Yeah we’ll see what the next 24 hours brings.

For anyone else who comes across this looking to re-book, someone in passing on my first call to UA (before getting disconnected) mentioned EK out of ORD. I called back later this afternoon and got someone in a US call center who spent a good deal of time working it but actually moved me over to the ORD - DXB flight on EK which has the new J seats on it too. So that is definitely an option, they rebooked me into EK C which is what finally did the trick for the person on the phone who was fighting the computer a bit to get it to stick and ticket.

Definitely a nice upgrade vs. UA 763/LX A330 combo they had me slated on.