A cold christmas was requested.....

[kermatu]

Great pics and enjoyable TR. Thanks for posting.

 

[mmchow]

The photos were amazing (especially the northern light). The frozen river was pretty impressive too. Now I've seen two Northern Europe trip report in the last 2 months, 2019 destination has been decided.

 

[ellen10]

Thanks for sharing your trip report. And also your J experiences, you certainly sampled many different products.
Loved the photos. A winter Christmas is on my list. The Northern lights photos were amazing, so lucky.
Was it hard to get your flight bookings? Do you have status with Qantas?

 

[cxthomps]

Was it hard to get your flight bookings? Do you have status with Qantas?

The flights from Sydney to London and London to Canada were fairly ok, I checked out how many days each airline releases seats and made sure to check on the day. I had real problems from Canada to Tokyo (lack of choice), at one point I think my son and I were on British Airways through London, the long way to Tokyo. It wasn't until AA and ANA became available that I started looking at the US hubs for options. We almost flew through LAX at one point. Tokyo to Sydney was a problem on OneWorld, I was originally booked via Perth until JAL announced a new service to Melbourne (or added another, cannot remember now), I jumped straight onto that.

I am a Qantas nobody so asking the call center to do anything (status) special was out of the question. As I was booking flights as they became available it wasn't until I had flights back to Aus that it counted as a RTW and the points sorted themselves out. I think I paid the change fees 4 times in total to achieve this.

 

[ellen10]

I am a Qantas nobody so asking the call center to do anything (status) special was out of the question. As I was booking flights as they became available it wasn't until I had flights back to Aus that it counted as a RTW and the points sorted themselves out. I think I paid the change fees 4 times in total to achieve this.

Thanks for the info. Well done with your bookings. I am QF silver but I don't think that amounts to much. I will be trying to do a booking later in the year for next year. Fingers crossed.

 

[craven morehead]

Jumping on board now !!

 

[craven morehead]

Absolutely fantastic TR & photos many thanks !

 

[Kefci2000]

Thanks for sharing, great TR and photos, especially the Northern lights (it is on the bucket list).

We just returned from a similar trip (Jan 1 to Jan 28) and the only snow we saw was on the ground in MUN as a transfer.

I guess we "lucked" it with the weather as it only rained once and the coldest weather was 2c and we had many a 10c blue sky days (even in NY).

For comparison, our trip was all in Y and was a wierd point to point RTW with LH, but also had CX and QF on the itinerary. We added AA and EZ seperately. All cash

Lucky I am QF WP and got a UA *G status match so we had some lounge access, and fast track at LHR and APEC for HKG and JFK

For the record:
MEL-HKG CX Y
HKG-xFRA-LHR LH Y
LGW-AMS EZ Y
AMS-PARIS train
CDG-VCE EZ Y
VCE-ROMA train
FCO-xMUN-JFK LH Y
JFK-LAX AA Y
LAX-MEL QF Y

We used a combo of points and paid Hilton and Airbnb.

 

[Irishbazz]

Great trip report and well done with the logistics of getting the family RTW!

 

[Straubs]

Am very late to this one but am really thankful you shared this ... what a wonderful experience for you and the kids!