I booked today for Alaska cruise with HAL Volendam and chose room 6200. I was told I qualify for a free upgrade if available. I said no thank you as the balcony room I have now seems well placed and an upgrade would be to the next deck up, which is under the pool and eating area.
Am I correct in assuming the upgrade was not wise to accept? I can still accept the offer with a phone call....so tell me: Accept or stick with what I have?
First Time Cruiser

Absolutely stay with the cabin you chose. If it is midship especially. Some upgrades are just not worth it. You may go up a deck but be too far forward etc. In a rough sea a higher deck isn't the place to be.

Of course decline upgrade it you are happy with your cabin and know that upper deck may be noisy. BTW, HAL is good at last minute upgrades. When ship is not full, you can get upgrade to suite for a price sevaral times less than usual. They will contact you closer to sail if upgrade is available.

I never accept upgrades. Being prone to seasickness, the location is very important for me.

Stay with what you have

While some upgrades are a plus, we've been sorry everytime we took one. You did the right thing by researching what you had and considered things like being located near a noisy pool, etc.

Stay where you are and enjoy your cruise.

We accepted an upgrade - with a modest fee- this summer on an HAL cruise. It was one deck below the Lido and we did have occasionally a bit of noise, from kids playing chess with three foot chess pieces which they would drop. Otherwise we were very pleased with our decision. We had a lot more room and other amenities. We also had a third person in the room and the upgrade made things a LOT better. I would do it again.