What are you doing with your 50,000 Southwest Miles?

[katie111]

I know a lot of people have taken advantage of this offer & just wondering where everyone is going with their miles. I have about 70,000 for 5 people and am traveling from the Boston area. I want to use them for my summer vacation but am trying to decide where to go. I think FL might be too hot for us in July or August and DH has no interest in doing Disney again.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

Do you yourself have 70,000 miles, or do you have a family of 5 with a total of 70,000 miles? This will make a big difference when deciding where to travel.

 

[auger]

We got our points posted to our accts back in August, but just scheduled our first trip with them.
We have flights to Mco in April for a WDW trip for the three of us. DD14 is planning to go to public school next year, so we are trying to take one last trip before that happens.

We also are considering using some points to get down to Florida in July. We
want to go on a church mission trip to the dominican republic, but the cost for all three of us to go is a lot!!! So we were thinking we could possibly cut the costs a little by using our points to get to fl, then only have to pay for the leg of the trip from fl to the dr. Each rd trip ticket is about $750, and we would cut that down to about $400 if we used our points.

If we don't use the points for the mission trip, we will probably use them to take our grandkids down to disney sometime next year.

 

[Dreamer2012]

I see a lot of talk about the airmiles....We seldomly fly since we are a family of 7 - so would getting one of the credit cards really be worth it for us? How does it work?

 

[Marionnette]

I see a lot of talk about the airmiles....We seldomly fly since we are a family of 7 - so would getting one of the credit cards really be worth it for us? How does it work?

There's a monster thread about it here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2830204

The short story is this:

• Apply for multiple SWA rewards cards. (they have annual fees)
• Get 50K (or only 25K, depending on the offer) Rapid Rewards points when you reach the spending threshold.
• Plan your trip.

 

[bjscheel]

Well, IF we do this, (just checked it out today), we will probably fly to San Diego, spend a couple days there, Amtrak to Anaheim, go to DL, and fly out of John Wayne to go home. Currently that will take about 76,000 points, so DH and I would both need to get a card.

 

[Our 2 Princesses]

We just used ours to fly to Houston for our 8 night Magic cruise.

 

[elaine amj]

Just keep checking all your options. We have about 80K miles (and need to cover 3 tickets)with SW and are planning to fly to California to go to Disneyland! From the average prices I researched last year, I had expected this to cover only 2 tix. But when I looked, I found an awesome price to fly into LAX (which I had thought would be more expensive) from DTW.

We planned a trip for the week of July 4th. I did structure it around what would give me the best bang for my miles. So we fly out Thursday night the week before and fly back Saturday afternoon (In cash it would only be about $320+!!). I would have preferred flying out Friday night and return Monday morning/afternoon - but it works out to about 20,000 miles cheaper to do it the other way.

I prefer one of the other smaller airports near Disneyland but for the savings in miles, it was well worth it to choose this route.

I definitely recommend checking your options. Through applying for the business card as well, we racked up 110K points last year, giving us a free Companion Pass. Last Thanksgiving, we decided we wanted to fly somewhere, anywhere warm that didn't cost too much in points. So I checked out the Getaway Finder and narrowed it down to Nashville, a beach in Florida, and Las Vegas. While Nashville was the cheapest in miles, we ultimately ended up in Vegas for a weekend getaway. It was awesome

 

[Gamegrl1]

I took advantage of this offer a couple years ago. I fly for work a half-dozen times a year so that adds points to (I'm allowed to keep 'em!). I pretty much ONLY use this credit card and charge everything...hardly ever carry cash...to maximize my points. I pay it off every month.

It's got that $69 yearly fee, which is the first card I've ever had with a fee so I didn't like that BUT...when you consider that last year I went roundtrip from CA to Washington D.C., roundtrip to Burbank and one-way to Orange County (Disneyland!) which would've been over $700 in airfare...I went for less than $100 total for all three trips (the $69 fee plus the few dollars in fees it costs per flight)...wow!

It'll take longer for a family to earn enough points to go on a trip but they also have partners you can earn with and promotions. I'd say it's worth it.