OP here. Many great comments...thank you all. DH, or I to be more precise
, have gone back and forth. Now, whenever I ask DH what he thinks, he just smiles and says 'I'm staying tuned'...the man is a keeper!
A bit more clarification...we as other posters have mentioned, like some downtime and don't plan on just being in the room to sleep and shower, so larger accommodations are important to us. We are used to timesharing, I know how to play the game and we always get 2 bedroom condos. Hotel rooms are for very short stays or places like NYC.
Our travel companions like the 8:30 dinner hour so we have also selected that time in order to eat together. A BIG however is DH and I are early eaters. I have already told him I cannot eat at 8:30 every night and we do plan on eating a number of earlier dinners by ourselves. We don't plan on being in each other's hip pockets the entire time.
Lastly, we can afford it and have been loosening the purse strings for awhile. That is our dilemma...our frugal nature will not allow us to overspend to ridiculous amounts.
SO, what is a good number to spend? It's been suggested 10-15%, but of what? Of the high bid amount on each category? Of what we are spending now on our cabins which is $6K total, $3K above the most basic cabin? Below are the upgrades we are considering, not for additional perks which would be nice, but for additional elbow room (our cabin is 170 sf w/ 38 sf of balcony):
Family Veranda minimum bid of $100/max bid $1.5K (280sf/112 or 191sf); Sky Suite minimum bid of $1,000/max bid $2.5K (251sf/57sf); and Celebrity Suite minimum bid of $1,500/max bid of $3K (467sf/85sf). Min. and max. bids are per person. Would appreciate suggestions on bid amounts of each category.
As one poster suggested, I will watch the min/max bid amounts to gauge interest from others wrt upgrading.