When does DCL Upgrade

[afff]

I have heard that cruise lines upgrade your Category sometimes.
Can anyone comment in what circumstance DCL may upgrade your accomadation without paying an addition fee.

 

[lbgraves]

There really is no reason to when & why DCL upgrades you. It seems to happen alot more often in the slow season / fall. We were lucky enough to be upgraded from an 11 to an 8 which thrilled us! Some people on our sailing were upgraded but not everyone from DIS was. Noone has been able to figure anything out for sure.

 

[alexandrew]

we were upgraded from cat 9 to cat 5 for the first time on our most recent 4-day cruise, 10/5/03....IMO, it seems you are most likely to get an upgrade if the demand for your stateroom category exceeds the availability.....I did notice that on this cruise moreso than any other we'd been on, that the ship was exceptionally full...

 

[westjones]

We have been on 4 Disney cruises over the past 4 years (once a year) and have never been upgraded. On this board it appears to happen a lot, but it doesn't happen to everyone. We have two more cruises booked in 2004 and I am not expecting it to happen to us.....BUT we invited friends along and I told DH that I would just bet that our friends will get upgraded and we won't; it wouldn't surprise me at all.
DJ

 

[jrabbit]

Many cruise lines with fleets larger than 2 will automatically upgrade return cruisers. DCL does not. And it really does not happen as much as people here believe it does.

Warning: boring math / statistics about to happen
There are about 2625 rooms available per week or 136,500 rooms available per year. If 3% of the rooms get upgraded per week that's 79 rooms. If there are 33 DIS Board families/rooms on each sailing that is 99 rooms per week which is about 3.8% of the total rooms. So if we (DIS) get 3.8% of the upgrades then we should have about 3 rooms upgraded per week. Do we have that many people reporting upgrades? How many DIS rooms do we have per sailing?
The variables: % of rooms upgraded & number of DIS rooms. I assume that the upgrades are distributed evenly between DIS people and non DIS people.
For one Sailing (not week):
875 rooms * % of rooms upgraded * % of DIS rooms to 875 rooms
875 * .03 * 33/875 = .99 (or about 1 room per sailing)
End of the boring math stuff

As far as who gets upgraded and to where only Mickey & Tinkerbell know for sure (Mickey watches who Tink sprinkles with pixie dust and that family get the Magical or Wonderful upgrade )

 

[mmickeya]

Hi

It seem I was just upgraded for my 14 dec cruise. I use to have cabin 5020, and when I checked today they change it for 5138

Does anyone know something about cabin 5138

Thank

 

[DMOMof3]

Looks like you went from a cat 10 inside to a cat 7 with navigators verandah

have a great cruise

 

[Lloyd Dobler]

I think that they purposefully keep the upgrades as random as possible so that there won't be a way to exploit the system. I have yet to hear of a reliable way to increase your odds. The best advice is to book the category in which you'll be comfortable, and not to count on an upgrade. That way, you can only be pleasantly surprised with an upgrade, rather than disappointed that you didn't get the upgrade you were counting on.

Good luck!

 

[ThreeCircles]

Upgrade?! We don't need no stinkin upgrade (to have a great time on DCL)!!!

 

[MrsPete]

On our November 9th cruise, we were upgraded from a category 11 GTY to a category 9 -- a very nice surprise! I know for certain that others on our cruise were upgraded as well. How many people, I couldn't say.

I agree with the much-repeated advice from this board: Reserve the room in which you think your family will be happy. IF you get "more room" you'll be more happy.