That was exactly my understanding regarding standard awards...if there is an open seat in the class you want, you can have it. Of course there's a significant cost to it. UAL.com doesn't even publish it's standard award table online to my knowledge. Last year, I had to travel to HKG for a last minute event and all saver awards were booked for 9+ days on both sides of my trip and thus had to pony up 150,000 miles.

Party was indeed fun, but it was tough to swallow.