Fantasy port upgrades from 11B?

[ladyj0212]

Hello. We are currently booked for the Fantasy June 2014, any DISers out there do a port upgrade from a CAT 11B to a verandah on the Fantasy? If so, what was the price? Currently the difference online is about 1,400 or so.

[lbgraves]

I would expect the difference to increase quite a bit for a June cruise by the time your cruise date arrives.

[ksucats]

Originally Posted by ladyj0212

Hello. We are currently booked for the Fantasy June 2014, any DISers out there do a port upgrade from a CAT 11B to a verandah on the Fantasy? If so, what was the price? Currently the difference online is about 1,400 or so.

We inquired last May about upgrading from our 10A to a verandah & the cheapest was about $900. We declined as I didn't feel was worth over $100 a day to us.

[ladyj0212]

Originally Posted by lbgraves

I would expect the difference to increase quite a bit for a June cruise by the time your cruise date arrives.

I completely agree with you. I'm just curious as to what people have paid at port as opposed to what they offer online from that particular category to verandah on the fantasy.

I would like to have a rough estimate so that we can be prepared when the time comes if this is something we want to do.

[HollandmillerFamily]

In our experience, the upgrade cost at port is not much less when you're going from, say, an inside or window to a verandah, than what it would be to upgrade beforehand. As I noted in another post on port upgrades: Before I went to port, I had been tracking the difference in price between what I paid and the cost of doing an upgrade to the different cabins in advance. The difference between what I paid for a 9B and a 4E upgrade was $910. (Note this doesn't apply to GTY rates. In the case of GTY categories, you can't upgrade those rooms until you get to port anyway.) Okay, so the difference beforehand was $910. At the port, to go from 9B to 4x (not sure which cat of "4" it was) was $945. At the time I was kind of focused on trying to get to concierge and didn't realize how bogus that was until later so I didn't ask about it.
Here's what I think: It sounds like upgrading from an inside or ocean view to verandah, for example, is not really that great of a deal. From what I've read--and from what I experienced at port--the real deals are as you get higher in category, particularly in concierge. The difference to upgrade beforehand from 9B to V was $3101 and from 9B to T was $5971. At port, those upgrades were $1470 (47% of the pre-cruise upgrade cost) and $2170 (only 36% of the pre-cruise upgrade cost), respectively. As you can see, you save more percentage-wise by going higher--but you're still ultimately spending more money. The Royals weren't available but from what I've read, that's actually an even better deal in terms of the percent-off you're getting, but it still ultimately brings in more money to Disney...
Note that if there isn't anything available to upgrade to by the time you get to port (i.e., the category you want is sold out), then this is all moot.
Good luck and come back and post when it's over to tell us the prices they offered at port and how those compared to what you could have gotten before traveling.