Monthly Archives: November 2011
In my opinion, and that of my family members, 4:30 AM is far too early in the morning to be awake. Unfortunately, that is the time we had to get out of bed on Thanksgiving morning. With a 7:30 flight and an expected busy travel day, we needed to leave for the airport by 5:00. Again, in typical vacation style, we left the house around 5:15 and made the quick drive to the airport. When flying out of Philadelphia, we like to use Winner Airport Parking. They shuttle you to the airport in your own car and when you return, they come and get you in your own car. For an extra fee of $12.99, they will drop the car with you and you can leave straight from the airport. I chose to use this option when we get back into town on Tuesday night since out flight isn’t scheduled to land until 10:45 PM and we have about a two hour drive home after that. I will let you know how it works out. In the past, we have always gone back to the lot and left from there. We pulled into the Winner parking lot on Thursday morning, went in to register, and were on the way to the airport within five minutes. I had reserved the parking online with a discount and had parked with them before, so that sped up the process a little bit. Our shuttle driver was friendly and cheery, working the job part-time during his retirement. We were let out at the Southwest Terminal and said goodbye to our truck.
I had checked us in online for our flights as soon as I could on Wednesday morning, and we weren’t checking any bags, so we went straight to security. The line was one of the shortest I have seen in the Philadelphia Airport and we were through it quickly. I did have to go through the metal detector a second time since I forgot to take off my belt, but they didn’t not hand check any of our bags even though we had left our liquid toiletries in the bags instead of pulling them out to go through separately. It was nice that the kids did not have to take off their shoes. I can’t wait until they decide to let adults leave our shoes on again, but I am not holding my breath for that one.
After security, we went to find a spot by our gate. Again, the airport was not as busy as expected and we easily found seats together. Once we had our spot and had deposited our carry on bags, we started the rotations of taking the kids to the bathroom and finding some breakfast before the flight. Nothing like a good McDonalds Thanksgiving breakfast. Once we had secured breakfast, I went to get gate check tags for our two car booster seats. The woman working the counter told me I could gate check them in Philly and they would transfer them to my next plane and I could pick them up in San Diego. That sounded great, though I was a little skeptical that they would successfully transfer my gate checked items and thought there was a good chance I might never see my car seats again.
Boarding began about a half hour before the scheduled departure time. For those of you who are not familiar with the Southwest Airlines boarding procedures, it is far different from any other airline. When you check in for the flight, you are assigned a boarding group and number. Groups go from A-C and numbers from 1-60 for each group. This is the order you will board the plane in. The reason that this order is important is that Southwest does not assign seats. When you get on the plane, you can pick any open seat and sit down. If you are traveling with a group and want to sit together, you can see why it would be important to get on the plane early. The first people on the plane also get the first spots in the overhead bins. Southwest allows you to check in online 24 hours before a flight and that is why I was checking in at 7:30 AM on Wednesday. They also let you pay a premium to check in earlier, but I do not remember how much that costs because I refuse to pay extra just to check in for my flight. In addition, certain boarding numbers are reserved for passengers who purchased the Business Fares for the flight. Because of this, when I checked in online, I ended up with A60 for myself and B3, B4, and B6 for my family. The plan was for me to get on and get seats, but in reality, it didn’t matter because they were right behind me coming down the jetway. We easily found seats together and settled in for the flight.
Cole all strapped in and ready to fly.
Because of the cool temperatures and early morning flight, we had to be de-iced before takeoff. This added about 15 minutes on to the ground time, but was a pretty cool process for the kids and let’s be honest, myself, to see. I haven’t seen the big de-icing cranes that they currently use in Philadelphia before. Last time I was on a plane that was de-iced, they were still using trucks with lifts on them. It was a quick and impressive process and we were soon on our way. Take off was smooth, the flight was smooth, and landing at Houston Hobby was smooth after a bit of low altitude turbulence. Our flight crew was friendly and I was impressed that Southwest still gives you peanuts as a snack. They also have bags of cinnamon bun cookies and pretzels and were happy to give us all three. We were served a single drink, though the flight attendant apparently liked my older son. He was offered a second later in the flight and none of the rest of us were.
Once on the ground, we went in and found the gate for our next flight. Even though we had left Philadelphia 15 minutes late, we got in to Houston about 15 minutes early, so we had an hour and a half until our flight to San Diego. Once again, we found a good spot to wait and then headed out for bathrooms and food. Boarding time came quickly after we were done eating, and for this flight we were all in the A boarding group, so we lined up to get on the plane. We found seats together again with no problem and were soon on our way to San Diego.
Another smooth takeoff, smooth flight, similar snacks and drinks, and smooth landing in San Diego. Not too much excitement on either flight of the day, but I guess that is typically a good thing when traveling by air. It was neat to see the ocean and then the city so close as we came in on our approach to the San Diego Airport. I think I had my son convinced for a little bit that we were actually going to land in the ocean. When we landed, we deplaned and waited for our car seats. They did not come up with the other seats and strollers and I started to worry. Someone went down to check for us and came back empty handed. She suggested we go to baggage claim and see if they were taken there by mistake. I started to worry a bit more. I was also a little upset, because we had specifically packed for this trip so that we didn’t have to check bags and could save the time of going to baggage claim. We walked down to the baggage claim area and started watching the bags from our flight. My wife noticed an area marked Oversize Bags and she went over to check there. Two minutes later she returned with out booster seats. I was no longer worried.
Out we went, over the pedestrian bridge to the ground transportation area. I had reserved a car with National, so we were a bit sad to see their shuttle bus pull away as we approached, but less than five minutes later we were on the next one. Our shuttle driver was super friendly and helpful, welcoming us to the city and giving us maps and information about local events and attractions. We stopped at one more terminal and then went straight to the National lots. I am an Emerald Club member through my American Express Platinum Card, so we were dropped off at the Emerald Aisle. A greater met us at the bus and told us to pick any car and proceed to the checkout. All of the cars have the keys in them and trunks open. The selection was not the best, but the black Dodge Avenger we chose was clean and smelled nice. We drove to the exit, where I had to show my driver’s license and Platinum Card. Then we were off for our first day of adventure on the west coast.
We got out of the house and on the road about 15 minutes late on Wednesday. That’s pretty good for our family of four when heading out on vacation. Then, as we drove down towards Philadelphia, we just kept waiting to hit the traffic. Waiting and waiting and waiting, but the traffic never really came. Instead, the roads were pretty clear and it was the easiest drive and fastest we have ever made it to the city. We didn’t have any issue with traffic until we were in Center City and even that was only because they had shut down a couple of streets to set up for the Thanksgiving Day parade. Over all, we made it to our our friends’ house about an hour before we had anticipated. This worked out well, because by this time the kids were pretty much starving to death. (It had been almost two hours since we stopped at a drive-thru for some chicken nuggets.)
For my wife’s birthday dinner, she had decided to go to Continental Midtown. We have never had a bad meal at a Stephen Starr restaurant, and this is one we have not been to before. We hopped in a couple of cabs and headed over to the restaurant. It was not too far away, so it didn’t take long to get there and was less than $10. I used my Chase Sapphire card to pay, since taxi rides are considered travel and the Sapphire Preferred card pays double points for travel. Needless to say, I will be using that card quite a bit on this trip.
Continental Midtown Bar Lounge
As soon as we got to the Continental Midtown, we were impressed. It has a fun, trendy look and a variety of interesting lighting effects and different types of chairs. If you are a party of two, you can sit in hanging chairs for dinner, and in the lounge area by the bar, you can sit on some sort of squishy foam animal shaped chairs. Unfortunately, I did not have a camera with me and didn’t think to use my phone, so I can’t include any pictures of the restaurant, but if you go to their website at continentalmidtown.com, they have plenty.
The menu is done in a Tapas style and the waitress suggested we get 1-2 dishes each. They donbt have a childrenbs menu, but they will alter dishes on request if you have picky eaters. Our kids are some of the pickiest ever, so we ended up getting them each an open faced quesadilla with just cheese on it. It turned out to be pretty much a cheese pizza made with a thick tortilla. We also got a side of grilled shrimp for the 5 year old. Thatbs right, super picky eater, but he loves shrimp. Their food was delicious and made them happy. For the adults, we got a variety of dishes, including Lobster Mac and Cheese, the Continental Salad, Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps, French Onion Soup Dumplings, and Kofta. Without going into too much detail about the food, I will just say that everything was delicious and we were all quite full when finished. Of course, we didnbt let that stop us from ordering a few of the desserts. On the whole, the desserts were good but not great. The one exception being the Pretzels & Beer, which consisted of house-made salted pretzel bites, caramel sauce for dipping, and milk chocolate Guinness ice cream. All of us thought that was the best of the selections and I personally would highly recommend it.
After dinner, we went back to the house, watched a bit of television and turned in early, since we had to get up at 4:30 AM to head to the airport. More details on the rest of the trip will come in the posts that follow, but day one of the trip was a huge success.
Today, when my wife and son get home from school, we are going to get in the truck and head out on vacation on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Traffic will be terrible, the airports will be ridiculously crowded, planes will be full, and we canbt wait to go. Why arenbt we dreading the trip, you may ask? The answer is simple. Our family will be spending the next 6 days in sunny Southern California. As if getting out of the PA cold, rain, and snow isnbt good enough, San Diego is a place that none of us have ever been to. We have close friends who used to live there so we have heard plenty about how wonderful it is, but other than Chrissy having a quick layover at LAX on the way to China several years ago, California is new to us. If there is one thing our family loves most about travel, it is seeing new places and experiencing new things. We will get plenty of both on this trip.
This trip came about because of a credit card we both applied for back in January. The card was the Chase Southwest Airlines Visa. For those who really know their airline program change dates, you will realize that we got these cards right before the Rapid Rewards Program switched to Rapid Rewards 2.0. The bonus at the time was 2 round trip credits for anywhere Southwest flies. 2 cards x 2 round trips = our family of four taking yet another low cost vacation. We applied and were easily approved, since this was our first major app-o-rama and we didnbt already have too many Chase cards. We completed the required spend and the round trip credits were issued to our Rapid Rewards accounts. Around this time, Southwest switched over to Rapid Rewards 2.0 and I couldnbt watch a March Madness game with being told at least 50 times that Southwest no longer had any restrictions on their reward flights. I knew that our credits were only good for a year so I was excited that we could take b Any Flight, Any Timeb . Because my wife is a teacher and my son a student, we often need to travel at peak times so that they do not miss too many days of work/school. The new lack of restrictions would be very helpful.
We looked at our schedule for the year and decided that Thanksgiving was the time to take our free flights. Since they were good for anywhere Southwest Airlines flies, we naturally decided to go as far as we could from home. We decided on San Diego, California. I went online to see what we could find for award space and quickly found that as they switched to the new program, they had broken the search engine for rewards certificates. This was not a huge problem, so I called the Airline directly. This was when I found out that my certificates were part of Rapid Rewards 1.0 and all of the commercials about no restrictions applied to Rapid Rewards 2.0 only. My rewards were still governed by the old program and had VERY limited availability. Basically, I was being punished for getting the card too early. I wish someone had told me that earlier, but at this point there was not much I could do about it. After several calls and checking a ton of flight options, we managed to find 4 Reward Seats on flights we could take. They are not the most convenient flight times and both include a layover, but I have a hard time complaining when they are flying my family of 4 to California for a total out of pocket cost of $40.00.
This brings us to today, as I mentioned before, one of the busiest travel days of the year. We are driving down to Philadelphia this evening in the rain and rush hour traffic and having a late dinner at Stephen Starrbs Continental Midtown. Today is Chrissybs birthday, so rather than drive down in the morning, we decided to head down tonight for a nice birthday dinner and stay over with friends. We will get up at around 4:30 in the morning (remember what I said about not having the best flight times?) and head to the airport and into the madness.
I will be attempting to provide travel updates during the trip, but with a packed schedule and two young kids on the trip, I am not sure how much time I will have to type. In case I donbt get anything posted while on the road, you can expect full reports when we return home. Some highlights of the trip include Sea World, Legoland, the San Diego Zoo, and going on a cruise on a Pirate Ship. This should be an awesomely fun family vacation and hopefully it will inspire some of you to get out there and see the world whenever you can.
I am off to pack up the truck so herebs wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving and hoping that your time with family and friends is as wonderful as ours will be. I know that this year, in addition to my wonderful family and friends who will be far away, I am super thankful that I am able to take my family to see so many places and experience such wonderful new things as I take advantage of the community of miles and points experts who help make it all possible for people like me.
There has been a debate going on over the past few days between a couple of travel bloggers and several blog readers about how miles and points should be redeemed. Until now, I have been sitting on the sidelines reading these posts and comments, but it has come to the point that I can’t help but weigh in on the subject. Here is a brief outline of what the arguments are.
There seems to be one camp that believes miles should be used almost solely for First Class International travel. This is often where you will get the highest value per mile for your redemption and therefore is the best use of your miles. Business Class can be used for shorter flights or if First Class is not available. This group believes (sometimes quite strongly) that redeeming for a Domestic Economy flight is a huge waste of miles and should never be done. You should just purchase domestic tickets and save your miles for a higher value option. The argument is made that collecting miles and points is done so that you can travel in ways that you could not normally afford and you should be getting the highest possible quality of service when you redeem.
The opposing view seems to be that miles and points are collected so that you can take trips you could not normally afford and that it doesn’t matter what value you are redeeming for, as long as you don’t have to pay for the tickets. This group has no problem using miles to pay for Domestic Economy awards. Several of these people can not take the time to go on long international trips and when they can, they don’t see the need for the perks and luxury of First Class travel. They would rather save the miles and take several trips throughout the states.
There is, however, one option that I have not heard much about. No one seems to be mentioning redeeming miles for International Economy tickets. I am curious how these different sides would feel about the subject. On one hand, the value per mile can be quite high compared to Domestic tickets, but on the other hand, why would you travel Internationally with such reduced amenities and the value per mile could be even more?
Let me present you with an example using my upcoming travel plans. The following is one of two trips that I have planned for next year and an explanation of the added value my family got by redeeming for International Coach tickets.B This trip came as a result of the predicted changes that were going to be made with the British Airways Executive Club. Speculation in the blog world was that miles would be highly devalued and some of the best long distance awards would become much more expensive. In truth, these long distance award flights did become much more expensive (over 100% more in many cases). Short distance flights became less expensive, so there are still some great awards to be found, but my particular awards to South America would be more than twice as many miles under the new Avios program. I am quite grateful to those who warned me about this program change, because I was able to book before the rates went up.
My wife and I each had a little over 100,000 BA miles from the Chase credit card bonus earlier this summer. We decided that our best use of miles would be to go to South America next June, once she was done teaching for the year. One option that we could have taken would be to fly International Business class and have a great vacation for just the two of us. This would have cost 80,000 miles each round trip, easily doable with the stockpile we had. However, doing this would have meant that we would have to leave our two kids home with their grandparents for 12 days. Our boys will be 5 and 8 at the time of the trip and love experiencing new places and seeing new things. It just didn’t seem fair to travel to South America and leave our two nature and travel loving children behind, so we are doing what would be unthinkable to some or perhaps most people out there. We are flying International Economy Class from JFK to Santiago and Rio with our two children. Some of you are probably thinking we are nuts, and maybe we are. I will let you know in June, but for now, here is the miles part of the story. Business class was 80,000 miles each. Economy was 40,000 miles each. By downgrading our service, we were able to use the same number of miles and take twice as many people. I think it would be hard to argue the added value of that redemption. Our total miles used was 160,000 for the four of us. If we had bought the tickets, they would have cost $6536.40, certainly an amount that far exceeds our travel budget for a single trip. If you do the math, our value is 4.1 cents/mile, but when we see the faces of our kids as they experience a far away land, I know the value will be much higher to myself and my wife.
The second example trip we have planned is a little bit different in circumstances and results and I will provide the details for you in another post. For now, I would like to hear your views on the subject. Am I getting good value for my miles? Am I crazy for taking the kids and not just going with my wife and enjoying International Business Class? Would you ever use your miles for a trip like this? Let’s see how the miles and points community feels about International Coach redemption.
Well, I think that everything with the blog is set up now, so here we go. I’m sure that I will make lots of changes over the next few months and I must be forgetting quite a few things, but I guess I have to begin somewhere.
I’d like to start out by thanking all of the fantastic travel bloggers that I read posts from each day. You have inspired me to take this next step. I only hope that I can add something of value to the conversation. There is so much information out there. If I can help even one person to travel and see something new, I will consider this venture a success. The more I learn about the world of miles and points, the more I want my family and friends to join me in my travels.
My plan for this blog is to detail not only the trips I take, but the steps I took to make those trips feasible. I hope to share videos whenever possible and there will definitely be lots of pictures. I’m not sure how often I will post, so we’ll just have to wait a see.
In closing, I’d just like to take a moment to welcome you to my little corner of the world. Perhaps we can use it as a starting point for our quest to Indulge the Wanderlust.