Alas, I could leave you with just the title, and I’m sure many of you would still feel my pain. People have been canceling trips left and right lately, and with plenty of good reasons. I have plenty of miles saved up for a big trip, and we finally decided to pull the trigger on two weeks in the Pacific. That’s just about the maximum amount of time I can take off from my day job in one stretch, and I was really looking forward to it.
As of today, I’ve canceled my last reservation for the trip. Here’s what it looked like so far:
- Boston to Auckland via Fiji on Alaska Airways
- BOS-LAX-SFO on Alaska Airlines
- SFO-NAN on Fiji Airways
- Two nights at the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa
- Continuing on from Fiji to Auckland on the same Alaska ticket above (NAN-AKL on Fiji Airways)
- Staying with family in Auckland for a little over a week
- Auckland to Tahiti on Air New Zealand
- Three nights in Tahiti at the Hilton Moorea Lagoon Resort & Spa
- Tahiti back to Boston on Air Tahiti and American Airlines
- PPT-LAX on Air Tahiti
- LAX-BOS on American Airlines
All in, I spent over a million points on this trip!
120,000 Alaska miles got us all from Boston to Auckland on the way there. We took advantage of the recent Alaska-Fiji promotion to book these! Since Alaska’s reservation system seemed to only let us book two tickets at a time, and I needed three, we actually split up the reservation slightly. Two of us were flying the above-mentioned BOS-SFO-LAX-NAN-AKL, and the third would have stayed overnight in Portland OR. All of us were on the same flights trans-Pacific, it was only getting to LAX that was tricky.
I then booked the return trip from Tahiti to Boston using American AAdvantage miles, flying on American Airlines and Air Tahiti metal. Our flights would have had us in Air Tahiti’s new business class seats in their 787 Dreamliner all the way to Los Angeles. I was very excited for that seat, and will definitely miss the opportunity! These flights rang in at 240,000 AAdvantage for the three of us.
The final flight to book was a quick hop from Auckland to Tahiti, towards the last few days of our travel. As far as I know, only Air New Zealand and Air Tahiti Nui fly AKL-PPT. I always want to try new airlines whenever possible, so Air New Zealand it was! Air New Zealand is a member of Star Alliance, and I used Singapore Airlines Krisflyer miles to snag the quick flights. Only 37,500 Singapore miles for all of us, 12,500/person!
Since we were staying with family in Auckland, I booked hotels just for Fiji and Tahiti. We opted for the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa for two nights. I booked with 40,000 IHG points and a free Chase Anniversary night. It looks like a great property, and I hope to stay there sometime in the future. My son was much more excited for Tahiti, in an overwater bungalow! The overwater bungalow is absolutely a holy grail of award travel, something we were all excited for. At 975,000 Hilton points for three nights, it’s certainly no bargain, but waking up to fish under our feet would be worth it!
This was my biggest trip by far! Over a million points used to get us to the other side of the world:
- 120,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles
- 37,500 Singapore Krisflyer miles
- 240,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles
- 40,000 IHG Points
- 1 Chase IHG Anniversary Free Night
- 975,000 Hilton Honors Points
- Total: 1,412,500 miles/points, and 1 free night award
So, want to commiserate with me? What trips did you have to cancel? Dan had to cancel a bunch. I hate not having anything on the calendar!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I feel your pain one of my lingering bucket list trips has been Austrasia (NZ, AU, Fiji ).
8.30~10.5.2020
PDX-SEA-PVG-HKG-NAN-AKL-ZQN-CHC-SYD-MEB-YVR-PDX
I commiserate with you, cause it likely will be years before we can book a similar itinerary multi-country, lie flat seats on flights longer than 5 hours as well had 95% of the trip was covered by points/miles or certificates
for Hotels/Flights -including a pair of F seats on EK A380 for a quick shower Trantasmania leg).
DWs PTO any time off block longer than seven days also needs 6-9 months advanced notice.
Such is life.
On the bright side we did get to spend 11 days with our families and flew both of our elderly MILs to Orlando in Feburary .
As well we spent just under three weeks in South Africa in December and 18 days touring Israel in March.
We had tentatively planned on Asia for 2021 (RP, RoK and Japan 2021 before Olympics bumped).
Both of us can WFH so that does make for some interesting travel possibilities in the future – with remote work vacation/exploration – Would love to spend 2-3 months in Cape Town or Australia/NZ during our wintertime.
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What a trip! So sorry to hear you had to cancel that, hopefully we can all travel again sometime soon
Thanks for sharing … wonderful comment putting things in perspective; we are all incredibly fortunate that of the many hardships so many people are facing, one of our biggest disappointments is the loss of freedom to indulge our passion for travel (sigh …) here’s hoping we all get out of this fast with a minimum of suffering and loss. In the interim, we can borrow the legendary advice from Mr. Dobie Gray and just “get lsot in some rack and roll and drfit away …” Stay safe folks!
Man – that looks like an epic trip. Hopefully you can get it rescheduled when the world is back to normal in like 2027 or something 😉