like" closer to sailing?

 

[HallsofVA]

Do you have information and / or an opinion as to whether the port-upgrades are better early the day of check-in - or more "fire-sale-like" closer to sailing?

I believe the upgrade prices at port are set the morning of the cruise, and I don't think they change during the day, though I don't really know. The supervisors work off of a price list that shows the cost of going from each group of stateroom categories to the other categories. When we upgraded from a 6 to a 1, they actually had to calculate the cost as if we'd gone from a 6 to a 4, a 4 to a 3, a 3 to a 2, and a 2 to a 1.

What changes during the day is the inventory of available rooms. As folks upgrade, their rooms get listed on the list of available inventory for someone else to upgrade to. This means some fairly nice rooms may come available. We turned in 2 midship connecting cat 6 rooms that we'd had reserved for 2+ years. I had to laugh as they resold our rooms within 2 minutes of them going on the list (while I was still there in line doing my upgrade.)

If you want a suite, I'd recommend getting there early, since that availability is only likely to go down as people upgrade, while the availability for other rooms could actually be better later into checkin (though I'd probably still get there early since you could probably always check back in later if they didn't have something you wanted when you first checked in.)

 

[CAPAW]

How exactly do you do this at port?
Who handles these room changes?

 

[cinmouse]

Thank you for the responds so far. We are staying at the Radisson the night before & already have the 10 AM shuttle booked, so I feel we can get to the port early.
I am happy with the room we have booked, it is more my husband would like to upgrade. I do think I will call the TA in the morning and see what she says.
Keep the advice coming

 

[kcashner]

What you do at the port is to check in as usual. Then you go to the supervisor station to see whether there are any upgrades available. If so, you can see the prices and the stateroom numbers (and categories) and choose to upgrade or not. PLEASE realize that upgrades are rarely available as the ship does normally sail quite full. Do not count on buying an upgrade at the port.

If you upgrade, a message is sent to the stateroom hosts, etc. so all your luggage and "mail" items are supposed to be transferred to your new room. Once again, don't count on that. It's not a bad idea to check the old room occasionally if you seem to be missing your "mail." Reality is that you shouldn't have to do anything, but we've seen it get messed up.

There is no "fire sale." In fact, if there are upgrades available, they usually "sell" fairly quickly. On our second to last cruise we were able to upgrade from a 12. I would have thought that no one would want a cat 12--I was wrong! The DVC staff on board was sharing a cabin as that's all that was available to them; they were delighted to hear that my cat 12 had come available because they could then each have a cabin rather than sharing.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

It couldn't hurt to call now just to see. If you get seasick, it's best to be aft. It's the bow that bobs up and down in rough seas. My dad is a major boatie ( 3 of them) and we've discussed this at length.
The ship is much larger of course but the same rules of physics apply.