Signing up new credit cards is the quickest way to rack up reward points and miles. Sign-up bonus contributed to over half of the 1.6 million points I earned in 2016. After a great 2016, I slowed down on new card applications in early 2017, only picked up both the personal and business version of Citi AAdvantage Platinum Card since the offers did not have the 24 month language. The two cards gave me 120,000 AA miles in total, and I was quite happy and decided to focus on earning points instead of signing up new cards. But the news about changes of Chase Hyatt card sign-up bonus convinced me to do a mid-year App-O-Rama. Oh boy did I have fun doing it!
Round 1: Chase Hyatt Visa
Last week, news came out that the sign-up bonus for Chase Hyatt card is going to change on Thursday June 29. The current two free night at any Hyatt hotels will be replaced with just 40,000 points. I never had this card before, so on Monday morning I applied for the card and as expected it went into pending, with the dreaded “30 day” language!
The card is not subject to Chase 5/24 rule, and from experience I decided not to call Chase Reconsideration but instead waiting it out. On Tuesday night, I noticed that the card popped up on my Chase online account, with a whopping $35,000 credit line! It was surprising considering I already have a good chunk of credit line with Chase!
Hyatt is running a promotion where cardholders will get rebate on Hyatt redemptions through summer 2017! But registration ends on June 30, 2017. I tried to register online but received an error message and asked me to call. I need to register as I do have a few award nights currently booked at my favorite Andaz Napa in the next two months.
Round 2: Alaska Airlines Visa Business Card
I love Alaska Airlines! Now that they merged with Virgin America and are constantly adding new routes to their network, I see myself booking more and more Alaska flights. They treat their elite members extremely well. As Alaska MVP Gold, I was upgraded to first class on my flights to and from Hawaii this month!
I have two personal Alaska Visa Cards that I actually pay annual fees for because I find great value in the annual companion certificate. Although I frequently received mailers about the Business Visa card, I tossed them out each time. But on Tuesday another mailer came, as if it knew I was thinking about it. I decided to go for it and see if Bank of America would approve me a business card even though I already have two personal cards.
Surprise surprise! Instant approval with 20,000 credit line! With this approval, I will most likely cancel one of the two personal cards when annual fee hits in September.
Round 3: The Blue Business℠ Plus Card
Just one month ago, Amex introduced a new business card and it got lots of attention immediately! Earning 2 points per dollar up to $50,000 purchases, the card is even better than the Amex EveryDay Preferred card which I love and use heavily! With major devaluation of the AT&T Access More card less than a month away, I need to find a card to switch my Plastiq mortgage payments and other purchases to, and the Blue Business Plus Card seems to be the best solution! Amex allows you to have a total of five credit cards, and I have only four active Amex credit cards at the moment!
[SEE ALSO: Is the (hot, new) Blue Business℠ Plus Credit Card from American Express worth it? ]
[SEE ALSO: 5 reasons why the Amex Everyday card is the best credit card for teenagers ]
There were words that the special welcome offer of 20,000 points would disappear on Thursday this week. With my confidence inching up after the instant approval of Alaska Airlines Business Visa card, I decided to give it a shot!
Whoa, another instant approval! Now I found myself singing the song by the Clash “should I stay or should I go”! Should I stay put or should I keep going?
Round 4: Barclay JetBlue Plus Card
JetBlue cards were never really on my radar. I flew JetBlue for the first time this year, to Anaheim for Disneyland in January and to New York in April for the Hamilton show. We used only 9,000 points per person for the one-way flight between SFO and JFK. For our Christmas trip to Florida this year, I booked the return flight for the whole family in JetBlue MINT class, which I am really looking forward to!
[SEE ALSO: Head to Head: comparing the JetBlue personal credit cards ]
[SEE ALSO: JetBlue adds more Mint flights, expanding service to 2 new routes ]
One nice thing about JetBlue points is that it never expires. Since it never hurts to diversify points, and JetBlue has a great network in the Caribbean which I would love to visit more, I decided to apply for the JetBlue Plus Card for 30,000 points.
Another instant approval! The card was added to my Barclay online profile immediately! Now I was really singing out loud in my heart “should I stay or should I go”!
ROUND 5: US Bank FlexPerks Gold American Express
My friend told me “one more for the giggles”. OK but I needed to pick a different bank. After looking around, I settled on the US Bank FlexPerks Gold Amex card. It will add 30,000 to the nice stash of FlexPerks points I got from the Olympics offers of FlexPerks cards in 2016. Unfortunately, I got the “pending review” this time. Not sure how this will pan out, as I have two cards issued by U.S. Bank and I haven’t put any charges on neither of them during the past year.
[UPDATE 7/3/17] Few days later I called the US Bank phone line to check on my application status. Much to my delight, I got the “Congratulations your card has been approved” massage! It concluded my mid-year App-O-Rama on high note! Hooray!
Conclusion of my mid-year App-O-Rama
So the song stopped, I decided to stay put. I didn’t map out this mid-year App-O-Rama ahead of time. One approval just let to another. I haven’t had that much fun applying for cards in a long time. It was definitely a great day!
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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 
Tell me what kind of credit score are you using to get these kind of credit lines and this number of credit cards? . Well above the normal 720 or 740 right comments? thanks.
My score has always been well into 800s.
FYI – check your credit lines with other cards – I had a 25 k line on the CSR and a week later got a notice that they had reduced another card by 10k.
Still a nice situation to have credit line to play with for future Chase applications.
None of my other cards have a $35K credit line, and none of their line got reduced. I guess Chase decided to give me a lot more credit line.
I applied US Bank FlexPerks Gold Amex for 20,000 flexpoints with no annual fee a week ago. It is a target offer, though.
I also got Blue Business℠ Plus, business Gold Delta, both personal & business Alaska, and BankAmericard Cash Rewards.