chooms
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- Aug 5, 2006
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I thought I would get in early with just under a couple of weeks to go until MrsChooms and I embark on what we have planned as our last indulgent trip lest little Miss/MasterChooms arrive in the next year or so.
This year, we have already been to Thailand and Singapore for our honeymoon (and I have done quite a bit of Asia), last year was West Coast USA (SFO, LA, Vegas, Grand Canyon) and both of us have been to Europe separately a number of times... however one location has not been ticked off the bucket list yet: New York… and a potential white Christmas.
Yeah, we could have done Africa or South America to go to another continent, but we both felt our Christmas break was not the right time to do it. New York was the pick.
Back in August, QF had a great deal to New York in J. After thinking for a week about whether we do it or not, we decided to let the sale lapse and would wait to see what work was like before deciding for certain in a month or so.
After discussing it further with MrsChooms in September, I was given the official approval to book a nice final (hopefully not) indulgent overseas holiday for Christmas.
When I went to look at the fares on the QF website I got quite the shock - return fares had skyrocketed. What to do?!
I had been given the all clear to book the trip by SWMBO, but given the new price for J (and W not that much cheaper), I considered doing the trip in Y with upgrade requests in to J. There was the risk of the upgrades not coming through and I had sold the trip to MrsChooms as another opportunity to do the QF A380 in F over the pacific again. We did it last year, why should we slum it in Y this time when we have had the taste of F before and swore off international travel in Y ever again (yes this website has turned me into a true FF).
I left the booking for a couple of days, thinking of potential other destinations when suddenly one night at about 11pm, I was flicking through the QF app on the phone and saw the return J sale fare BNE-SYD-LAX-JFK-LAX-BNE for the exact dates we needed.
I jumped out of bed, rang Qantas Premium line to book. I needed to ring up as I wanted the first flight out of BNE-SYD on the day so we could enjoy the Flounge for a couple of hours and the website wouldn't allow the selection of that flight. Phone booking fees were waived.
So, we had the QF flights booked and ready to go:
QF501 BNE-SYD (J)
QF11 SYD-LAX-JFK (J)
QF12 JFK-LAX (J)
QF16 LAX-BNE (J)
An upgrade request was made over the phone from J -> F for the SYD-LAX leg of QF11. Wasn't possible to do via website.
EF is currently showing (with 12 days to go):
I reckon the buy-J-get-F sale QF have been running for the past week hasn't help my cause... was still F9 A9 up until last Wednesday. Still, I think we have a good shot for snagging two F seats at this stage.
Now, we had just shy of three weeks to play with in the USA. Christmas and New Years Eve had to be in NYC. Do we stay in the North-East or head down to Florida/New Orleans to escape some of the cold? As someone who has worked a little in the political space, Washington DC was high on my list of places to visit. Given MrsChooms is getting her shopping quota in at NY, I thought I better get my political nerd quota in at DC. The fact the National Air and Space Museum is also in DC and on my bucket list has quelled my aviation nerd thirst too. NYC and DC were two definites.
Next, MrsChooms suggested we head to Boston to see an old friend who moved there some years ago. Why not… and let's make it even more of a nostalgia trip and go visit some exchange student friends of mine from many, many years ago in Toronto too. Done. Oh, Toronto is near Niagara Falls, lets get a car and head down to check it out... OK. Before we got too carried away, I said leave the planning to me for a day or so.
New York was always going to be expensive and we had to be there for both Christmas and New Years Eve. This didn’t ease the price pain, but it give us the anchor of certain dates. It had to be the end of the trip as we fly back to BNE on 1 Jan 2016.
MrsChooms wanted to ‘experience’ a bit of the Christmas spirit before the day itself, so we decided to arrive a couple of days earlier. In the end, we have ten days/nine nights in the Big Apple.
DC needed a bit of time to cover all the political/aviation nerd activities and after doing a bit of research, we figured six days/five nights should be enough.
We were flexible with the other places so all we needed to work out was routing and transport. Actually, transport was easy – we had to fly. As a now devoted AFF with WP status why would we go by train…? Weather is probably the best reason (we’ll see how that pans out).
So, on to AA to check out routing and prices. Playing around a little, I worked out we could do direct flights to each of those cities if we went JFK-BOS-DCA-YYZ-LGA. Direct flights was a no brainer as we had decided just to fly Y with AA given our previous experience in F (was not worth it).
That routing ended up costing ~AU$900pp with the right number of days in each city.
We would pick up a rental car at YYZ to drive to Niagara Falls and back.
Next challenge: accommodation. I am relatively fussy when it comes to accommodation. Yes, it is primarily for rest/luggage storage when we should be out exploring the city we are in… but I feel it does set the scene for the visit.
All my status with hotel chains had either dropped down several tiers or was now non-existent. The weekly BNE-SYD/CBR/MEL visits helped with the airline status, but they are almost always just day visits.
I lost my Accor and GHA WP status some years ago and both chains had some relatively decent prices for the trip (except for NY). We recently stayed at the Sheraton Waikiki in Hawaii and didn’t mind it, so let’s give SPG a look. Sure enough, hotels in each of the cities and I had a promo through Westpac Earth Black to grant me SPG SG status after one night stay in Asia-Pacific.
After seeing I could get price guarantee for each of the cities hotels – with some significant savings – I had made my mind up. Emails were sent to get the guarantee and the rates were locked in. To give you some idea of savings through the guarantee, our stay in New York with W delivered a total price of ~US$1,850 for nine nights, including NYE!
I booked a night for MrsChooms and I at the Four Points Sheraton here in Brisbane to get the SG status through Westpac (status upgraded within two days of the stay). But what about WP? Could I get it? Apparently through the WP challenge I could. I needed to stay 18 nights with SPG to get WP. Our trip is actually a total of 20 nights. Boom – registered for the challenge and with the bonus points, we will have a decent getaway to attend to next year up to Port Douglas.
Hotels sorted:
Boston: Sheraton Boston – 3 nights
Washington DC: Westin Washington DC – 5 nights
Niagara Falls: Sheraton on the Falls – 1 night
Toronto: Sheraton Centre Toronto – 2 nights
New York: W New York Downtown – 9 nights
I’ll leave some surprises for the TR, but to whet the appetite, we are booked in for tickets to NHL, NFL, NBA and have a visit to a house that is white, see two space shuttles and two Concordes.
I’ll try to keep the report updated as we go… getting excited now!
This year, we have already been to Thailand and Singapore for our honeymoon (and I have done quite a bit of Asia), last year was West Coast USA (SFO, LA, Vegas, Grand Canyon) and both of us have been to Europe separately a number of times... however one location has not been ticked off the bucket list yet: New York… and a potential white Christmas.
Yeah, we could have done Africa or South America to go to another continent, but we both felt our Christmas break was not the right time to do it. New York was the pick.
Back in August, QF had a great deal to New York in J. After thinking for a week about whether we do it or not, we decided to let the sale lapse and would wait to see what work was like before deciding for certain in a month or so.
After discussing it further with MrsChooms in September, I was given the official approval to book a nice final (hopefully not) indulgent overseas holiday for Christmas.
When I went to look at the fares on the QF website I got quite the shock - return fares had skyrocketed. What to do?!
I had been given the all clear to book the trip by SWMBO, but given the new price for J (and W not that much cheaper), I considered doing the trip in Y with upgrade requests in to J. There was the risk of the upgrades not coming through and I had sold the trip to MrsChooms as another opportunity to do the QF A380 in F over the pacific again. We did it last year, why should we slum it in Y this time when we have had the taste of F before and swore off international travel in Y ever again (yes this website has turned me into a true FF).
I left the booking for a couple of days, thinking of potential other destinations when suddenly one night at about 11pm, I was flicking through the QF app on the phone and saw the return J sale fare BNE-SYD-LAX-JFK-LAX-BNE for the exact dates we needed.
I jumped out of bed, rang Qantas Premium line to book. I needed to ring up as I wanted the first flight out of BNE-SYD on the day so we could enjoy the Flounge for a couple of hours and the website wouldn't allow the selection of that flight. Phone booking fees were waived.
So, we had the QF flights booked and ready to go:
QF501 BNE-SYD (J)
QF11 SYD-LAX-JFK (J)
QF12 JFK-LAX (J)
QF16 LAX-BNE (J)
An upgrade request was made over the phone from J -> F for the SYD-LAX leg of QF11. Wasn't possible to do via website.
EF is currently showing (with 12 days to go):
I reckon the buy-J-get-F sale QF have been running for the past week hasn't help my cause... was still F9 A9 up until last Wednesday. Still, I think we have a good shot for snagging two F seats at this stage.
Now, we had just shy of three weeks to play with in the USA. Christmas and New Years Eve had to be in NYC. Do we stay in the North-East or head down to Florida/New Orleans to escape some of the cold? As someone who has worked a little in the political space, Washington DC was high on my list of places to visit. Given MrsChooms is getting her shopping quota in at NY, I thought I better get my political nerd quota in at DC. The fact the National Air and Space Museum is also in DC and on my bucket list has quelled my aviation nerd thirst too. NYC and DC were two definites.
Next, MrsChooms suggested we head to Boston to see an old friend who moved there some years ago. Why not… and let's make it even more of a nostalgia trip and go visit some exchange student friends of mine from many, many years ago in Toronto too. Done. Oh, Toronto is near Niagara Falls, lets get a car and head down to check it out... OK. Before we got too carried away, I said leave the planning to me for a day or so.
New York was always going to be expensive and we had to be there for both Christmas and New Years Eve. This didn’t ease the price pain, but it give us the anchor of certain dates. It had to be the end of the trip as we fly back to BNE on 1 Jan 2016.
MrsChooms wanted to ‘experience’ a bit of the Christmas spirit before the day itself, so we decided to arrive a couple of days earlier. In the end, we have ten days/nine nights in the Big Apple.
DC needed a bit of time to cover all the political/aviation nerd activities and after doing a bit of research, we figured six days/five nights should be enough.
We were flexible with the other places so all we needed to work out was routing and transport. Actually, transport was easy – we had to fly. As a now devoted AFF with WP status why would we go by train…? Weather is probably the best reason (we’ll see how that pans out).
So, on to AA to check out routing and prices. Playing around a little, I worked out we could do direct flights to each of those cities if we went JFK-BOS-DCA-YYZ-LGA. Direct flights was a no brainer as we had decided just to fly Y with AA given our previous experience in F (was not worth it).
That routing ended up costing ~AU$900pp with the right number of days in each city.
We would pick up a rental car at YYZ to drive to Niagara Falls and back.
Next challenge: accommodation. I am relatively fussy when it comes to accommodation. Yes, it is primarily for rest/luggage storage when we should be out exploring the city we are in… but I feel it does set the scene for the visit.
All my status with hotel chains had either dropped down several tiers or was now non-existent. The weekly BNE-SYD/CBR/MEL visits helped with the airline status, but they are almost always just day visits.
I lost my Accor and GHA WP status some years ago and both chains had some relatively decent prices for the trip (except for NY). We recently stayed at the Sheraton Waikiki in Hawaii and didn’t mind it, so let’s give SPG a look. Sure enough, hotels in each of the cities and I had a promo through Westpac Earth Black to grant me SPG SG status after one night stay in Asia-Pacific.
After seeing I could get price guarantee for each of the cities hotels – with some significant savings – I had made my mind up. Emails were sent to get the guarantee and the rates were locked in. To give you some idea of savings through the guarantee, our stay in New York with W delivered a total price of ~US$1,850 for nine nights, including NYE!
I booked a night for MrsChooms and I at the Four Points Sheraton here in Brisbane to get the SG status through Westpac (status upgraded within two days of the stay). But what about WP? Could I get it? Apparently through the WP challenge I could. I needed to stay 18 nights with SPG to get WP. Our trip is actually a total of 20 nights. Boom – registered for the challenge and with the bonus points, we will have a decent getaway to attend to next year up to Port Douglas.
Hotels sorted:
Boston: Sheraton Boston – 3 nights
Washington DC: Westin Washington DC – 5 nights
Niagara Falls: Sheraton on the Falls – 1 night
Toronto: Sheraton Centre Toronto – 2 nights
New York: W New York Downtown – 9 nights
I’ll leave some surprises for the TR, but to whet the appetite, we are booked in for tickets to NHL, NFL, NBA and have a visit to a house that is white, see two space shuttles and two Concordes.
I’ll try to keep the report updated as we go… getting excited now!
