I love credit cards so much! v2.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[miztressuz]

We used that coming back to port on our RCCL cruise and it was super easy since GE doesn’t work at ports.

Last I looked into it Ft Lauderdale had started it. Heard that Miami was in talks to do it, I wonder if that ever happened? Rumors that Tampa somehow honors it sometimes, guess it doesn't hurt to ask, might get you to a shorter line at least maybe? Also heard about some kind of separate facial recognition program for ports instead that they may choose instead of entering into GE program, but don't know many details on that. Cruise ports are trying but it's kinda all over the place still I think.I thought even the mobile passport app was limited in Port acceptance.

 

[Lain]

After casually suggesting the Park Hyatt Kyoto that's set to open Autumn 2019 (likely December 1) to @ten6mom yesterday, I dug up an article published on OMAAT a few days ago: Park Hyatt Kyoto Now Accepting Reservations.

The Park Hyatt Kyoto is going to be a Cat 7, 30k/night hotel. However, I couldn't pull up award availability as of yesterday, but Lucky notes: "It looks like the hotel isn’t yet accepting points reservations, though that should change shortly. That’s probably because the hotel has just become bookable within the past few hours [on May 30]."

After searching about this property a little more, I found this in the press release:

Park Hyatt Kyoto will feature a low-rise building in consideration of the Ninen-zaka cityscape and the surrounding landscape. Ideally located, the hotel will be walking distance from the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, will be surrounded by UNESCO World Heritage sites, and will boast views of Kyoto City and the Yasaka Pagoda. There are also several historical buildings on site, the oldest of which is a teahouse dating back 360 years.

And this FT thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hyatt-world-hyatt/1801359-park-hyatt-kyoto-announced.html

It sounds like the Park Hyatt Kyoto is going to be pretty small, as hotels go, with only 70 guest rooms including 9 suites. And it looks like it's situated at the foot of the hills in the Higashiyama District of eastern Kyoto. We stayed at the Westin Miyako Kyoto a few years ago that looks to be on the other side of the hill from the new Park Hyatt Kyoto, and if memory serves this is an very walkable and deeply historic area of Kyoto with amazing views of the city and surrounding hills/mountains. I imagine it'll be beautiful in the spring and fall.

For 30k Hyatt points a night, this redemption is a tremendous value considering room rates are running ~$800-$900 (~3 cpp). I think the fear on FT is Hyatt will realize this and bump it up to Cat 8 eventually.

It's now on my bucket list (probably replacing the Bonvoyed Ritz-Carlton Kyoto)! I just need to find the time.

 

[Lain]

I was poking around on the Chase UR just to get an idea of "cost" of points for flights and I noticed that some of the options said "extra charge to choose your seat" or similar, but I didn't see where one could do that, or find out how much it would cost. Can anyone comment? The last time we went to Japan it was a group of 12 so we used a "group travel" person with JAL and had reserved seats.

Unfortunately, a lot of airlines have introduced "basic economy" fares that don't let you pick your seats or bring on carry-on luggage and other things you'd expect from already low expectations of flying in coach.

These basic economy fares are the cheapest fares offered, and the Chase UR/Expedia platform pulls up these basic economy fares and presents them to you as the lowest fare. This always happens when I book on United or Alaska through the Chase UR portal. If you select the fare, you'll get taken to the next page where you can select/"upgrade" to economy, economy plus, etc. We always upgrade. The Chase UR portal will tell you exactly how much the higher priced tickets will cost in points. With the Chase UR portal, you can pay with a mix of points and cash (say, if you don't have enough points, you can pay the balance in cash on your Chase credit card).

 

[ten6mom]

@Lain as always, thank you for the info on fare types (can you tell I rarely fly??). I am intrigued by @Haley R's mention of flying business class which I am guessing costs a LOT LOT more. I was looking at photos of business class seats though and I am not sure my husband I would like to be separated like that when we are awake!

 

[Haley R]

@Lain as always, thank you for the info on fare types (can you tell I rarely fly??). I am intrigued by @Haley R's mention of flying business class which I am guessing costs a LOT LOT more. I was looking at photos of business class seats though and I am not sure my husband I would like to be separated like that when we are awake!

It was only 180k points which is really easy to get with chase. I didn’t think I would like being apart from Dh like that but I really enjoyed having my own space. I turned around a lot to talk to him over my seat but really I was tired most of the time and watched movies.

 

[ten6mom]

It was only 180k points which is really easy to get with chase. I didn’t think I would like being apart from Dh like that but I really enjoyed having my own space. I turned around a lot to talk to him over my seat but really I was tired most of the time and watched movies.

Hmmm I will show him some photos and see what he thinks. The premium economy on JAL looks ok but he may really want the ability to lie down flat to sleep as he has a lot of trouble sleeping anywhere except in a bed. We shall see which one wins out!

 

[elgerber]

Way too busy day today (stupid work) but I did manage to call Amex about my pending Delta Gold Biz application. Transferred once to learn to my surprise (not) that the only problem with the application was that I already had the 5 credit cards. She said “pick one to cancel and you can be approved.” I picked the Bonvoy Biz. It is now showing as cancelled on app. It also shows “pending balance” for the $95 annual fee. Any insight over whether or not that will come off or if I will need to try to chat tomorrow?

They said they would expedite the new card. Fingers crossed they do. I guess I have trust issues!

Yes it should drop off in a day or two, mine always have.

There’s an app called mobile passport that essentially does the same thing coming back into the states. We don’t have GE so we are using that. I’ll let you know how it goes

Please let us know, I have wondered about that app also!

My opinion on Hamilton: the first act was good and almost worthy of the hype, but the second act was actually sheer perfection.

Agreed, I was hesitant going in, that it would be too much hype. The first act was good, but the 2nd act blew me away!

 

[Lain]

@Lain as always, thank you for the info on fare types (can you tell I rarely fly??). I am intrigued by @Haley R's mention of flying business class which I am guessing costs a LOT LOT more. I was looking at photos of business class seats though and I am not sure my husband I would like to be separated like that when we are awake!

As @Haley R just mentioned, her business class roundtrip flights on ANA from LAX to Tokyo totaled only 180k UR (90k UR per person). This is because she transferred her UR points to Virgin Atlantic ("VS") miles, and booked ANA partner award flights through VS, rather than using the Chase travel portal. Here's a recent article explaining how to do it: ANA First Class With Virgin Atlantic Miles: An Incredible Value.

The above article mentions Amex Membership Rewards as a starting point because MR points also transfer to VS, and Amex periodically runs a "transfer bonus" where every 1k MR you transfer to VS gets you 1k miles +30% bonus miles, which is arguably a better deal than transferring UR to VS 1:1. Chase is just starting to offer similar transfer bonuses to some of their partners, so we'll see if they'll do one for VS. And as I mentioned before, I don't want to recommend you getting into Amex MR cards right now because a lot of the big bonus cards have high spend and/or high AFs, the no fee cards don't have enough in SUBs to get you the points you need, Amex requires a lot of spend and commitment to using their cards even after meeting MSR if you want to keep getting bonuses on more cards, and getting all of Amex's cards will have you blowing your 5/24 status.

Like @Haley R said, it's really easy right now to get 180k+ UR from Chase, and you can just as easily transfer UR>VS>ANA, so we'll stick with that. Your CIP SUB will get you 80k UR. If you can convince your husband to be a passive P2 with you, support him to his own CIP, that's a 20k UR support bonus and another 80k UR SUB, and there's your 180k UR for business class seats.

Here's another helpful tip from @calypso726 about using VS to fly premium on ANA:

One way to get there is using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly ANA. Both UR and MR transfer to Virgin Atlantic. The only issue is that you can only book RT flights. So you either need to be flexible or be willing to pay the $50 change fee when your real return flight date shows up. I booked our real departure date and a return for the same day we arrived. I also needed to book a positioning flight to where ANA flies out of. Another option is AA miles to book JAL. You can't search for JAL availability on AA though. You need to search for it on BA. Again, I have had to book a positioning flight to do this. I have no issues with that. I am married to a Plane Princess, so it's lie flats seats or we aren't going. Not that I'm complaining

 

[Alexle2007]

Last I looked into it Ft Lauderdale had started it. Heard that Miami was in talks to do it, I wonder if that ever happened? Rumors that Tampa somehow honors it sometimes, guess it doesn't hurt to ask, might get you to a shorter line at least maybe? Also heard about some kind of separate facial recognition program for ports instead that they may choose instead of entering into GE program, but don't know many details on that. Cruise ports are trying but it's kinda all over the place still I think.I thought even the mobile passport app was limited in Port acceptance.

Ah, maybe that's it. We were coming into Ft. Lauderdale from the Allure of the Seas. I wonder if Port Canaveral takes it. That's where we will be cruising from next.

 

[havaneselover]

Okay SW experts, so my fares dropped about 5,000 points total since Thursday. Do I simply cancel and rebook?

Never mind. I called and got about 7,000 points back.

 

[cajunmommy]

Business cards require their own login, so you will have to create a new one for the CIP. If you don't want to keep separate logins, you can have your personal one merged with the business one and then just use that to login. ( Your separate personal login will still work but it will only show your personal cards there) You can call or try SM to do that but you may need to call in anyway to get the business one setup so you could have them merged at the same time, if that's what you want. Chase has been weird where they don't populate a phone or email address from the application so it has no way to send a verification code to complete the sign up process and you have to call to have one sent. If it's still happening then it's a normal "error" that's been going on for over a year now.

/QUOTE]

SOOOO glad you posted this. I thought there was a problem on our end!
CIP arrived & let's just say my P2 was a bit perturbed at having to complete the process. He had to keep asking his "CFO" for verification information.

 

[ten6mom]

Thanks again @Lain - definitely avoiding AMEX for now. I will be happy if I get to travel where I want with Chase!

I will look into the UR->VS->ANA thing instead of going directly through the UR portal. The differences between JAL and ANA seem minimal right now with the possible exception of the regular economy seats, where JAL seems to have the edge. We flew regular economy last fall and while it didn't kill us, I don't think I could even take a tiny step "down." Not on a flight of that length.

 

[Lain]

I will be happy if I get to travel where I want with Chase!

I will look into the UR->VS->ANA thing instead of going directly through the UR portal.

I don't know if you caught my last minute edit: Your CIP SUB will get you 80k UR. If you can convince your husband to be a passive P2 with you, support him to his own CIP, that's a 20k UR support bonus and another 80k UR SUB, and there's your 180k UR that you can transfer to VS>ANA for business class seats.

 

[ten6mom]

I don't know if you caught my last minute edit: Your CIP SUB will get you 80k UR. If you can convince your husband to be a passive P2 with you, support him to his own CIP, that's a 20k UR support bonus and another 80k UR SUB, and there's your 180k UR that you can transfer to VS>ANA for business class seats.

Yes, I saw that... now. The question is do I want to blow it ALL on the airline tickets????

 

[Lain]

Yes, I saw that... now. The question is do I want to blow it ALL on the airline tickets????

Hotels are what the next cards are for.

 

[elgerber]

Just activate dh Barclays Biz and my employee card. Paid a bill with his, and bought a Raise gift card for $10 with mine. Both seemed to go through ok.

 

[punkin]

I don't know if you caught my last minute edit: Your CIP SUB will get you 80k UR. If you can convince your husband to be a passive P2 with you, support him to his own CIP, that's a 20k UR support bonus and another 80k UR SUB, and there's your 180k UR that you can transfer to VS>ANA for business class seats.

Good transfer idea for Japan. Does anyone have similar transfer paths for Europe?

 

[Lain]

Yes, I saw that... now. The question is do I want to blow it ALL on the airline tickets????

Now, admittedly, I haven't checked what the cash prices for economy seats from the west coast US to Japan are running these days. Last time I checked, economy tickets during sakura season can run $2k+ one way, and even off season fares can run ~$600+ one way. ~180k UR is $1,800 cash, $2,250 towards travel booked using the CIP/CSP, and $2,700 towards travel booked using the CSR. If you're going to spend all/almost all of 180k UR redeeming for economy flights on the UR portal, you’ll probably find a better use by transferring your UR to a partner like ANA or United, and then you might as well go big for an ANA redemption.

I get that you don't need to fly premium, and you can just transfer UR>VS>ANA and fly economy roundtrip for less points (60k vs 90k). That's an option too.

 

[hsmamato2]

Divide the cost by how much your URs are worth. CSR 1.5cpp = .015
If you're transferring, make sure to subtract your cash deposit first.
$1000/0.015 = 66,667 URs

so..... which is the recommended method..... book a cruise thru say,costco,and then call in and transfer,paying the bulk using UR- or Just finding a cruise I like, and calling to use UR for the whole cruise?

 

[Alexle2007]

.