Just a quick note to let everyone know that I will be live-blogging the Family Travel for Real Life (#FT4RL) conference, starting tomorrow. It’s kind of hard to imagine since it’s less than 24 hours to go and I am still half the country away! 😛 It’s all part of #10statesinaweek, which hopefully you’ve been following my adventures along on Instagram and Twitter!
The first session ends at about 10:40 a.m. EDT, so depending on how fast I can type, I’d imagine you can check back here at pointswithacrew.com about 11 to see.
I had a lot of fun when I went last year (see the live-blog from last year with the links in the box below), and I am looking forward to meeting some old friends, new faces, and learning a lot about how we travel here in the real world!
- What is #FT4RL?
- How to book an award flight from Cincinnati to Washington DC
- Transfering Chase Ultimate Rewards to get a free flight on British Airways
- Getting a US Airways confirmation number!
- Avis changes my price when adding my wizard number
- I stop Avis's dirty tricks!
- Trip report
- 1st speaker - Miles to Memories
- 2nd speaker - Jason Steele from The Points Guy
- 3rd speaker - Phil from Miles Abound
- 4th speaker - Susan from Carolina Travel Girl
- 5th speaker - Debra from Traveling Well for Less
Here’s the full speaker list.
- 9:45-10:40: Bonnie The Frugal Travel Lawyer on the New Frontier (Airlines): Southwest, Jetblue, and the rest of the game changers
- 10:45-11:40 Leslie from Trips with Tykes on Disney: Mastering the International Houses of Mickey
- 12:40-1:30: Jason Steele, frequent contributor to The Points Guy and many other publications, on Current Events and Sweet Spots in Miles and Points
- 1:35-2:20: Kenny from Miles4More on National Parks and Destination Ideas Off the Beaten Path for Families (and how to get to them with awards)
- 2:15-3:30: Shawn from Miles to Memories on Immersive travel: family adventures, educational experiences, and ways to give back
Again, I’m a pretty fast typer, so I’d imagine that posts will be up within 30 minutes or so after the conclusion of the talk, hotel wi-fi depending. On a related note, the wi-fi at the hotel / conference center of the OTHER conference that I’m attending this week, totally sucks. Some fellow conference-goers and I have decided that slow wi-fi is #literallytheworstthingever (even worse than NO wi-fi, because it keeps teasing you….) 😀
Several of these speakers were at last year’s event, so I know they’ll do a great job.
How to follow along
The best way to follow along would be to follow me on Facebook or Twitter as well as follow the Twitter hashtag #ft4rl. Signing up for my daily email newsletter is also a good thing, but it only goes out once a day, so you won’t catch the blogs in real-time, if that’s your thing.
Hope to see you there!
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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 
Thank you for live-blogging this event for us! Next week my daughter is leaving the country for 18 months, and she is speaking in church on Sunday, so I just can’t justify leaving. 🙂 But I would sure love to attend this conference another time! When/where will the next one be? I’ve planned several trips for my family of seven, but every time I start a new trip I realize I have so much more to learn. In the last year we visited Peru, Bolivia, China, Australia, and Hawaii. Finding award space is always a challenge for a family of seven. We’ve traveled on different planes and in different cabins to get where we need to go, and I usually make our travel plans 11 months in advance to find seats. I would love to learn from others who have found solutions for the same challenges!
How exciting – where is your daughter going? One thought I have had was that using miles and points would be a great way to tour my kids missions when they’re done. Jason Steele gave his talk last time on how to get multiple award tickets for his family, but that was for “only” 4 people :-). Flying on Southwest or other revenue-based award systems is one way that we’ve done it.
She is going to Chile! She is very excited, because she loved Peru and Bolivia. And she is not one bit worried about navigating the airport connections between here and Santiago (a few of the people flying with her have never been on a plane, so they’re terrified about finding their way). I just wish I had enough lounge passes for her and her traveling companions!