Travel Planning Archives - Page 2 of 10

Jan 06 2017

Housekeeping – making sure your miles and points are in order

I know there are a lot of hyper organized people who play this game. I happen to not be one of them, much to my wife’s chagrin. I am organized enough to have avoided major mistakes (that I know of lol) but I am not hyper vigilant.

What that means is every couple month I do a bit of housekeeping, which can take an hour or more but puts me at peace of mind that I haven’t made mistakes. I just recently did this, so I thought I’d share some of the housekeeping items I tend towards.

I’d also love to hear what kind of housekeeping you all engage in: always be improving! So hit me up in the comments. Also, if your response is “you should have done all this stuff in the first place”, take a place in line behind my wife.

Confirm all new credit cards are on autopay

I usually engage in housekeeping activities around a month after applying for a bunch of new credit cards. That’s because the very first thing I do when housekeeping is make sure all my new credit cards are on autopay. Since some banks make it easier than others to enroll in autopay (ahem, Bank of America link I can never find), I like to double check all my new accounts are on autopay.

Your miles and points balances need housekeeping from time to time. Here are 5 things you can do to make sure everything is in order! — Why can’t you make things easy like everyone else Bank of America?

After I’ve confirmed my accounts are on autopay, I update my credit card spreadsheet accordingly. I also make sure my spreadsheet is updated with accurate sign up dates, credit lines, and potential annual fees. While my spreadsheet is open…

Look for any upcoming annual fees

I’ve gotten better about setting calendar reminders for myself to cancel cards/call for retention bonuses. But some of my older cards or cards that I have received retention bonuses on still don’t have the calendar reminders so I like to double check my spreadsheet. If I have any calls I need to make coming up I’ll either set a calendar reminder for myself or highlight the line item in the spreadsheet.

This gets me mentally started on the process of prepping for my next retention calls. That also gets me thinking about my overall plan for my miles and points.

Update demand table

I started using Milenomics demand table last year and it’s really helped me plan out my travel. If you’re unfamiliar definitely read his posts on the topic. To summarize, it’s just a spreadsheet of potential trips and potential costs in miles and points.

I’m not good about updating my demand table in real time so I try to do it when I’m housekeeping. This gives me a good overview of where I’m going for the year and helps me think about the miles and points I need to earn to get there. This bit of housekeeping goes hand in hand with the next.

Take stock of current miles and points balances

People hate to admit it, but it’s really easy to lose track of what miles you are earning at any given time. So every few months I like to see where my balances are at to make sure that my mental picture of my balances matches up with the actual picture.

This helps me set my agenda for the next few months. What credit cards will I be considering? Where am I going to be focusing my bonus spend? What balances are too large and putting me at risk?

Personally, I find if I’m not doing this work I’m being very efficient, which is why I force myself to do so.

Get amped about upcoming trips

The last thing I tend to do while housekeeping? Get myself amped up for future trips! Oh, and double check those reservations to make sure they’re intact. I’ll also look at options to save money. For example, Jetblue extended my Mosaic status for a month so I can still change some flights/redeposit miles for free if I need to.

Hotels are another place to save money since the prices are always changing and dropping. So I like to garden my reservations and make sure everything is all set. This has the doubly beneficial effect of getting me excited for what’s coming.

Final Thoughts

Without housekeeping, I’d probably get myself into a lot of headaches while playing this game. Being mindful and logical about my decisions and taking stock of my situation really helps me to stay grounded and focused. It also helps me avoid huge mistakes.

What kind of housekeeping tasks do you like to do?

Jul 09 2016

Surveying Scotland: Preparing to travel with two children under four

As I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of decisions now revolve around my kids. I thought it might be useful for some young parents to see what other decisions the kids’ affected.

I’ve gotta say, preparing for travel with two children is pretty different than preparing for one. At least when they are this close in age (2.5 years). Here’s how we tackled each problem presented (note: this is being written three days into our trip so there is still plenty of time for things to go south). I’d love to hear feedback from other parents about how you handle these things.

And those of you who fall into this category:

Until you guys are playing zone defense instead of man-on-man, don't even speak to us. 😂😂😂
— Maulermark (@maulermark) July 4, 2016

I have no good comeback.

Transportation

I went through most of this in the introduction, but one or two more points here. One of the reasons I chose to mix it up so much is variety keeps my kids’ interested. I know most people in the UK would probably drive up to Scotland (10 hours). I considered it – it sounds like a beautiful drive.

travel with two children — Driving affords the ability to stop and take pictures

But with little knowledge about rest areas and the like, I didn’t want to risk driving that far. Plus, that gets boring. At the same time, the drive from Inverness to Edinburgh isn’t that far, but I thought my daughter might enjoy riding the train. And infants basically light up at every new experience so I know I’m covered there.

I also booked direct flights whenever possible: pretty much a no brainer at this point. Gone are the days I’ll take an extra leg to try a new business class product. Oh well.

Car seats

These freaking things. I realize this makes me weird, but nothing causes me more stress as a parent than deciding how to handle the car seat situation. Buy? Rent? Ship? AHHH! And we need two car seats to travel with two children!

Well, I’m exaggerating there because handling the car seat for H was a piece of cake. We brought his Chicco Keyfit 22 and caddy: car seat plus stroller, done. Those are both getting retired when we get home, but he can slum it for two more weeks.

M, on the other hand, needs her front facing car seat. Normally, we bring it in this huge bag and load it up with diapers (not a bad plan). However, with two kids, that’s less hands available, and we decided to leave the bag at home. Let’s ignore the fact that it’s been sewn back together three times, it just wasn’t going to be feasible.

So I decided to bite the bullet and rent the car seat for a week. Even typing this I am still annoyed: it costs more than buying a seat (about $80). I wanted to buy one and ship it, but that presented two problems.

1) The only place I could logistically ship it to before we need it was our hotel in London. That would necessitate us dragging it on our flight to Scotland with us.

2) H needs a front facing car seat, as alluded to above. Meaning I would want to keep the one we bought here. Meaning we’d have to get it home somehow. Forget it.

History has proven that, for my family, I made the right decision. We had some, um…developing situations at Paddington Station that an extra bag might have further complicated. So I spent a little extra for convenience. I am the one percent!

Of course, did I mention we used to stuff the car seat bag with diapers?

Suitcases

So we needed to find space for 75 diapers. Yes, yes, could have ordered them online and had them sent to various places we were staying, I know, I know. That is the smart thing to do (I am Amazon Prime UK for another 3 weeks), but I’m not a smart guy. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Instead, we loaded our diapers into this baby:

That’s right: a carry on sized rollerboard with a backpack ZIPPED ON. It’s made by Ful, which I pronounce “fool” because that’s how I look dragging that thing through the terminal. But who cares, it works. I have no shame.

In addition to that we brought a large suitcase. Scotland is cold and rainy so we just couldn’t get away with two carry on sized suitcases. I’d love to hear from parents who can take two week trips with 2+ young kids and carry on only: teach me! For us, it’s checked bags or bust now. At least they are free. 😛

Strollers

Jess and I love to walk, especially in Europe, and the reality is at 3.5 years old M can’t keep up. So we had to bring her a stroller – we brought our Uppa Baby G-lite which is D-liteful. The shoulder strap is super convenient and came in VERY handy in London.

As mentioned above, H can ride in his caddy/carseat combination, but he prefers not to. So the real decision was whether to bring a second umbrella stroller or not. Answer: enjoy being uncomfortable buddy! Maybe you can use the big stroller when M feels like walking!

Worst case scenario, I’ll buy one on Amazon UK and ditch it in Scotland.

Length of stays and location choices

In the past, Jess and I would be happy spending one night in a city if it seemed interesting enough. After we had M, we reduced the minimum length of stay to about two nights, now with two that is more like three nights (though it’s not a hard and fast rule).

We also look to travel a bit more off the beaten path, places like the Isle of Skye where the natural beauty is the attraction in and of itself. That prevents us from feeling pressure to go see everything: instead we can take things slow and enjoy one or two attractions a day.

Food

There is a famous story in my family that goes something like this: my negligent parents once took us on a day long drive through the Outer Banks during the offseason where every eating establishment was closed. We survived only on the strength of four Polly-o string cheeses.

While that story has grown in legend over the years, it approximates the truth. So my goal as a parent is to avoid those kinds of situations (we were close yesterday though).

Hence we packed a lot of cheap snacks that we could use at any time even though they took up a lot of space. Cheerios, puffs, and teething biscuits for the baby. Instant oatmeal, goldfish, kind bars, and trail mix for the preschooler (mixed results on the last two).

Final Thoughts

Planning for two kids is pretty different than planning for one. In some senses you have to be more prepared; in other senses you just care less. The nice thing with the second kid is you know what worked for the first so you have a baseline to start with, but it won’t necessarily work for the second. Would love to hear how people with young kids handle travel in the comments!

Jul 07 2016

Surveying Scotland: Introduction

Two kids creates more than twice the work. That holds true for regular life and travel. Nonetheless, we took it upon ourselves to travel to the United Kingdom to celebrate our son’s first birthday. Just kidding, it’s just when we were free.

As always, we paid for the majority of our flight with points. We even booked our first transatlantic flights in coach for the first time in five years. Slumming it! Just kidding, I’m just practicing what I’ve been preaching in my family travel hacking guide.

Read below for details of what we booked and the thought process behind it all.

Flights for Four

I wrote about booking our flights to the UK awhile back. Man, can’t believe I booked this trip back in August 2015. Either way, Delta availability still remains great. We elected to book in Delta One (aka business class) for the extra space. We figured since it was a redeye it’d be good for the kids to have “beds” overnight. I had to pay about $560 for the infant ticket: on international flights you pay 10% of the base fare even on award tickets. So overall call it 187.5K miles + $600 in taxes and fees for the four of us.

I'm convinced screen time is half the reason she flies — I’m convinced screen time is half the reason she flies

On the way back, the decision was between buying three business class tickets on United or four coach seats. Like I said, we haven’t flown coach across the Atlantic in years (though we did fly it to Aruba). That being said, we would fly our kids to California in coach and Europe only takes an hour longer.

Here’s how the pricing broke down:

Business Class (3 seats plus lap infant): 172.5K miles + $819 taxes and fees + ~600 for infant fare

Coach (4 seats): 120K miles + $384 taxes and fees

So basically, flying coach would save us 52.5K miles and a thousand dollars.

This ended up being a much easier decision than expected. You can do a lot of things with $1000… Plus 52.5K Ultimate Rewards points is like another $500. Anyway, we decided to fly in the back on the way home: it’s a day flight anyway. Gonna be interesting!

Not gonna lie: was pretty tired after this flight. We'll see how the return goes — Not gonna lie: was pretty tired after this flight. We’ll see how the return goes

We also used some Wells Fargo Go Far Rewards points to book a quick hop from London to Inverness, not much worth writing about there. Miss you Wells Fargo!

Lodging

While we use miles and points to save money, at this point we have committed to traveling to where we want to go – not necessarily where we can get everything for “free” (note: not free). Thus we decided on Scotland knowing full well that the Scottish Highlands are mostly devoid of chain hotels that we could use points redemptions on.

I’ve written about the importance of having a separate room, especially for my one year old. We can do without but then lose access to the bathroom. Only two of our stops have chains we can even redeem at: London and Edinburgh. I decided to book a room with a confirmed Diamond Suite Upgrade in London at the Hyatt Regency The Churchill. I figured we’d really need that second room to recover from jetlag.

Our first and last hotel room on this trip - not complaining — Our first and last hotel room on this trip – not complaining

We booked everything else through airbnb, Trip Advisor, or directly from websites. For the rest of our trip we will not be staying in chain hotels. Though in this case we’re only giving up staying at a Club Carlson or Hilton in Edinburgh – but I really wanted to avoid getting stuck with a small room. Maybe when H is older. If only this kid would sleep in bed with us!

Ground Transportation

Our one final cost was ground transportation. We bought round trip tickets on the Heathrow Express and then took a taxi to our hotel. We’re planning on doing the same in reverse but will eat the sunk cost and take a cab if we are running low on time for our departure (still recovering from jet lag).

We rented a car for a week in the Scottish Highlands. No tricks or gimmicks just looked for the cheapest price I could find and called it a day. Too much running in the background to worry further.

We’re planning on taking a train from Inverness to Edinburgh, though that is subject to change as well. Everything depends on the kids!

Final Thoughts

When we traveled with one kid, I’d say she only affected about 60-70% of our decision making. Maybe even less (40%?) once we had gotten used to traveling with her. With two under four, about 95% of our decision making has revolved around them. That’s just life for us now. So we’re flying coach, not worrying about saving every last penny, and thus far, having a great time. Will update with thoughts as we go along!

Apr 26 2016

Award Booking Tips overheard at FT4RL

So I made a rookie mistake presenting at FT4RL – too many slides! I had to rush through a few of my points on booking awards so I thought I’d share some of them here, along with a few other tips shared by the group. Nothing earth shattering here, but some good tips nonetheless.

There is coach award space to Europe still available this summer

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but as far as I could tell there is quite a bit of award space available to Europe this summer. I searched the three main legacy carriers for four people to/from various US cities to various European cities and there was quite a bit of coach availability.

My main point here is this: if you want to travel to Europe this summer with a family, coach is your best bet. People write about flying in the front cabin all the time (guilty) but if you want to travel coach can get you there just fine.

There is even some coach award space to Asia

I searched (again, not exhaustively) flights to Taipei and Hong Kong and I found assorted coach award space for four people at low level award prices. Cool.

Delta is still the best option if you want to fly business class

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseum. Nobody cares, that’s cool. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for a heck of a lot more people than care to admit it.

Got a stockpile of Membership Rewards? Believe me about the Delta space?

Then when you find it, transfer your miles over to Air France and book. I think it was Richard Kerr (@thepointsjock) who shared that AF will wait with you online while you transfer miles so you don’t need to worry about the award space from disappearing from under you (Delta will do that too and they eliminated their phone booking fees). Transfer to AF and avoid the pesky excise fee.

Alaska Airlines is good for more than just showers

If you are flying roundtrip, you can use Alaska miles to book that Delta award space. Or book American Airlines coach space. Or book award space on a host of carriers in coach (and sometimes even in business). You might have Alaska miles leftover if you were holding out for Emirates first – no problem! Now you can fly to visit your friends on the other side of the country instead. Or to Europe.

Korean Air is a great option to Asia

OK, so they are adding change and redeposit fees in August 2017. Boohoo. Korean Air has great award space to Asia and you don’t even have to fly in first class. They have coach and business class seats too if you’re short on miles! There are enough seats for your family and they are an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner and they got rid of most of their fees. You can even fly to Mongolia from Seoul to be like milestomemories!

Be creative – lots of award programs have cool little niches

The aforementioned Richard Kerr shared some cool stuff about booking with Etihad miles but I think he’s going to write about that so I’ll just say here that…there is some cool stuff you can do. But the bottom line is, play around with some award searches or read up on some programs and you can find some pretty neat things.

You can use cash to buy tickets

Seriously! And this isn’t an option for all families, but you could always book two award tickets and two tickets with cash. There have been a lot of good deals in coach for this summer, just follow any of the big fare deal sites (airfarewatchdog, The Flight Deal, etc.) and then see if they work for you. You can even offset the overall cost with award tickets if they match up to the same flights.

Hat tip to milenomics for this huge breaking news!

You can use cash to hire someone to do all this work for you

A lot of my talk was about finding balance in our lives as our families get bigger. If I want quality time with my family that means less time running out to various stores, less time blogging, and less time searching for award space (my favorite thing to do).

If you don’t have the time, there’s no shame in paying someone to do the work for you. Go spend an hour playing with your kids instead!

Final Thoughts

I think I will write an entire post on why FT4RL was so freaking fun. But these are just some random award booking tips from the conference. None are game changing, but they all served as nice reminders to me – especially the ones I thought of myself. Always good to go back to the basics…

P.S. – I apologize for all the exclamation marks I am still on a conference high. I will do better next time.

Mar 14 2016

Daring to Disney: Things I wished I knew before I went to Disney

For someone who hadn’t been to Disney in a long time, the trip seemed daunting. So much has changed since I was a kid and of course I wasn’t planning the trips then. People fill literal books with all the things there are to know about Disney. Over the course of our week in Disney, I picked up some things that I thought might have been useful to know or better understand before I went. What better way to end this mega trip report than to share what you need to know before visiting Disney World? This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s my list. I’d love to hear what others wished they had known before they went to Disney, so drop some tips in the comments if you have them!

1) If you’re not using magic bands, your ticket cards are linked to your name

When I received my ticket cards in the mail, they looked like this.

So you’ll understand that I thought any card could be used for any person in my party. You assign tickets to people on My Disney Experience, but since there was no clear indication on the letter whose card was whose, I figured as long as I sorted out who got the 7 day and 6 day passes it wouldn’t matter.

Turns out it does matter. We found out towards the end of our trip that I had been using my wife’s ticket and vice versa the whole week. This caused us some hassle that isn’t worth going into, but this is something I wish I had known beforehand. I couldn’t find anything online about how to find whose ticket is whose but I think you can call Disney and give them the card numbers and they can tell you. Obviously if you have magic bands this won’t be a problem. That leads me to the second thing I had no idea about before I got to Disney.

2) Your ticket is matched with your fingerprint at park entrances

I did quite a bit of research before we went, so I’d say this is the one and only obvious thing that really caught me by surprise. Tickets are matched to people’s fingerprints! When you enter, you tap your ticket or magic band against an RFID reader and then you put your index finger in a fingerprint reader. This is double checked every time you enter the park so you can’t borrow your mom’s ticket to park hop one day or anything like that (not that I tried :P).

Disney says they aren’t storing your fingerprint information, apparently they convert your fingerprint into a unique digital number that is linked to your ticket. Which…sure sounds like they are storing your fingerprint information, at least for the duration of your visit! (If they can convert from your print => number how hard can it be to go the opposite direction, even if they don’t have the tech for it yet they could probably work that up really quickly if they wanted to I’m guessing).

Also, if you have a “bad” fingerprint, like my wife, be prepared to have your ID checked from time to time. She was ultimately taught the tip to rub her fingerprint on her jeans before the check, which worked out most of the time.

3) You can upgrade your ticket as long as you have at least one day left on the ticket

This ID stuff really matters because you can upgrade your ticket at any time you’d like, applying the value of the old ticket to the cost of the new one. That means if you have a day left on a three day ticket you can upgrade that to a seven day ticket with park hopper or even an annual pass as long as you haven’t swiped in on your last day. This can be very useful when you come to big realizations such as “Hmm an annual pass is better value than my 7 day park hopper.“

Now I’m not sure how upgrading tickets will work if you bought a ticket under the old prices, but at the very least you can apply the cash value of your old ticket to any upgrades to new prices. Disney expert Haley said that traditionally Disney has honored old prices when upgrading old tickets but YMMV.

4) Baby Care Centers can be very useful

If you’re traveling with infants or toddlers, Disney’s dedicated Baby Care Centers can be a lifesaver. Whether you forgot supplies, need a place to change a diaper and nurse, or just need some peace and quiet, the Baby Care Centers are there for you. They are also conveniently located next to the First Aid Centers which I’ve also heard great things about. There is one Baby Care Center located in each park, so make sure you know where it is before you get there!

5) You can get a pin at Guest Relations for special occassions

If you’re celebrating anything: honeymoon, birthday, anniversary, first time visit, you name it, you can get a special pin at Guest Relations (the ticket booth). These pins cue cast members into the fact that you’re celebrating and they are generally nicer to you (and they’re already pretty nice). Plus, you get to take it home as a keepsake yada yada yada. Maybe not so special for a 30 year old, but you bet it’s something that a 3 year old would cherish.

6) If someone in your party has an annual pass you can skip the Memory Maker

I haven’t confirmed this, but I’m pretty sure this would work. If you have an annual pass you get free access to photopass photos linked to your account. The difference between that and Memory Maker (Disney’s ~$170 catch all photo service) is that Memory Maker allows you to add all your family and friends’ photos. As an aside, for a good debate on the merits of Memory Maker Leslie has a nice post.

Anyway, if someone in your party has an annual pass, just make sure you grab the Photopass tickets from each photographer you get tickets from. Then you can add those Photopass IDs to the annual passholder’s account and you should be able to download all those photos. I didn’t find anything against this in the terms and conditions or anywhere so it should work just fine.

7) Row #s in the parking lot are unique, regardless of lot name

This might only work for more number oriented people, but it saved me a ton of headaches once I figured it out. While each parking lot is divided up into sections (Scar, Hook, Aladdin, etc.), if you have trouble remembering the name of your section just remember the number of your row. All row numbers are unique and as long as you know that you can find your car.

This is probably one of those things that only applies to me, but once I figured that out I never had trouble figuring out my car. It also got Jess and I to stop arguing whether we were in Scar or Hook or wherever – the lot is so enormous I got easily confused. What can I say, I’m a simpleton. Regardless, Row # is all you need!

Bonus: Some rider switch tickets are good for longer than one day

If that’s the case (I didn’t get enough evidence but I feel like it is), you can store them up and have one magical day without your kids!

Final Thoughts

I learned a ton on the trip to Disney and had lots of fun. My daughter and I are ready to go back ASAP, just gotta wait for the right time to trick mom into going! 🙂 Hopefully this series is helpful for anyone trying to prep a trip. If not, I hope it at least made you want to go to WDW!

Other Posts in this Series

Flights, Hotel, and Car

Making Disney Dining Reservations

Saving Money on Disney Tickets

Using Touring Plans (the non-touring plan parts)

Optimizing a visit using Touring Plans’ touring plans

Saving money by staying off site

When a Disney annual pass makes sense

Touring Epcot attractions with a toddler

Touring Animal Kingdom with a toddler

One perfect day at the Magic Kingdom

Dining Reviews