I did try looking though this thread first for an answer, but there are a lot of pages, so maybe I missed it.

So this is the first time I've tried looking a buying a W or R class ticket and using miles to upgrade. After 3 calls to MPC, I am dismayed at how difficult it seems. Am I missing something?

I was told that I need to call reservations, ask them to HOLD a ticket, then call back to MPC to see if an award is available. If an upgrade is available, then great. If not, then call back, cancel the hold, make another reservation, then call back to MPC. Keep repeating this process until you hit.

Does that sound right? And MPC said that they cannot tell us if an upgrade is available until we are holding the reservation.

One chap at MPC said one alternative would be to just book and hold the ticket online, but I don't see an option for that; I only see a PAY NOW option for credit cards. (EDIT: I did notice that the HOLD option seems to be available sometimes. Perhaps user error. Anyway, this no longer needs to be part of my question.)

Is there a big availability difference between the Full Redemption bucket and the Upgrade bucket? In other words, if I can see that a full redemption is available online, does that mean chances are good that an upgrade would be available?

This sounds like the hit and miss option could take HOURS. And from reading above, it sounds like there is not a lot of success since June 22 in scoring upgrades.