After so many years of great upgrades on the Emerald Aisle (and we all got spoiled by it) I see by all these posts that it is the rare occurance now.
My guess is that we used to get those SUV;s and minivans as there were just so many in stock in Orlando as the family demographic makes up their biggest marketshare.
I also think that with ME, the car rentals have taken a large hit, and have by now adjusted their inventory, so less minivans and Suv's to overflow into the Emerald Aisle.
Over the years, my expereince with Emerald Aisle in other cities throughout the country was never as good as MCO was. Basically you got to chose and if you ever got a full size, that was a big upgrade. I say that MCO has also started to run its MCO operation like that also. Maybe it could be a new station manager - who knows.
I know we are now booking on price and will lose our executive level this year as we feel that we will not be able to get lucky with a big upgrade on the aisle. We didn;t mind paying a bit more for a 75% chance of a bigger SUV or Minivan. I would say from reading the posts, that this chance went down to about 10%. As I said before, National spoiled us for years but it made us loyal.
So - did priceline for our upcoming trip. We will miss the convenience

, but save so much on the larger car/van that we need.