I love credit cards so much!

[GlamMistress]

where are u with 5/24? Any more chase cards u want?
if the answer is no, always go with cards with MSR.

just my 2 cents.

No, I'll never be below 5/24. That's why I'm leaning toward Hilton. The cheap in me leans toward the free Plat tho, lol.

 

[miztressuz]

Mini Trip Recap, details plus photos: (I will be back to update this and will let you guys know in case you're interested)

Mini Trip Recap, points version:

Current MSRs are Hilton Biz ($3k) and SPG Lux ($5k)

• Flight on SW with CP Fri - 10651 RRs
• Flight home on Frontier - $100 through Frontier for both people including the seat selection fees ($12 each)
  • I ended up adding a carry-on for $40 - but less than SW RRs and better timing
  • Paid OOP, Frontier had a sale only on their site for half off tickets so I did that instead of URs
  • No issues with flight!
• Hotels:
  • All Star Movies Fri night - $137.11/9,141 URs
  • Pop Sat-Tues nights - $494.10/32,940 URs (had a $1.91 credit on the room after switching to this)
• Transportation:
  • Spent about $100 with Lyft with my Freedom, mainly to and from VB and to some resorts for dining instead of transferring via buses
  • Used DME for the first time since Jan 2017

• Tickets:

• MNSSHP - $159.76 - Used GC stash
• 7 day PHs from Chase Travel with points - $521.85 each so 69,850 URs total
  • Upgrade to Plat Plus APs at waterpark gate - additional $977.68
  • Bought $500 Disney GC at grocery store for fuel points (worth ~$55) and paid remaining with SPG Lux
  • Know how Disney ticket prices online are $20 cheaper than at the gate? When we did this the cast member adjusted our tickets up $20 in value to account for this, so this was $40 + tax less than I anticipated
• Volcano Bay - bought 5 day 3 park tickets from UCT with SPG Lux for $371.50 each, value $415.34
  • Upgraded to Seasonal 3 Park APs after entering VB - got $6.39 refunded on each ticket
  • We were going to spend about $461 each on 1 day VB tickets, tickets for next weekend, and HHN tickets; Now we can get discounted HHN tickets, so our OOP doing this was $462 and then we got $6.40 back
  • We don't actually have plans to go back right now, but I would have been really mad at myself if I'd skipped this opportunity and then we did end up back there in the next 12 months.

I had just enough in my gift card stash for my estimated food budget for this trip and the one next week, but next week will mostly be at the Dolphin with no room charging. So we used GCs for the table service meals but charged everything else to the room to my CSR. I want to have some GCs for souvenir shopping next trip. This is the first time we really used magic bands for charging and it's kind of addictive - I haven't added up the damage yet. We also used mobile ordering which was so nice, I just wish they took gift cards through there.

With random charges like lockers plus VB food, and buying a TIW card, we put another $200 towards Hilton Biz (~$500 to go) and $1700 towards SPG Lux, mostly from tickets. Tonight we'll finish Universal tickets which will be another ~$400 towards SPG Lux.

We had a great time except that I broke DH! Oops. Basically, he has high arches and can't go barefoot around a water park all day anymore, so the first day killed him and we used a lot of ice from the ice machines for his feet. They are doing much better today. This caused us to go a bit slower than we normally would at the Halloween party and such. I'll write a little more when I do a post with photos, but we loved MNSSHP!



This is some Universal/UCT upgrade math I did to see what the best scenario was for us, after some research. I learned that the tickets like the Buy 3 get 2 days free promos that Universal also sells on their site, are valued at the 3 day cost. But ones like the Buy 2 get 1 day free ticket UCT is selling, should be valued like a 3 day ticket once you have used it to enter the parks.

This sounds pretty awesome (well aside from breaking DH. don't feel too bad, I did it a few times myself until I learned the limits. they bounce back and will still blindly follow your planning, for the most part, just so they don't have to do it themselves)

Did not know you could get a refund from an upgrade, you just earned yourself a bookmark

 

[amalone1013]

This sounds pretty awesome (well aside from breaking DH. don't feel too bad, I did it a few times myself until I learned the limits. they bounce back and will still blindly follow your planning, for the most part, just so they don't have to do it themselves)

Did not know you could get a refund from an upgrade, you just earned yourself a bookmark

So true. He's just looking at in soles right now

I learned all about ticket upgrades on the Universal boards. Thought that was pretty interesting!

And I can't believe I left out our PP lounge experience! I went back and added it. I'm also remembering I forgot to tell you guys about the person throwing up...

 

[LynnTH]

I got my AAdvantage Business Card today. Any way to merge it with my Barclay Arrival + card?

Also, I was under the impression that if I did not have an AA account that they would assign me one when getting the card. I did not receive anything on this. Do I need to create an AA Account or should they have an account # for me?

 

[calypso726]

OMG! OMG! OMG!

We got it! Y’all are my lucky charm today. While I was posting about the useless $495 AF card and trying to catch up on the thread I was also on the phone. I tried a new tactic to see about getting the Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa in Dubai for the dates I wanted. We had a stay booked for April but those dates wouldn’t work so I cancelled it and what I needed was in March. I’ve been calling everyday with no success. Then I recalled when I initially made the April reservation I had called the Marriott Platinum line (800-399-4229) which is what we should be until December but it is wrong in the system. Anyhow, when I called Marriott they could not book it since it isn’t loaded in their system and they transferred me to someone at Starwood that could. I wondered if the problem wasn’t so much availability but the agents on the line I was calling not knowing how or not able to book the reservation. So I repeated that process and called the Marriott Plat line, got transferred to someone at Starwood and lo and behold, we have reservations for our dates, 4 nights at the Al Maha in their Bedouin King suite for 60k points per night! SQUEEEEE!

I’ve never put something like this together on such short notice. I am still stunned it all came together. So, we are flying Emirates in first over there and business on the way back. I will share airplane shower pictures. They will be DISfriendly, no cheese on my pizza shots. We have 4 nights at the Al Maha an all inclusive, all suite resort in Dubai, followed by 4 nights at the Conrad Maldives in over water bungalows.

Our flights in real money would be $21,000 per person.
We are using 460K AS miles and paid about $170
The Al Maha is $1333 per night so our 4 nights would be over $5,300
We are using 240k Starriott points
The Conrad Maldives is $1250 per night so that’s $5,000
We are using 285k Hilton points and one free night certificate


I am sharing the step by step process of what worked for me just now to book the Al Maha in case someone else is trying to secure an all suite or future cat 8 property that was SPG at 60k/night before December. Call the Marriott Plat line, try to book from there and let them transfer you to the right person. I don’t know if that will work, but it worked for me.

 

[amalone1013]

I am 10 pages away from being caught up, and now have to re-read about my shunning for not using a referral link (because I did catch those yesterday)

 

[DisneyMandC]

OMG! OMG! OMG!

We got it! Y’all are my lucky charm today. While I was posting about the useless $495 AF card and trying to catch up on the thread I was also on the phone. I tried a new tactic to see about getting the Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa in Dubai for the dates I wanted. We had a stay booked for April but those dates wouldn’t work so I cancelled it out and what I needed was in March. I’ve had been calling everyday with no success. Then I recalled when I initially made the April reservation I had called the Marriott Platinum line (800-399-4229) which is what we should be until December but it is wrong in the system. Anyhow, when I called Marriott they could not book it since it isn’t loaded in their system and they transferred me to someone at Starwood that could. I wondered if the problem wasn’t so much availability but the agents on the line I was calling not knowing how or not able to book the reservation. So I repeated that process and called the Marriott Plat line, got transferred to someone at Starwood and lo and behold, we have reservations for our dates, 4 nights at the Al Maha in their Bedouin King suite for 60k points per night! SQUEEEEE!

I’ve never put something like this together on such short notice. I am still stunned it all came together. So, we are flying Emirates in first over there and business on the way back. I will share airplane shower pictures. They will be DISfriendly, no cheese on my pizza shots. We have 4 nights at the Al Maha an all inclusive, all suite resort in Dubai, followed by 4 nights at the Conrad Maldives in over water bungalows.

Our flights in real money would be $21,000 per person.
We are using 460K AS miles and paid about $170
The Al Maha is $1333 per night so our 4 nights would be over $5,300
We are using 240k Starriott points
The Conrad Maldives is $1250 per night so that’s $5,000
We are using 285k Hilton points and one free night certificate


I am sharing the step by step process of what worked for me just now to book the Al Maha in case someone else is trying to secure an all suite or future cat 8 property that was SPG at 60k/night before December. Call the Marriott Plat line, try to book from there and let them transfer you to the right person. I don’t know if that will work, but it worked for me.

Yessss! I can't wait to hear this review!

 

[calypso726]

I have been 30-40 pages behind since vacation in July but I am jumping ahead to ask for advice on booking AA award flights. My window has just opened for our flight out but I still have a few days before I can book our flight home. It will be myself and 2 boys flying from PHL to MHH for a scout trip. Should I book 2 one way trips or wait for the round trip to open? The troop will be getting trip insurance as it is hurricane season, any advice for insuring a trip booked on points? Anything else I need to know? I have cancelled and rebooked SW flights several times, but this is more intimidating.
TIA

Still catching up and don’t know if this has been answered yet. Book the one ways. If it is an award booking that allows one ways, AA does then book them while availability is there. I never wait for the return as the departure may disappear while waiting.

 

[jhoannam]

Help me talk through this: Planning to spend $1,110 through Chase UR. We only have CSP/CIP. Should we upgrade our CSP to the CSR?
CSP: 85K UR
CSR: 71K UR or 51K if you use $300 travel credit.
We don't eat out much so I'm not sure what other value we would get out of the CSR.

 

[happ]

i went to get this yesterday but the staples i drove 40 minutes to get to had none.

That stinks. Sorry you drove all that way for nothing.

 

[mmmears]

The public application links available on Chase.com now say:

50,000 Bonus Points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
The product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card who received a new cardmember bonus within the last 48 months.​

The referral links still contain the 24 month language. Our assumption is that at some point the referral links will probably change to the 48 month language.

Were you thinking of getting a CSR or CSP or double dip for you or a Player 2 soon??

Definitely thinking about about, but I still need to figure out some long term goals and come up with a long term / looking at the larger picture plan going forward. Thanks for the explanation. I'm still scattered from our trip and being sick and DH and I haven't been able to sit down and think this stuff through. But I guess it's good to know he can't sign back up for these cards in 2 years now.

Still catching up and don’t know if this has been answered yet. Book the one ways. If it is an award booking that allows one ways, AA does then book them while availability is there. I never wait for th3 return as the departure may disappear while waiting.

Totally agree. This last trip was booked around 11 mos in advance and we seriously struggled to find good flights for our outbound trip since the windows had already opened (even though they were probably only open for a few days). Return flights were no problem at all since we were grabbing those farther in advance. Even a few weeks makes a difference, so I would book one way whenever possible. Oh, and CONGRATULATIONS @calypso726 - I love it when a trip finally falls into place! Can't wait to hear all about it. Overwater bungalows...

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Can DAH tickets be purchased via Chase Tour/Cruise department? I'm thinking about going Dec 10.

WHHHAAATTTT!?!? They extended. OMGosh! Off to check dates!!!

 

[Haley R]

WHHHAAATTTT!?!? They extended. OMGosh! Off to check dates!!!

Yep they added December-March dates! I told Dh and his initial response was "no we are already going to wdw 3 times this year". Then after about 5 minutes he said, "It makes you happy and I'm a sucker for that." What a sweetie lol

 

[jhoannam]

WHHHAAATTTT!?!? They extended. OMGosh! Off to check dates!!!

I worked it all out, changed the date to 12/3 ... I just need to go home and call the chase tour line.
One night at MCO, 4 DAH tickets, 1 night at Contemporary for 90K UR
or
One night at MCO, 4 DAH tickets, 1 night at CBR for 70K UR

I'll talk it over with DH this evening.

 

[jhoannam]

Yep they added December-March dates! I told Dh and his initial response was "no we are already going to wdw 3 times this year". Then after about 5 minutes he said, "It makes you happy and I'm a sucker for that." What a sweetie lol

when are you all thinking about going?

 

[1st*toright]

WHHHAAATTTT!?!? They extended. OMGosh! Off to check dates!!!

Yep they added December-March dates! I told Dh and his initial response was "no we are already going to wdw 3 times this year". Then after about 5 minutes he said, "It makes you happy and I'm a sucker for that." What a sweetie lol

Just checked the dates - they are doing it one of the nights I'm in town for a conference! Last year my DD flew down and joined me and we had so much fun at DAH. I've been toying with the idea of flying DH and the LO down during the same conference (the teen could hang in the hotel room and do homework while I was in conference sessions, the LO, not so much, so her dad would have to come too). Mostly just so we could do DAH... although, I'm not sure my little one would last until 11pm.

Hmmmm.... we get a good rate on the rooms at the Grand Floridian, and we probably have enough SW points to cover the flights (DH could change his SW "companion" from me to her...) I probably can't use URs for a conference rate, I'm guessing, since it is done under a room block by the conference sponsor (so I get the good rate for the extra night or 2 we stay). But I could probably get park tickets for URs...

Y'all are such a bunch of enablers...

 

[disneymagicgirl]

So what's the opinion of the hive mind on this one?

Upgrade Freedom to CSR ($450 AF) vs new application for Hilton Aspire (with next week bigger bonus of course) ($450 AF)

This would be for DH. We need lounge access again. But I could use more Hilton points for Spain next August... I think I'm leaning toward Hilton because I've always felt this was a keeper card and we could get a lot from it. The other option is to apply for the AmeriPrise Amex Plat with the no fee first year and just use it for the lounge and air credits.

Opinions?

CSR is such a great card, but the hilton diamond status gets you breakfast, which will save you alot of money. Tough decision. I'd probably do both and space them out if I were you.

 

[Haley R]

when are you all thinking about going?

We are pretty much free to go to any of them. We usually wait until Frontier offers their cheap deals. We've flown with them for as little as $20 one way. Even though their customer service is atrocious, they are the only airline near us that flies nonstop to MCO. Do you know when you are going to go?

 

[Haley R]

Just checked the dates - they are doing it one of the nights I'm in town for a conference! Last year my DD flew down and joined me and we had so much fun at DAH. I've been toying with the idea of flying DH and the LO down during the same conference (the teen could hang in the hotel room and do homework while I was in conference sessions, the LO, not so much, so her dad would have to come too). Mostly just so we could do DAH... although, I'm not sure my little one would last until 11pm.

Hmmmm.... we get a good rate on the rooms at the Grand Floridian, and we probably have enough SW points to cover the flights (DH could change his SW "companion" from me to her...) I probably can't use URs for a conference rate, I'm guessing, since it is done under a room block by the conference sponsor (so I get the good rate for the extra night or 2 we stay). But I could probably get park tickets for URs...

Y'all are such a bunch of enablers...

LOL but DAH is worth every penny IMO.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I love my Discover checking. You can get that 1% buying MOs and it will be good practice before you start really MSing. Lol

Thank you!!

Yep they added December-March dates! I told Dh and his initial response was "no we are already going to wdw 3 times this year". Then after about 5 minutes he said, "It makes you happy and I'm a sucker for that." What a sweetie lol

I worked it all out, changed the date to 12/3 ... I just need to go home and call the chase tour line.
One night at MCO, 4 DAH tickets, 1 night at Contemporary for 90K UR
or
One night at MCO, 4 DAH tickets, 1 night at CBR for 70K UR

I'll talk it over with DH this evening.

I'm jealous. Checked and only the 2 dates in dec. Our cruise leaves 12/15 and I can't pull the kids out for that whole week prior to it on top of the cruise week, just to make it to the 12/10 DAH. Why so few offered?
Oh well, I am just going to go pout now.