I love credit cards so much!

[3 DD love princesses]

Poly studios have two bathsrioms? I thought they had a split bathroom? That’s would be awesome!

Like someone said it’s not 2 full bathrooms. I was thinking more in terms of getting ready it’s nice having Two showers so you can get out quicker.

 

[DisneyMandC]

I've gone back and forth a million and one times on whether I should try to get this Universal hotel deal on Daily Getaways this afternoon. I think I've decided not to do it... for now. I could pay $325 for two nights plus another $48 in parking to stay at Universal, or stay at the nearby Marriott for about $300 for three nights with the member rate. While the express passes that come with the Universal hotel are tempting, I was just looking around online and didn't realize Universal had so many single rider lines that we could use. Am I missing anything here?

My other idea is to change our one night at Beach Club to two nights at a moderate and then do two nights at the Marriott near Universal, which would actually work out even cheaper for us. Decisions....

i think i have the travel curse. Ive been hoarding points for a solid 2.5 years, trying to find things to blow it on... last year, was suppose to use some points to go to Japan. Family passed away so trip got cancelled. Winter break time, i found Hyatt @ Lake Tahoe a nice redemption. cancelled again due to other member cancellation. Tried the same attempted again for spring break to Lake Tahoe. 8 of the 10 days were either 90% snow or rain. Next thought was, hey parents in Asia, i can go visit family and be with parents... well they are going finals week and returning that sunday when finals are over... Next... Now i got my Hawaii Trip coming with my parents since it was their friend that let us use their timeshare, turns out, there is a cruise they been wanting to go and it just so happens to overlap the hawaii time share time. So hey, they told me to go the cruise with them. i said yes, well it turns out the 3 ppl rooms were all sold out... either pay $6000+ more or get a 2nd room for +$3000 more... so now no cruise trip for me...
now what...
end rant. thanks for listening...

Sorry about your bad luck, Albort

 

[1st*toright]

I'm also interested to see how the free night thing works out- we already have one free Marriott night (cat 1-5) and will get an SPG free night next year (up to 35k points) when our card cycles. I just cancelled my Marriott card (before program changes were announced) because the Cat 1-5 thing didn't get me much in the places I visit, but if you can now find a hotel in Manhattan that would be eligible- that makes things much more interesting, and might make the annual fee more appealing. I think I got my first bonus on that card sometime in 2016, so I might actually become a real churner and get the card again... although, I'm still not entirely sure it is worth a chase slot. Hmmm...

 

[DisneyMandC]

Well I just checked my Marriott account and saw that I was given 20,000 points by the hotel I stayed at last weekend where I didn't get a room until 10:30 pm. They said they were going to give me 5,000. Given that it's an even 20,000, it looks like it's just courtesy points and not points based on my stay or any promotion or anything like that. I also received 6,000 points directly from Marriott when I called to complain that night. So I'll go ahead and consider that pretty fair recompense!

Alarmingly though, I still have NEVER received a response from Marriott on Twitter after being instructed to DM them... so that's some quality customer service right there.

 

[speedyfishy]

i think i have the travel curse. Ive been hoarding points for a solid 2.5 years, trying to find things to blow it on... last year, was suppose to use some points to go to Japan. Family passed away so trip got cancelled. Winter break time, i found Hyatt @ Lake Tahoe a nice redemption. cancelled again due to other member cancellation. Tried the same attempted again for spring break to Lake Tahoe. 8 of the 10 days were either 90% snow or rain. Next thought was, hey parents in Asia, i can go visit family and be with parents... well they are going finals week and returning that sunday when finals are over... Next... Now i got my Hawaii Trip coming with my parents since it was their friend that let us use their timeshare, turns out, there is a cruise they been wanting to go and it just so happens to overlap the hawaii time share time. So hey, they told me to go the cruise with them. i said yes, well it turns out the 3 ppl rooms were all sold out... either pay $6000+ more or get a 2nd room for +$3000 more... so now no cruise trip for me...
now what...
end rant. thanks for listening...

I’m sorry for you loss. I hope you have better travel luck in the near future.

 

[1st*toright]

Like someone said it’s not 2 full bathrooms. I was thinking more in terms of getting ready it’s nice having Two showers so you can get out quicker.

Two full baths would definitely have been even better, but the 2 showers in the Poly Studio really are nice - we'd come back super tired (and sweaty) and everyone wanted a shower before bed!

 

[1st*toright]

i think i have the travel curse.

I'm so sorry - that is super disappointing! Here's hoping some new great trip option shows up!

Well I just checked my Marriott account and saw that I was given 20,000 points by the hotel I stayed at last weekend where I didn't get a room until 10:30 pm. They said they were going to give me 5,000. Given that it's an even 20,000, it looks like it's just courtesy points and not points based on my stay or any promotion or anything like that. I also received 6,000 points directly from Marriott when I called to complain that night. So I'll go ahead and consider that pretty fair recompense!

Alarmingly though, I still have NEVER received a response from Marriott on Twitter after being instructed to DM them... so that's some quality customer service right there.

Sounds like a crazy situation - wonder what happened a the hotel that day to put them so behind. Clearly a mess, and not well handled by the front lines. Glad there was some kind of recovery for you!

 

[speedyfishy]

I have an addiction and a problem. I booked a free dining package at pop for a week in December. I’ll maybe transfer the reservation over and use URs. The only problem is SO. SO gets five weeks vacation but he wants to only use three weeks this year and roll over the rest. But really isn’t one week vacation rolling over plenty of buffer? Time to start convincing him....

Also, a huge thank you to everyone here. I have been so spoiled. This would not even be a possibility without everyone here.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

i think i have the travel curse. Ive been hoarding points for a solid 2.5 years, trying to find things to blow it on... last year, was suppose to use some points to go to Japan. Family passed away so trip got cancelled. Winter break time, i found Hyatt @ Lake Tahoe a nice redemption. cancelled again due to other member cancellation. Tried the same attempted again for spring break to Lake Tahoe. 8 of the 10 days were either 90% snow or rain. Next thought was, hey parents in Asia, i can go visit family and be with parents... well they are going finals week and returning that sunday when finals are over... Next... Now i got my Hawaii Trip coming with my parents since it was their friend that let us use their timeshare, turns out, there is a cruise they been wanting to go and it just so happens to overlap the hawaii time share time. So hey, they told me to go the cruise with them. i said yes, well it turns out the 3 ppl rooms were all sold out... either pay $6000+ more or get a 2nd room for +$3000 more... so now no cruise trip for me...
now what...
end rant. thanks for listening...

So did you go to the Tahoe Hyatt or cancel because you saw the weather? I am looking at that one too...maybe for summer, maybe for a ski trip. Leaning summer and doing a ski trip at a ski-in/out place.
Sorry things haven't gone as planned. It can only improve, right?

 

[kayteekt]

Haven't been hanging around here too much, busy time as we're preparing for a Disney trip {first one hotel paid with cc points!}. I've been skimming when I can and reading articles on the SPG changes.
So...my personal SPG just had the AF applied on this most recent stmt. I've had the card for exactly 2 years, was planning to cancel since now I have the biz and DH has both personal and biz.

Well I called in to cancel this morning and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse! $500 spend in 30 days for 7,000 Starpoints. Not sure if that's been reported here, so that may be old news. But I felt like that was pretty generous, so I snatched it up and that will give me time to see if the free ann. night will be worth it. I do think this has been said, but the rep did confirm that the free anniversary night would take effect your next anniversary after Aug. 1...so in my case, my ann night won't come up until March 2019.

So...my good fortune continued! Logged into my spg acct and there was on offer for spending $75 at a Home Improvement Retails and get $10 back {hello more Disney GCs}! So that was the icing on the cake! That and they had an Olive Garden offer last week I think it was, so that will be put to good use. I would love to see a trend of better Amex offers...seems like they were pretty good my first year I had the card, then it went downhill.

Has anyone else seen that offer on the Home Imp. Retails?? I couldn't get it to pull up on any of our other cards (3 other SPG) and DH has 2 Amex Lowe's cards. Nothing on any others.

 

[mom2elal]

i think i have the travel curse. Ive been hoarding points for a solid 2.5 years, trying to find things to blow it on... last year, was suppose to use some points to go to Japan. Family passed away so trip got cancelled. Winter break time, i found Hyatt @ Lake Tahoe a nice redemption. cancelled again due to other member cancellation. Tried the same attempted again for spring break to Lake Tahoe. 8 of the 10 days were either 90% snow or rain. Next thought was, hey parents in Asia, i can go visit family and be with parents... well they are going finals week and returning that sunday when finals are over... Next... Now i got my Hawaii Trip coming with my parents since it was their friend that let us use their timeshare, turns out, there is a cruise they been wanting to go and it just so happens to overlap the hawaii time share time. So hey, they told me to go the cruise with them. i said yes, well it turns out the 3 ppl rooms were all sold out... either pay $6000+ more or get a 2nd room for +$3000 more... so now no cruise trip for me...
now what...
end rant. thanks for listening...

Could you get a friend to go on a trip with you? Or even take one by yourself. It's awesome to just do what you want to do.

 

[Lain]

Haven't been hanging around here too much, busy time as we're preparing for a Disney trip {first one hotel paid with cc points!}. I've been skimming when I can and reading articles on the SPG changes.
So...my personal SPG just had the AF applied on this most recent stmt. I've had the card for exactly 2 years, was planning to cancel since now I have the biz and DH has both personal and biz.

Well I called in to cancel this morning and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse! $500 spend in 30 days for 7,000 Starpoints. Not sure if that's been reported here, so that may be old news. But I felt like that was pretty generous, so I snatched it up and that will give me time to see if the free ann. night will be worth it. I do think this has been said, but the rep did confirm that the free anniversary night would take effect your next anniversary after Aug. 1...so in my case, my ann night won't come up until March 2019.

So...my good fortune continued! Logged into my spg acct and there was on offer for spending $75 at a Home Improvement Retails and get $10 back {hello more Disney GCs}! So that was the icing on the cake! That and they had an Olive Garden offer last week I think it was, so that will be put to good use. I would love to see a trend of better Amex offers...seems like they were pretty good my first year I had the card, then it went downhill.

Has anyone else seen that offer on the Home Imp. Retails?? I couldn't get it to pull up on any of our other cards (3 other SPG) and DH has 2 Amex Lowe's cards. Nothing on any others.

Have fun on your upcoming trip!

Yeah, 7k Starpoints for $500 or $1k spend/30 days seems to be the usual retention offer they're giving on the SPG personal these days. It's a good deal. There's speculation that the SPG personal will continue to be issued until Marriott/SPG/Ritz-Carlton all merge under one name, and that the card will either be grandfathered with Amex or, as some bloggers think, Amex is trying to buff up this portfolio to sell to Chase.

The Swan/Dolphin haven't been recategorized under the new program yet, and just yesterday we were discussing whether they might be 35,000 points hotels that we can use the anniversary night certificates on.

I got the $75 at a Home Improvement Retails on my PRG; not on any other card. Seems to be highly targeted! I got the Olive Garden offer on several of my cards. Amex Offers tend to get better later in the year, especially during the holidays, then really takes a nosedive at the start of the year. So here's hoping!

 

[JC0712]

Yesterday was a good churning day for me. I met the minimum spend on my SW Business card and should receive my companion pass when my statement closes in early May. I hit the $2000 mark in my spend on the SPG business. Just $5000 more to go (plus $3000 for personal). But the best news of all is that my husband applied and was instantly approved for the Chase Ink Cash. I will have an employee card. I'm so excited to finally have this card. Now to finish with American Express and get back to earning UR's.

 

[1st*toright]

OK, need some help. Thinking about booking through the Chase portal for my upcoming Orlando trip - I have a room already reserved for ~12k Starwood points (36000 Marriott points), but I found a similar room on Chase for 21k chase points. So the value seems about the same to me. Question is - do I get Starriott credits for nights stayed and/or elite perks if I book through Chase?

I'm currently booked at the Sheraton Lake Buena Vista. I could also do Sheraton Vistana for not too much more - is one better than the other? I really care about the pool on this trip, not so much about the room.

Either option is so much cheaper than the Swolphin, and I'm only considering Starriott properties for this trip, but would be interested if anyone has any other good Starriott off-site hotels with good pools.

 

[Alexle2007]

I've gone back and forth a million and one times on whether I should try to get this Universal hotel deal on Daily Getaways this afternoon. I think I've decided not to do it... for now. I could pay $325 for two nights plus another $48 in parking to stay at Universal, or stay at the nearby Marriott for about $300 for three nights with the member rate. While the express passes that come with the Universal hotel are tempting, I was just looking around online and didn't realize Universal had so many single rider lines that we could use. Am I missing anything here?

My other idea is to change our one night at Beach Club to two nights at a moderate and then do two nights at the Marriott near Universal, which would actually work out even cheaper for us. Decisions....



Sorry about your bad luck, Albort

We've been Universal 4 times this year (3 stays at Portofino and 1 stay at Royal Pacific) and I personally can't imagine not staying onsite. It's so easy to wake up and either walk or take the boat over to the parks, leave when we had our fill and go back to the resort for a bit to enjoy the pool and then back in the evening (especially to see the new HP light show on the Hogswarts Castle!)

 

[hsmamato2]

This is my plan for a family of 4:
Late May/early June 2019, 15 days in Hawaii - 7 nights on Maui, 4 nights on the Big Island & 4 nights Oahu
Flights: TUL to OGG, OGG to KOA, KOA to HNL, HNL to TUL is 52K miles per person on United. I need 208K miles.

Marriott Hotel & Flight package for Maui 360K Marriott points: Cat 8 + 132K United miles. We only have 220K Marriott points now. Plan: Either Marriott Biz or SPG Biz next month. That should get us another 78K minimum. I will need 68K more, I have 80K MRs, I'll transfer 68K to complete. I need to do this all before August to secure that package before anything changes.

I have 75K United miles from last year's 70K sign up bonus + 132K from the package. That's 207K United miles. I'll transfer 1,000 URs to United.

4 nights Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island - 240K Hilton points. DH and I will each get a Hilton Card - one of them Aspire to help cover the $40/resort fee + parking.

1-2 nights at Hale Koa military hotel - probably pay cash since it's only $156/night.
We will have 180K URs after I finish the spend on my CIP (almost done). We will spend our last 2-3 nights relaxing at Aulani - plan is to rent points and pay it with a statement credit.

I'll get the CIC and CSP this year, that should be another 110K UR to help with car rental and the other 1-2 nights we need in Hale Koa.

How much is this costing:
$95 from my CIP
$95 Hilton Ascent
$450 Hilton Aspire
$640 for air & hotel

I'm considering switching up my HI plans based on this....tell me if this makes sense. Right now I have 5 nights at Sheraton Maui=80k spg. I could cancel that,and put back into my acct have that 80+another 25k spg which = 315 Marriot points. ( I can possibly add another 30k buying them on sale and using UR credit to pay myself back) so total Marriott points would be 405k. (still with me?) This is for Dec 8-13 2018 if that makes a difference.
That would get me a 7 night cert plus flights for 360k,and I'd still have 45kMarriott left after this.
*NOW* here's my questions....
1) I hesitate to cancel my current booking, b/c I'm afraid there won;'t be availability by the time I get this all set up. Is this a valid concern?
2) How do I use the flights part of this, is it required that I use the flights for this trip,or right away? How long do I have to keep them(if possible) and use them elsewhere?
3) what is booking like? do they run out of rooms with this cert? Would I book the sheraton thru the Marriott site?
4) I'd likely only be able to stay the 5 nights anyway due to award flight availability (I think the saavers are gone for my dates.
head currently spinning just trying to max out my value on this batch of points.
Any help would be appreciated!

 

[miztressuz]

So I was in my AmEx Everyday account and got an offer for the BCE card $150 credit on 1k. I thought, well that's yucky the public offer is $200 why would I take that? I double check the offer and the public offer is $150 on 1k. Support links are still $200/1k.
Looks like the same for all the Blue cards, public offer $50 less on all but support links holding steady. Not sure how new that is, I just know in Jan when hubby got the BCE it was the $200 credit and he didn't use any support links.

 

[miztressuz]

Has anyone else seen that offer on the Home Imp. Retails?? I couldn't get it to pull up on any of our other cards (3 other SPG) and DH has 2 Amex Lowe's cards. Nothing on any others.

It's been spotted but very elusive, congrats on being the lucky few I have nada. The only thing interesting that popped for us is Macaroni Grill restaurant, $10 off $30 can do it 3x. Got that one on all 4 of our cards, but really, don't think we're maxing that out. I'll do it on the SPG Biz that I still need a little more to make MSR but otherwise everything else is boring. I am starting to get some restaurants on the SPG Biz but it's mostly places we don't eat so been disappointed so far on this card.

 

[platamama]

I've gone back and forth a million and one times on whether I should try to get this Universal hotel deal on Daily Getaways this afternoon. I think I've decided not to do it... for now. I could pay $325 for two nights plus another $48 in parking to stay at Universal, or stay at the nearby Marriott for about $300 for three nights with the member rate. While the express passes that come with the Universal hotel are tempting, I was just looking around online and didn't realize Universal had so many single rider lines that we could use. Am I missing anything here?

My other idea is to change our one night at Beach Club to two nights at a moderate and then do two nights at the Marriott near Universal, which would actually work out even cheaper for us. Decisions....

Does the Marriott offer a shuttle to Universal? Parking for the day costs $22, so if the Marriott doesn't have a shuttle then you need to figure in the cost to park at Universal too. It's also quite a walk to get from the parking garage to the front gates of either IOF or USF, about 10-15 of brisk walking IIRC, plus the time you're waiting in the line to just get into the parking garage.

Staying on-site does give you the flexibility of taking a break in the middle of the day, like @Alexle2007 points out. I've done both on-site and off-site, and I greatly prefer on-site.

 

[vanjust14]

Haven't been hanging around here too much, busy time as we're preparing for a Disney trip {first one hotel paid with cc points!}. I've been skimming when I can and reading articles on the SPG changes.
So...my personal SPG just had the AF applied on this most recent stmt. I've had the card for exactly 2 years, was planning to cancel since now I have the biz and DH has both personal and biz.

Well I called in to cancel this morning and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse! $500 spend in 30 days for 7,000 Starpoints. Not sure if that's been reported here, so that may be old news. But I felt like that was pretty generous, so I snatched it up and that will give me time to see if the free ann. night will be worth it. I do think this has been said, but the rep did confirm that the free anniversary night would take effect your next anniversary after Aug. 1...so in my case, my ann night won't come up until March 2019.

So...my good fortune continued! Logged into my spg acct and there was on offer for spending $75 at a Home Improvement Retails and get $10 back {hello more Disney GCs}! So that was the icing on the cake! That and they had an Olive Garden offer last week I think it was, so that will be put to good use. I would love to see a trend of better Amex offers...seems like they were pretty good my first year I had the card, then it went downhill.

Has anyone else seen that offer on the Home Imp. Retails?? I couldn't get it to pull up on any of our other cards (3 other SPG) and DH has 2 Amex Lowe's cards. Nothing on any others.

Congrats on the SPG offer! I didn't have the Home Improvement Retails offer, but I did have one for $20 off $100 or more on tickets to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. I thought that was a good one.

i think i have the travel curse. Ive been hoarding points for a solid 2.5 years, trying to find things to blow it on... last year, was suppose to use some points to go to Japan. Family passed away so trip got cancelled. Winter break time, i found Hyatt @ Lake Tahoe a nice redemption. cancelled again due to other member cancellation. Tried the same attempted again for spring break to Lake Tahoe. 8 of the 10 days were either 90% snow or rain. Next thought was, hey parents in Asia, i can go visit family and be with parents... well they are going finals week and returning that sunday when finals are over... Next... Now i got my Hawaii Trip coming with my parents since it was their friend that let us use their timeshare, turns out, there is a cruise they been wanting to go and it just so happens to overlap the hawaii time share time. So hey, they told me to go the cruise with them. i said yes, well it turns out the 3 ppl rooms were all sold out... either pay $6000+ more or get a 2nd room for +$3000 more... so now no cruise trip for me...
now what...
end rant. thanks for listening...

Sorry, Albort! I hope something great pops up for you soon!

I've gone back and forth a million and one times on whether I should try to get this Universal hotel deal on Daily Getaways this afternoon. I think I've decided not to do it... for now. I could pay $325 for two nights plus another $48 in parking to stay at Universal, or stay at the nearby Marriott for about $300 for three nights with the member rate. While the express passes that come with the Universal hotel are tempting, I was just looking around online and didn't realize Universal had so many single rider lines that we could use. Am I missing anything here?

My other idea is to change our one night at Beach Club to two nights at a moderate and then do two nights at the Marriott near Universal, which would actually work out even cheaper for us. Decisions....



Sorry about your bad luck, Albort

I like staying on property, and really like the Royal Pacific. I do have a young child with me though and like the convenience of walking. However, I have never stayed at the Marriott nearby. My DS19 is spoiled and likes having the express pass. I guess it also might depend on what time you are going and whether or not the express pass is needed. If you don't mind single rider lines then I can see your point about it not being worth the extra cost to you.