Cat. 11 & Cat. 12 ??? Confused!?

[pjew]

Can someone tell me the difference between a cat. 11 and Cat.12. in the Wonder.

I recently got a quote (TA) for a cat. 11 and a cat. 12 (guaranteed) and it
was a difference of $450. Why? I thought they were the same size.

How is it in Cat. 12? What should I do? The TA said that it is guaranteed and maybe later i can get an upgrade of lucky - what did she mean by that?

Help - this is my first cruise ever so this is all new to me- i would appreciate anyone's opinion!

 

[ivanova]

there are very few cat 12 staterooms ... as you change categories the price changes even if the room size is identical. A cat 5 and cat 6 are identical, just on different decks and the cat 5 costs more. Same with the cat 11 vs cat 12 comparison. I think all of the cat 12s are on one deck, forward.

 

[jrabbit]

How is it in Cat. 12? What should I do? The TA said that it is guaranteed and maybe later i can get an upgrade of lucky - what did she mean by that?

It appears to me (and probably only me) that the bulk of the complementary upgrades happen to people with a guaranteed catagory room. Note: lots of the reported upgrades are to people with assigned rooms too.

What "upgrade" means is that DCL will give you a more expensive room without you having to pay for the difference. Very infrequently people get bumped up a category or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. DCL does this to free up lower priced cabins that they can sell easier than the higher priced cabins quickly - because they want to sail with a full ship. And "LUCKY" is the key word - you can never count on an upgrade - but if you get one - it's a nice bonus for your cruise.

 

[yamahaboy]

on our last cruse we went from two cat 8's to two cat 5's

 

[kar313]

I thought Cat12 were a bit smaller than the rest of the rooms. Sq ft wise I mean.

 

[ivanova]

I thought Cat12 were a bit smaller than the rest of the rooms. Sq ft wise I mean.

According to the stateroom info on Dis cat 11 and cat 12 are both 184 sq feet.

 

[CM_Mom]

Cat 12's are all on deck 1 so I think the downside is that they are closer to the dock and the mechanical equipment so may be a little bit noisier than the higher decks. But if you go on shore, you're close to your cabin when you get back on board without having to go up stairs or an elevator.

Also they are further from the pools, restaurants and entertainment on the higher decks so you pay less for the "inconvenience".
Book what you can afford and enjoy your cruise. Maybe the upgrade fairy will strike.

 

[JC Butterfly]

I would definitely book the category 12 as that is a pretty significant price difference and you could use that $450 for lots of other things!

The other posters are correct that size wise the cat 11 and 12 are exactly the same. No matter which room you get you still get all the Disney perks: great meals with fun servers and same rotations. You will have access to all the same shore excursions etc.

To book a category 12, you would have to prepare yourself that that is the room you will actually get. It will not have a porthole. It will be located on deck 2 so that if you want to go "look outside" it will require moving up several decks to do so. But you will be close to getting off the ship when it's time to go ashore.

Booking under "guarantee" means essentially that you are "guranteed" a room on the ship at the price of the category that you pay for. So in your case you are booking the cheapest room on the ship and are guaranteed at least that level of quality. What will happen is that Disney will continue to fill the ship with other passengers. Some may have requests for rooms to be together for various reasons some may have special needs or deck preferences. Once that is figured out on Disney's end, they may realize that they have "extra" category 11s or 10s or some other higher category that they can offer to you. You get that room at no additional cost.

Some people when they book, choose their stateroom right away. They might be trying to get close to an elevator or whatever else, so as a "guarantee" it may or may not make you more likely to get an upgrade.

There are only 13 total category 12 rooms and these are some of the first to sell out on the ship because they cost significantly less.

Have a great cruise!

 

[MRIrene]

I had read on the boards that a Cat. 12 will not hold four people, but Disney will let you book it that way with a Guaranteed Cat.12. They will automatically upgrade you to a Cat. 11 (or maybe even better) at no extra charge. We did this and got a Cat. 11 midship (exactly where we wanted because of less motion) Would have been deliriously happy if we had gotten a better upgrade, but we are satisfied with what we got.

Irene

 

[treloarf]

Just to let everyone know - we booked 2 Cat. 12's. There are 5 of us (DH, myself, DD, DS, MIL). To save my MIL from paying the extra $$$ for a single in a cabin, our TA booked our reservation with 3 in 1 room & 2 in another room.

Well we did get upgraded to Cat. 10's, but each of our rooms only sleep 3 people. Therefore, the 4 of us cannot sleep in 1 room, someone will have to sleep with my MIL. I am not very happy about that. I just assumed that the rooms would sleep 4. Also, we are on opposite sides of the ship (I knew there was no guarantee that we would be together, but we did have our reservations linked & the same last name). You would think Disney would take that into consideration.

Oh well live & learn - hope this helps someone out for a future cruise.

 

[cepmom]

treloarf ~
which cat 10 rooms did you get? I thought all cat 10's slept 4. Did you ask your TA about connecting cat 10's? That's what we ended up booking because we have 5 in our family and I wanted to be sure the rooms were connected ~ our kids are too young to be in a room by themselves.

 

[treloarf]

cepmom-
Our rooms are 2043 & 2693 - since we booked 12 GTY - we could not request connecting rooms, I guesss. I'm assuming by TA would have known if you could have requested that. She did say that there was NO guarantee that they would be together & that there was a possibility they could even be on a different deck.

 

[cepmom]

treloarf~
I just checked in my Passporter and room 2043 is listed as sleeping 4, but there is no room 2693. Could it be 2639? According to the Passporter, all cat 10's sleep 4. They have the queen/twin, sofa bed and pull down berth.

In any case, the rooms are quite a bit of distance from each other which stinks, but if you can have your family in one room all together at least that's better than splitting up.

 

[treloarf]

cepmom,
thanks for checking - yes it's 2639. Why would DCL tell me they sleep only 3? I will check with the supervisor when we get to the port to see if we can get the rooms closer - but I hear the ship is booked - so I don't know what will happen.

 

[cepmom]

treloarf ~
I posted this question about cat 10 room capacity on the Passporter board. It was driving me crazy! I couldn't figure out why the Passporter showed room capacity as 4, but DCL showed it as only 3. Here is the answer I got from Dave Marx, the author of Passporter books. HTH.

Actually, this is a very complicated subject.

We have verified that all the Cat 10's have four berths - the queen/dual twin, the fold-out sofa (single), and the fold-down upper berth.

However, every cruise ship has more beds than it can legally sell (maximum passenger capacity). The extra beds provide flexibility to the cruise line when it comes time to assign staterooms. If the ship is close to capacity, the remaining rooms will usually be shown as sleeping fewer than four, regardless of how many berths the room may actually have. Also, the cruise line's printed documents show stateroom capacities adding up to no more than the ship's legal capacity, just to prevent folks from insisting they can get a berth once the ship's capacity has been reached.

 

[treloarf]

thanks-so I guess what you're saying is we'll be OK with sleeping 4 in a room?

I still want to see if we can get closer to each other when we get to the port.