Hi petesamprs, at any point in time, you can call Reservations and they can add an indicator that designates you do not want to be upgraded (albeit, our call volumes are still higher than normal). That said, in this scenario, the system that processes upgrades in advance would skip your reservation anyway since you are a party greater than 2. Once you check in, it will ask you who you want to designate as your companion. If you select someone, you and that person would be split from the others in your party. If you don’t want to designate anyone, you will all stay together. For now, I’d also recommend that you opt-out of auto-return check-in when prompted.
Shannon
Thank you very much! It is great to hear from the company on a topic rather then to try our best to speculate based upon FTers voluntarily reported data. Sometimes the guessing based upon data works, sometimes it doesn't, so thanks very much for giving us the official answer.