infant travel Archives - Page 6 of 11

Oct 16 2015

Family Travel for My Real Life – Splitting the Team

I had originally planned to attend FT4RL3, but unfortunately I’m not going to make it due to real life circumstances. Instead, our family is going to embark on a new adventure – splitting the team. I thought I’d share some of my thought process and how this illustrates my evolving view of my points and miles.

Actually going to FT4RL3 was always a longshot – I bought the ticket before H was even born and once I found out I was going to Las Vegas sans wife and kids I knew another trip was probably not going to happen. Still, I had a cheap flight booked for 4500 Avios outbound and held onto it for awhile. But then about six weeks ago I decided I definitely wasn’t going to attend so I cancelled that flight. That was a mistake, which I’ll get into later.

In the meanwhile, Jess decided she wanted to go to Charlotte to visit her sister that same weekend (apparently she likes to go to Charlotte on weekends that coincide with FT4RLs). Since her and H are pretty much attached at the hip at the moment, that meant a weekend at home alone with M.

I bought Jess’ ticket using Citi Thank You points, so it only ended up costing around 12,000 points with the 1.6 cents per point you get for AA flights (Prestige cardholders). I have over 100K Thank You points that I never use – yet I still debated just paying in cash. But ultimately, I asked myself, what am I saving these points for? I have them for this exact reason to save money on travel – so I used the points instead of the cash.

Anyway, so M and I were stuck at home until I got to thinking – what if we took a trip somewhere? So I started looking into ticket prices for one stop destinations, though I was basically focused on D.C. I knew I wouldn’t make it to FT4RL especially as a solo parent, but there are some friends I’d love to see in D.C. and I love free museums.

Tickets were cost prohibitive for that weekend – I’m not sure what’s going on but the cheapest non-stops were pricing at like $200 and the cheapest non-stops that were practical for a toddler were more like $300.

Enter US Bank Flexperks. I’ve been earning about 20,000 points per month, or enough for an (up to) $400 ticket. So I had enough to buy tickets for both M and myself and not worry about the price. Again, I considered saving it for something else, but ultimately decided – what is the point? These points are to decrease travel costs and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

So next weekend we’re splitting the team. Both of us are taking our first solo flight with the kids and H is taking his first flight ever. Should be a ton of fun!

Oct 10 2015

Portland the Third: Fun Activities and Eats, Old and New

Eventide has some of the best oysters Maine has to offer

Part One

I’ve discussed kid friendly activities/eating in Portland, ME, before, so instead of rehashing I’ll just give a quick update on our experience this time. We also tried two new eating establishments, so I’ll talk a little more about those places.

Bottom line – Portland still rules.

Activities for Kids

Portland Children’s Museum and Theatre – Proof that “rope dropping” works everywhere. We got there right when the museum opened at 10 AM and pretty much had the place to ourselves for a good hour and a half. Still a lot of fun things to do, but I think this is the kind of place you want to go to with other families – lots of parallel/joint play opportunities!

It's basically impossible to get four people to look at once — It’s basically impossible to get four people to look at once

Maine Narrow Gauge – It’s still fun to ride trains, still fun to ring the bell on the engine, and still fun playing with model trains/run around old train cars in the museum itself. Think this will remain a hit until the kids hit double digits in years. Great for adults too due to the pleasant scenery.

Fort Williams Park – It was freezing and the wind was blowing like crazy so we kept H in the car. M still loved it, running around the trails, looking at the beautiful lighthouse, and…more running. The lobster roll truck didn’t hurt either (more below).

Revisited Eateries

I’ve written about all these places elsewhere.

Standard Baking Company – Still some of the best bread/baked goods I’ve had this side of the Atlantic. Must try.

Holy Donut – Potato donuts have a different consistency, but are still incredibly tasty. They open until they sell out.

Eventide Oyster Co. – Local Maine oysters simply taste better than what we can get in Boston, Island Creek excepted possibly but I’m not even sure about that. Maybe it’s just because they are tougher to get, who knows.

Mt. Desert Island – We had ice cream there twice in two nights. Think this place has surpassed Gelato Fiasco at this point.

Bite into Maine – Lobster rolls at Fort Williams Park, still super tasty (Jess even tried a Wasabi based one this time which was pretty exciting). Connecticut style is still the way to go (hot buttah!)

Slab

We were looking for a family friendly meal on our first night in town, so we settled on Slab, an establishment that advertises itself as Sicilian street food. The menu is pretty straight forward, 1 lb “slabs” of sicilian pies (just cheese and tomato sauce), or 1/2 lb slabs with toppings on them. Plus some salad-y stuff.

This place was great. The food was great, it was a nice open space so it’s good for kids (though a bit tough to maneuver a stroller), and there was a giant pizza oven for M to gawk at when she got bored. I seriously considered going back for another mega-slab. I generally don’t like Sicilian pizza but I enjoyed this one.

Piccolo

Jess and I got a night to ourselves so we decided to try out Piccolo. I really love this restaurant’s story – two Boulud disciples who had pretty successful careers in NYC moved up to Portland to start their own restaurant together because they fell in love with the town. We didn’t even realize it at the time, but the nice woman waiting on us and chatting with us about having kids and our families turned out to be Ilma Lopez the co-owner (what tipped us off was she prepared our dessert herself).

One of the nicest platings of fish I've seen — One of the nicest platings of fish I’ve seen

The restaurant is small and cozy, the service is great, and it’s just casual enough not to feel too stuffy. I had a cavatelli pasta with a lamb neck ragu while Jess had a beautifully plated sea bass. Combined with a cheese plate, some wine, and dessert – it was just a delightful meal. It reminded me of Trattoria Toscana here in Boston – an authentic feeling Italian meal served at an Italian pace. Definitely worth a try.

Final Thoughts

There’s always something new and fun to discover in Portland. But there are a lot of oldies but goodies as well. If you live in New England and haven’t been to Portland yet, why not? And if you don’t…it might be worth putting on your list!

Sep 17 2015

Portland the Third: Travel with Four

As I mentioned in my parking post (thanks for all the feedback calling me crazy after I said so myself, btw!), we were back in Portland, Maine, our favorite local vacation spot, to test out traveling with four. Things were definitely different with a 2.5 year and 2.5 month old, but the trip went well and we’re ready for more. Here are some things I observed about traveling with four.

Packing

All credit goes to my wife for this one. I’m just recently back at work so I literally gave her a pile of my clothes and she did everything else. With two kids, it’s double the diapers (potty training only half complete), wipes, eating stuff, clothes, baby carrier – all the stuff adds up.

Jess, being a miracle worker, ended up getting all of our stuff into two carry on size suitcases (one is like European carry on sized). All of our clothes fit in one, all the child related accessories fit in another. It helps a ton that we don’t really need to bring toys for M – she loves playing with all the junk in hotels (read: ice bucket) so we banked on that and were rewarded.

Including the backpack that was on my back when I took this, this is everything we brought to Portland

On top of the two suitcases, we brought my backpack, Jess’ purse, a plastic bag with our boppy in it, and a diaper bag. Plus two strollers (really need to invest in some sort of sit and stand situation). So, technically, we could have gotten onto an airplane without checking any bags. Hey, you can still kinda travel light with two kids under three!

Getting Around

I know I got a lot of flak for not valeting the car, but I ended up only having to move my car once (for the record, even though it worked out very well doesn’t mean I think I made the right decision, but what’s done is done). The reason for this was because two strollers makes a twenty minute walk a much more cumbersome undertaking than it used to be, especially when you factor in stopping to deal with a fussing infant or stopping because a ridiculous toddler insists on pushing her little brother’s stroller.

So we ended up driving to a lot of the things we had walked to in the past, so I was glad to have my car readily accessible. And even though we were there on the weekend I had no trouble finding parking whenever we got back downtown. The hidden cost of having two strollers is it makes everything feel more cramped when you get inside, nobody has any free hands, etc. – so it was often just easier to drive. It might be easier with a sit and stand but like I said that’s next on the research list.

Eating

I’ll have a more comprehensive look at our various eating and sightseeing activities later, but eating went pretty smoothly. We skipped Fore Street just because I didn’t want to queue and I didn’t have reservations, but we did make it to Eventide Oyster Co. with both kids. Google has a neat popular times graph that we used to determine when we went (330 PM on Friday), although the graph isn’t quantitative and it’s mostly common sense. Still, a nice feature.

Eventide was so empty it would have been fine although my parents met us there (they decided to come to Portland but stay elsewhere) so that further alleviated any pressure we were feeling. The stroller space situation did come into play though.

Having a 2.5 year old and a 2.5 month old in the same restaurant isn’t too bad – one parent eats and feeds M and then we switch. If M gets antsy whoever’s not eating goes for a walk in the end.

Getting to eat oysters was a real victory and made our vacation a success within the first hour

Once again, free hotel breakfast came in very handy. Although we hit our usual Portland breakfast haunts, it was great knowing we could get M food as soon as she was up to avoid hangry-ness. Jess says that might be the number one feature we look for in hotels going forward and I am inclined to lean that way as well.

Sleeping

We stayed once again at the Hyatt Place Old Port. Even though we didn’t get upgraded to a suite this time, the room was plenty big. At night we each slept with a kid in separate beds (rotating as necessary for feedings); we requested a pack and play but didn’t end up using it at night.

M did, however, insist on napping in the pack and play for some reason. I thought it was weird but she went to sleep and we got a good photo op so everybody won. Once again we avoided the tiny pool, but other than that the hotel and staff was awesome. I was at first hesitant to drop the 24K Ultimate Rewards needed for two nights but ultimately decided to just bite the bullet – what am I saving them for, really?

Final Thoughts

Overall, having a second kid on vacation didn’t create as many logistical problems as I had feared. I think when H becomes a toddler things might change, but for now (and for our upcoming trip to Disney in January), I think we’ll be okay. We’ll see what things are like when the kid starts walking though! More on how awesome Portland is (again) in a later post!

Jul 29 2015

Daring to Disney: Saving Money on Disney Tickets

This is my third installment of my Daring to Disney series, chronicling my planning of my first Disney trip as an adult. To see how I booked flights, car, hotel, and dining, click! In today’s post I’ll discuss saving money on Disney tickets.

After grabbing all my dining reservations at 180 days, the next step in my plan to conquer Disney was getting tickets. Now I don’t actually need to buy tickets 160 days before, but, you know, I’m crazy. Here’s how I ended up saving money on Disney tickets and why I didn’t think it was really worth it in the end.

Ticket Options: To Park Hopper or not to Park Hopper?

The first thing I needed to decide was what kind of tickets to buy. Basically, after you buy a four day ticket, each subsequent day on top of that is $10, so the number of days I was buying was pretty straightforward. I decided to buy two 7 day tickets for Jess and myself and two 6 day tickets for my parents. We’re planning a day at Sea World, but I figure the 7 day ticket for Jess and me might be able to get us a date night. A $20 risk I’m happy to make. I don’t need to buy tickets for my kids because M is turning three a few weeks after we go and H is tiny.

As I mentioned when talking about dining reservations, I was considering whether to get the park hopper option for our tickets. That would give us the flexibility to visit a second park in the afternoon post nap and/or go to Epcot for dinners. The park hopper option was about $64/ticket, around $10/day average. Ultimately I decided against getting the park hopper for now for two reasons. First, I’m realizing that I’m overestimating the stamina of a two year old – I’m basically projecting a 34 year olds’ stamina potential onto my daughter. Heck, I’m likely overestimating my stamina as well. Secondly, if I change my mind, I can always add the park hopper option on at a ticket kiosk once we’re there, so I have that insurance.

Apparently, according to the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2015 (which my mother in law graciously got for us from the library!), you can still pay for a “no expiration” option on your tickets if you buy them at the World. Though the guide itself is even unsure. Regardless, I decided it wasn’t worth it – I’d likely physically lose my tickets plus Disney has priced things so you’re only hedging against future price increases.

Looking for the Cheapest Price

Disney is a bit like Apple – you can get little to no discount off the sticker price most times (unless you are buying secondhand but I didn’t really want to deal with that). Still, I was looking to save whatever I could.

The very first thing I did, naturally, was plug in my preferences at the Walt Disney World website to see what showed up. Searching for the tickets I was looking for resulted in an overall price of $1405.82.

Next, I went to touringplans.com and used their handy ticket calculator. Think of it as the Kayak of Disney World tickets. There they list a few options and conveniently calculate how much you save off of the Disney price. The best rate I found was the Undercover Tourist rate coupled with signing up for the free Mousesavers newsletter (which I recommend anyway). This would have saved me about $50 off of the Disney price (total, not per person).

saving money on Disney tickets — The options from Touring Plans ticket calculator

A note on tickets sold by authorized dealers such as Undercover Tourist. You might be tempted to think they don’t convey the same benefits as tickets you get from Disney World, but that’s not the case. The only real difference as far as I can tell is that you need to link the tickets you buy from retailers to your account while tickets you buy from Disney are linked automatically.

The only thing you should be concerned about is if a retailer asks you specifically what dates you will be using the tickets for. If you buy from these kinds of places, make sure your dates are set in stone and you won’t deviate, otherwise you might find your tickets expire before you think they might (normal tickets expire 14 days from first use). You can read all about that in the Unofficial Guide if you’d like.

Ultimately, I decided not to buy from Undercover Tourist because I planned on…

Utilizing my 5% Target Redcard Discount

July was a good month for me. Stop and Shop was offering 2X gas points on Visa gift cards so I used that to save some money on gas and top off my Target Redcard. As you probably know, the Redcard offers 5% off of any Target purchases. This includes Disney gift cards! So I crunched the numbers – if I bought from Undercover Tourist, the cost of our tickets would be $1358. If I bought tickets from Disney proper using Disney gift cards purchased at Target with my Redcard the cost would be $1335.82, a savings of $22.18.

So I decided to buy 28 $50 Disney gift cards. 28! Of course, it’s not that simple. You can’t use more than two gift cards to buy Disney tickets online – which would seem to render 28 gift cards useless. You can use them to buy at the park but that’s a major pain.

There is a workaround. I signed up for a Disney Vacation account. These accounts are designed to help families save money for Disney – you can direct deposit to them, set up monthly payments, etc. You’re supposed to make a goal for yourself and theoretically when you hit that goal you can plan your trip. Everything is self directed so it’s not like you’re locked into anything.

The great thing is you can add Disney gift cards to your account. So I loaded all 28 cards into my account – $1400 total. You can then use your account number to pay for your park tickets. I used the $1400 plus an extra $5.82 that I put on my credit card. Money saved!

That last statement is a little bit tongue in cheek, in the end, I didn’t think it was worth stocking up on all those gift cards to save twenty bucks. Typing in all the gift card numbers was mind numbing – next time I’ll probably just go with Undercover Tourist. But if you want to make every dollar count, that’s how you can do it!

Final Thoughts

There aren’t a ton of ways to save money on Disney tickets, but you can shave off a few dollars here and there. Using my Target Redcard, Disney gift cards, and a Disney Vacation account, I managed to save some money. In the end, I probably would have done it differently. In terms of tickets, I think the most important thing is to decide what kind of tickets you want – that’s the most complicated part! But I think you can “add on” when you get to Disney if you like, so in my mind booking less is more, at least at the beginning.

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

Tips for parents of toddlers and infants

Things I wished I knew before I went to Disney

Jul 21 2015

On Children, Convenience, and Being Cheap

I’ve spent the last two podcasts talking about how I was going to write this post but it took this from Matt to finally kick my butt into serious gear.

Thanks to our latest major life change (family size increase of 33%), I’ve been thinking a lot about how to balance the following three things: children, convenience, and being cheap. I realize this is an oversimplification but that’s the way my brain best processes things. By being cheap I more mean “saving money” but saving money doesn’t start with the letter C, so…anyway.

Back when it was just the two of us, I was all about maximizing the travel experience. I was happy to take an extra connection if it meant another first class cabin or I’d book a longer layover if it meant a chance to try out a cabana. Ever since M was born, my mindset has slowly begin to change and with H in the mix now it’s just going to get more interesting.

M and her little brother - wait till they get on a plane together — M and her little brother – wait till they get on a plane together

Points with a Crew once wrote a post on the Traveler’s Triangle, positing that out of time, price, and location, for any given award ticket you usually can only maximize two of the three (to this day I still don’t get why that post didn’t gain more traction). At first, I thought children, convenience, and being cheap was like that – you can usually get two out of the three square. On further reflection, I actually don’t think these three things form a triangle – usually what’s best for your children is what’s most convenient and often that prevents you from getting things for cheap. It’s more like an acute angle…or something.

The bottom line is, kids, even the well behaved ones, are more or less completely unpredictable wildcards. That means when I am planning our family travel, I need to minimize all other possible wildcards that can be thrown into the equation. Every extra connection is a potential wildcard, every extra piece of luggage, flight times, or even gambling on grabbing an empty row. Obviously, travel disruptions are something you can’t account for, but you can minimize their potential hazard by doing things like scheduling a nonstop flight.

So I’ve started to come up with some general rules of thumb for myself until my kids are old enough to handle more. I of course reserve the right to break all of these rules to get into the Lufthansa First Class Terminal.

1) One layover maximum – stringing together two smooth flights with one child is pretty difficult. My guess is stringing together two smooth flights with two children is an even rarer occurrence (remember I’m dealing with an infant and a toddler). Three smooth flights with two children seems like a statistical impossibility. Luckily we can fly direct to both Europe and Asia now, which leads to my next rule.

2) No one night stays, unless being used to break up the journey – at this point, I think a one night stay is just crazy. By the time you finish loading everything into your hotel room (and we try to travel pretty light even post family expansion), it’s time to load it back again. I can see us doing this if we have to string two long flights together in a row, but if we’re already in our final country of destination, two nights per hotel minimum. Can’t mess around checking into the hotel across the street to accrue stays with toddlers in tow.

3) For now, traveling as a family, not the destination, is the priority – this is tough and I’ll probably get push back from my wife about this, rightfully so. Personally, I just want us to go somewhere, and I’d rather prioritize that (and, say, take a direct flight) than prioritize where we are going. My wife’s counterpoint likely will be that if it’s not a destination worth going to then what is the point of going through all the trouble in the first place? Which is a fair point – I’m not going to take my kids to the opera just to take them there (extreme example).

I bet M misses drinking in the First Class Terminal too — Preferably our one layover gets us into the FCT

4) Points “maximizing” will have to take a seat on the backburner for a little while – I’m no longer going to try to squeeze every cent of value out of my points. You have to understand, I kind of have a backwards philosophy when it comes to my points. Like, if I spend 62.5K to fly with a connection to Hungary I tell myself that’s more valuable than spending 62.5K to fly direct to London. Yes, that’s a stupid way to look at things, and I’ll need to stop doing that. It also means that if I can grab two saver seats and pay for one standard to keep the family together, I’ll do that (I fully believe in “splitting the team”, but that’s when the team is a bit older). It also means that I’ve been focusing more on cashback so we can buy coach flights to domestic destinations instead of focusing my game solely on premium international redemptions.

5) If I have to pay a change fee to make things work better for us, I’ll do it – this is kind of a weird one. But the question is, is it worth a couple hundred of dollars to have a less stressful flight? Three years ago I’d have said no way – now? I think it can definitely be worth it. A lot of times, a flight can set the tone for your entire trip, a rough outbound journey can set you back mentally on your vacation for days. With two kids, nobody can take a break since it’s almost always 1v1. So if at any point I think the itinerary we’ve strung together is too stressful, and paying a little bit of money can offset that, then that’s probably what I’m going to do.

Final Thoughts

As always, I recognize that we are blessed with two solid paying jobs and the ability to take these luxuries. Ultimately, what I’m saying is this. For our family, if we want to prioritize traveling with our children, we’re going to also have to prioritize convenience for the time being. That might mean not being able to emphasize being cheap for awhile. In the end, that’s something I’m happy to live with if it means I get the chance to broaden my kids’ horizons.

I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts about how they balance cheapness and convenience once they have children in the mix. And of course, the biggest problem a lot of people might have with all of this is – why bother dragging your kids around the world in the first place? But more on that later.

This is crazy enough. Might as well make our travel more convenient

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