I love credit cards so much!

[SouthFayetteFan]

Anyone else tempted by FD'ing today? We don't ever do FD'ing even though we travel at FD'ing times because we aren't big eaters and do much better paying OOP. But the temptation was so strong today. We are not planning to go to WDW this year so I think that is the only thing that held me back. I get all caught up in everyone else's excitement over FD'ing even though I know the numbers don't really work for us I think, in reality, I just want to carry around a resort mug and feel like everyone else...

We are pretty much sold on Deluxe now (it feels insane to type that FYI, lol) soooo Free Dining just doesn't remotely excite me now. The room only discounts just seem so much better at that level (and even at the mod level)...but I can see getting caught up in the hype and everybody else's excitement, LOL!

Now I will say...Free Dining circa 2013...that was something to get excited about!!!

 

[Lain]

@disneymagicgirl This is kind of why I had to back burn Hawaii too. The complication (and huge use of points) of trying to get six people on the same flight and needing two rooms just overwhelmed me. I think if SW had their flights going, it'd be easier but that may just my thinking and that I know SW really well.

I think flying other airlines can be a stumbling block for us SW loyal fans, lol! I look at some of these other flights and I'm just lost. Why don't the points tie to the prices??? Why can't I just book any flight?? LOL! Oh screw it...I'll just cash out for some Target gift cards and fly Southwest, haha

I keep thinking the same about SW. maybe I should wait til they start their flights.

@disneymagicgirl, it's really sweet of you to want to plan a Hawaii vacation for your husband's 40th, but I'm sure he wouldn't want you to stress as much as you are to make it happen. This is where I kind of defer to @calypso726's guideline of planning vacations two years out. You've got a lot of points in different programs, but I think there are a few changes in the coming months that really favors putting off Hawaii until next year. As @Albort mentioned, with Marriott finalizing its merger with SPG, you'll probably be able to book the Westin Ka'anapali as part of Marriott's Flight and Hotel package and get a better deal. And with Southwest poised to start flying to Hawaii late this year or early-2019, it'll give you a lot more flight options.

The difficulty is you're in the middle of the country without easy access to a lot of the direct routes to Hawaii, and on top of that you've got to find award seats for 6 people. Three of the airlines that have been discussed -- Alaska, Southwest, and Hawaiian -- have some form of companion discount.

• Southwest's Companion Pass, you know, and is probably the most generous of them all. Unfortunately, Southwest still has yet to announce the details of their Hawaii plans, much less make tickets available for sale.
• Alaska has the Companion Fare, which is offered to their Alaska Airlines Visa consumer and business cards. (The Alaska cards are issued by Bank of America, and DoC confirms they do not report business cards to personal credit reports. However, I don't know how difficult it is to get a "business" card from BofA.) Alaska's Companion Fare offers an annual roundtrip coach companion fare on Alaska for just $99 plus taxes and fees starting from ~$22, when traveling with a paying passenger on the same itinerary, booked at the same time at alaskaair.com. I believe Alaska has a limited time signup bonus where the $99 base fare is waived for the first year.
• Hawaiian has a Companion Discount, which is offered to their Hawaiian Airlines World Elite and Business Mastercard cardholders. (The Hawaiian cards are issued by Barclays, and again I don't know how hard it is to get approved for a "business" card, and there are conflicting reports whether Barclays reports business cards to personal credit reports.) The standard signup bonus for the personal card is 35,000 HawaiianMiles (which is usually enough for one roundtrip from the Mainland to Hawaii, but award availability becomes almost impossible from the week before Christmas until about a week after New Year), but you can do a dummy booking on hawaiianairlines.com and get targeted for a 50,000 HawaiianMiles signup offer (I was able to pull this up two weeks ago). (DoC reported recently that Hawaiian is handing out paper applications with a 60,000 HawaiianMiles offer in flight.) Back to the Companion Discount, new cardholders get a one-time 50% off companion discount for roundtrip coach travel on Hawaiian between Hawaii and the Mainland, and a $100 discount off a roundtrip coach companion ticket upon each account anniversary thereafter. Hawaiian's Companion Discount is only good for companions traveling with the cardholder on a paid ticket, on the same reservation, book through the the cardholder's HawaiianMiles account and using his/her Hawaiian Mastercard.

So if you can't get all 6 travelers on award seats and you have to pay out of pocket for some of the tickets, the above companion discounts could help cut down on your cash cost. Southwest: Companion flies almost free (+taxes and fees). Alaska: Companion flies for $99 +taxes and fees (possibly free + taxes and fees for the first year). Hawaiian: Companion flies for 50% off for the first year, gets a $100 discount after each account anniversary (with even "cheap" roundtrip fares from the West Coast to Hawaii costing ~$400 in the low season/midweek, 50% off still leaves you paying at least $200 for your companion.)

 

[DisneyMandC]

We are pretty much sold on Deluxe now (it feels insane to type that FYI, lol) soooo Free Dining just doesn't remotely excite me now. The room only discounts just seem so much better at that level (and even at the mod level)...but I can see getting caught up in the hype and everybody else's excitement, LOL!

Now I will say...Free Dining circa 2013...that was something to get excited about!!!

I checked out some pricing on free dining today, but I think the room discounts are going to work out better for us too. Plus, we went to stay at either POFQ or POR. I priced out what we plan to do for our trip next year using free dining at Coronado Springs and Caribbean Beach and wrote down the prices so I can compare to what comes up with room discounts for this fall, that way I'll know for sure what will be our best option. The other thing I don't like about free dining is we will definitely want the regular Disney dining plan, so we would have to upgrade from quick service if we stay at a moderate (which we plan to).

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I checked out some pricing on free dining today, but I think the room discounts are going to work out better for us too. Plus, we went to stay at either POFQ or POR. I priced out what we plan to do for our trip next year using free dining at Coronado Springs and Caribbean Beach and wrote down the prices so I can compare to what comes up with room discounts for this fall, that way I'll know for sure what will be our best option. The other thing I don't like about free dining is we will definitely want the regular Disney dining plan, so we would have to upgrade from quick service if we stay at a moderate (which we plan to).

As many of you may know I claim to be a Disney Discount Guru lol!

IMO The two changes to free dining that sucked the most:

1) Mods to QS dining! That took away a TON of value
2) Requiring Park hopper

Such a bummer that they don’t give regular dining to those Mod folks.

 

[StephPlum]

I love Tuesdays!!! First, received my bonus on the Chase savings acct opened earlier this year. That was a total of $500 in just 3 months.

Next, got my 20k bonus point for referring DH to the CIP.

It was a very productive day for bonuses!

 

[speedyfishy]

Free dining would save SO and I $800. We booked a week at Pop and upgraded to the deluxe dining plan. We love the deluxe dining plan though (we eat a lot lol) and the last time that we didn’t have it we really missed sitting down and eating. QS for us is just not enjoyable.

 

[mom2elal]

heh, my my friends just want to stay home. I dont have any friends that play this credit card game so they cant take nice trips themselves...


Also thanks to everyone who replied.

@SouthFayetteFan did u read the most recent shutdown? thats probably the most scariest one ive seen... although i feel like the poster isnt telling us the full truth.

I hope I'm not being too pushy, but I have a strong desire to try to solve people's problems, lol. Anyway, maybe since you have all those points and have to get a room anyway, you could get a friend to come with you by covering the hotel? It doesn't have to be an expensive trip, there are so many great places that you can drive to in CA!

 

[Albort]

I hope I'm not being too pushy, but I have a strong desire to try to solve people's problems, lol. Anyway, maybe since you have all those points and have to get a room anyway, you could get a friend to come with you by covering the hotel? It doesn't have to be an expensive trip, there are so many great places that you can drive to in CA!

ive been to most places in California. Ive tried to make the attempt to go up the 395 to Lake Tahoe a few times, but i need help driving up that 8 hour road. haha.

 

[jhoannam]

@Albort where was that last shutdown posted? I want to read it.

 

[kmc8826]

Anyone else tempted by FD'ing today? We don't ever do FD'ing even though we travel at FD'ing times because we aren't big eaters and do much better paying OOP. But the temptation was so strong today. We are not planning to go to WDW this year so I think that is the only thing that held me back. I get all caught up in everyone else's excitement over FD'ing even though I know the numbers don't really work for us I think, in reality, I just want to carry around a resort mug and feel like everyone else...

I booked it for my parents and thereby gave into the impulse! Right now I am still struggling with wanting to add dining to our rooms in a couple weeks. If I did and didn’t use my entire gift card stash I could take a huge chunk out of my Amex spg biz spend. But try as I might realistically even with 3 adults and 2 kids and a lot of character meals I can’t make the numbers add up. Yet still so tempting...

 

[mom2elal]

Anyone who's done AS award flights: what is the probability that @disneymagicgirl will be able to find 6 RT tickets to HI at saver rates? Is AS known for releasing a decent amount of award availability at the saver level? I don't have any experience with this but am concerned here that it might be very hard to find that many saver tickets on the same flight.

We were able to get 4 award seats on AS to Alaska last summer, but I don't know, Hawaii might be a whole different ball game. We got ours on the day they were released.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

@Albort where was that last shutdown posted? I want to read it.

r/churning shutdown megathread

 

[mom2elal]

ive been to most places in California. Ive tried to make the attempt to go up the 395 to Lake Tahoe a few times, but i need help driving up that 8 hour road. haha.

Ooh, I've been planning a trip DOWN the 395 for a future trip at an unknown date, lol. What you have to do is stop along the way, like stay a night in Mammoth Lakes and go to Devil's Postpile and Mono Lake.

 

[Albort]

@Albort where was that last shutdown posted? I want to read it.

this was the one we found quite odd.

Ooh, I've been planning a trip DOWN the 395 for a future trip at an unknown date, lol. What you have to do is stop along the way, like stay a night in Mammoth Lakes and go to Devil's Postpile and Mono Lake.

yeah, I have some places on the map marked on the way up. Manzanar, ive always wanted to see whats in the owens valley(LA steals its water from there) and theres a few ghost towns i want to check out. I thought Mammoth Lakes was a bit off course, i think there was another city with like holiday inn i was planning to stop midpoint, then up to Lake Tahoe Hyatt. Reno was also an idea to visit too.

 

[Jax1023]

this was the one we found quite odd.

This shut down story seems so different than the others. And freaks me out. I’ve got 4 cards with chase (cf, cfu, csr and cip), they own my mortgage. And the extended me over 80k of credit. I’ve had the cf for almost 15 years and my credit score is like 830. So I feel like I’m a borderline high shut down candidate. Really makes me pause every time I think of applying for a new card. But I’ve only gotten 2 cards in the past year and a half- the spg biz and the cip.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

This shut down story seems so different than the others. And freaks me out. I’ve got 4 cards with chase (cf, cfu, csr and cip), they own my mortgage. And the extended me over 80k of credit. I’ve had the cf for almost 15 years and my credit score is like 830. So I feel like I’m a borderline high shut down candidate. Really makes me pause every time I think of applying for a new card. But I’ve only gotten 2 cards in the past year and a half- the spg biz and the cip.

But have you had multiple fraud alerts when using Apple Pay and logged into your account recently from a foreign country?

Don’t let yourself get too worried - that is a goofy one-off story that perhaps is missing some details as @Albort alluded to earlier.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

@disneymagicgirl, it's really sweet of you to want to plan a Hawaii vacation for your husband's 40th, but I'm sure he wouldn't want you to stress as much as you are to make it happen. This is where I kind of defer to @calypso726's guideline of planning vacations two years out. You've got a lot of points in different programs, but I think there are a few changes in the coming months that really favors putting off Hawaii until next year. As @Albort mentioned, with Marriott finalizing its merger with SPG, you'll probably be able to book the Westin Ka'anapali as part of Marriott's Flight and Hotel package and get a better deal. And with Southwest poised to start flying to Hawaii late this year or early-2019, it'll give you a lot more flight options.

The difficulty is you're in the middle of the country without easy access to a lot of the direct routes to Hawaii, and on top of that you've got to find award seats for 6 people. Three of the airlines that have been discussed -- Alaska, Southwest, and Hawaiian -- have some form of companion discount.

• Southwest's Companion Pass, you know, and is probably the most generous of them all. Unfortunately, Southwest still has yet to announce the details of their Hawaii plans, much less make tickets available for sale.
• Alaska has the Companion Fare, which is offered to their Alaska Airlines Visa consumer and business cards. (The Alaska cards are issued by Bank of America, and DoC confirms they do not report business cards to personal credit reports. However, I don't know how difficult it is to get a "business" card from BofA.) Alaska's Companion Fare offers an annual roundtrip coach companion fare on Alaska for just $99 plus taxes and fees starting from ~$22, when traveling with a paying passenger on the same itinerary, booked at the same time at alaskaair.com. I believe Alaska has a limited time signup bonus where the $99 base fare is waived for the first year.
• Hawaiian has a Companion Discount, which is offered to their Hawaiian Airlines World Elite and Business Mastercard cardholders. (The Hawaiian cards are issued by Barclays, and again I don't know how hard it is to get approved for a "business" card, and there are conflicting reports whether Barclays reports business cards to personal credit reports.) The standard signup bonus for the personal card is 35,000 HawaiianMiles (which is usually enough for one roundtrip from the Mainland to Hawaii, but award availability becomes almost impossible from the week before Christmas until about a week after New Year), but you can do a dummy booking on hawaiianairlines.com and get targeted for a 50,000 HawaiianMiles signup offer (I was able to pull this up two weeks ago). (DoC reported recently that Hawaiian is handing out paper applications with a 60,000 HawaiianMiles offer in flight.) Back to the Companion Discount, new cardholders get a one-time 50% off companion discount for roundtrip coach travel on Hawaiian between Hawaii and the Mainland, and a $100 discount off a roundtrip coach companion ticket upon each account anniversary thereafter. Hawaiian's Companion Discount is only good for companions traveling with the cardholder on a paid ticket, on the same reservation, book through the the cardholder's HawaiianMiles account and using his/her Hawaiian Mastercard.

So if you can't get all 6 travelers on award seats and you have to pay out of pocket for some of the tickets, the above companion discounts could help cut down on your cash cost. Southwest: Companion flies almost free (+taxes and fees). Alaska: Companion flies for $99 +taxes and fees (possibly free + taxes and fees for the first year). Hawaiian: Companion flies for 50% off for the first year, gets a $100 discount after each account anniversary (with even "cheap" roundtrip fares from the West Coast to Hawaii costing ~$400 in the low season/midweek, 50% off still leaves you paying at least $200 for your companion.)

Thanks so much for taking the time to type all this up! I have been looking to put this together since Christmas 2017 and I just keep getting frustrated with all the pieces of the puzzle. Now here we are in April. Original plan was Christmas break 2018...early Jan...but then I recently was thinking summer would be great since no one has school. I am seeing that is a big task. Ha! So I think if by some miracle SW comes out with their Hawaii flights before the end of the year we will try and take advantage. Otherwise we will maybe shoot for December 2019. We have a SW CP this year but expires 12/31. I can renew mine for 2019/2020 and DH could redo his summer 2019. Would be great if we had 2 of us fly free to Hawaii in 2019! Alaska air is another good option for me. Hawaiian requires me getting to one of their cities, which seems to eliminate any savings.
Well, maybe I can do the Lake Tahoe thing this summer for DH. He'd love that too.

 

[mom2elal]

this was the one we found quite odd.

The fact that he had one credit bureau frozen and had to call in and then unfroze makes me nervous, since that happened with my dh recently.

 

[Jax1023]

But have you had multiple fraud alerts when using Apple Pay and logged into your account recently from a foreign country?

Don’t let yourself get too worried - that is a goofy one-off story that perhaps is missing some details as @Albort alluded to earlier.

No but earlier this year I got an email to call chase. When I called, not the number in the email cause I was convinced it was phishing, they told me someone had been attempting to call about my accounts from a number that they had previously associated with fraud. Asked if I had called, when I said no, they reissued all my cards. And I get weird fraud alerts from chase all the time. Like once I tried to by furniture for $350 (so not like a giant amount by an means) at the outlet center 50 miles from my house and I got flagged fo fraud. Had to use my amex lol. Good thing I always carry like 6 cards.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

No but earlier this year I got an email to call chase. When I called, not the number in the email cause I was convinced it was phishing, they told me someone had been attempting to call about my accounts from a number that they had previously associated with fraud. Asked if I had called, when I said no, they reissued all my cards. And I get weird fraud alerts from chase all the time. Like once I tried to by furniture for $350 (so not like a giant amount by an means) at the outlet center 50 miles from my house and I got flagged fo fraud. Had to use my amex lol. Good thing I always carry like 6 cards.

Given how goofy Chase has been with shutdowns, I guess maybe some concern is warranted there with those fraud alerts.

I guess I just take this attitude that I'll be a little bit careful but I'm not going to let it affect me playing the game. I'd rather get shut down and have earned 20%+ back on a bunch of purchases than operate in fear of shutdown and earn 1-3% back on most purchases.