2019 TRIPS:
DISNEY CRUISE LINE 5 NIGHT CRUISE
10 NIGHTS IN HAWAII (Almost free!)
So I have 2 trips planned for 2019 so far - a 5 night Marvel Day at Sea cruise with just one of my sons, and a family trip to Hawaii.
For the cruise I got 10% off with an on board booking, saved probably another 10% using GCs I got with various deals. Will use SWA companion pass for my son, so only pay airfare for myself, and use points for the hotel the night before the cruise. Right now I have 3 nights booked at WDW after because I wanted to get a little more use of my APs before they expire in June, but I am probably going to cancel that and just come home. I want to have a couple days off just staying home and relaxing. Maybe we can go down for a long weekend another time to use the passes...
For Hawaii - I am using points and trying to save as much money as possible and it is so fun to try and get as much as possible on points!
So far, I have only booked one flight - my husband's - from San Diego to Honolulu. First class FREE using HAL points. He has plenty of AA airlines points to fly to SD and he almost always gets upgraded.
But the kids and I will be flying coach. I just got a SWA companion pass and I have over 100k points, so once they start selling to Hawaii I am hoping to use points for myself and bring one of my kids for free. If I have enough points left I can buy a 2nd ticket for my other son. Worse case scenario (I hope), is I will have to pay for 1 of 4 tickets to Hawaii.
I have booked 5 nights in Maui at Wailea Beach Resort using Marriott/SPG points. Then 2 nights in Kauai at Koloa Landing Resort in Poipu using Marriott/SPG points. I plan to use points for our last night before we fly out to stay at a hotel on Waikiki beach.
The thing that is going to cost me the most money is that I want to spend 2 nights at Aulani - which is sooo expensive. With taxes and fees $1400!! I heard that you can't use Chase Ultimate reward points to book with Disney anymore, although I didn't try because I don't want to use up that many rewards points just for 2 nights at a hotel - I'm saving those up for our family trip next year (hopefully a Greek Isles cruise).
Instead I am going to either buy 2 nights through a DVC resale site or go through hotels.com. At hotels.com my husband and I both have a couple hundred dollars credit for one night each, so that would shave about $400 off of the price, and I can probably get GC for hotels.com to shave another $100 off, but still...I am waiting to try and use the DVC site until I nail down the SWA flights because when you book that way the rooms are non-refundable.
Aulani is going to be my biggest expense of the trip, which is so frustrating because I have plenty of points left to book 2 nights at a Marriott or Hilton even, but my kids and I really want to stay at Aulani!!!! If I just booked with points then all 10 nights in Hawaii would be free, and if I end up getting all my flights free that would be an awesome feat!!!
Inter-island flights aren't very expensive and my husband and I have enough HAL points to pay for ours, so we just have to pay for our kids.
I get $250 credit on my Hilton Aspire to pay for airline incidentals, so I can use that to get early bird on the SWA flights, then later I can use it to pay baggage fees on the HAL inter-island flights.
Out of pocket, besides Aulani, we will have food - but let's face it, we'd be eating if we were at home too!! Also, daily resort fees and parking and rental cars. I might be able to find a way to get rental car using points - but not sure if it would be worth it because the rental car usually aren't that expensive.
I'm hoping to do everything, not counting food, for under $2-$2500, but it will depend on how cheap I get Aulani and whether I can get all the plane tickets for free. I am trying to find a cheap way to get from RDU to San Diego to catch the flights to Hawaii. I have a free RT companion on Delta as well as quite a few points saved. The other option is the SWA companion pass - just not sure what will be best. It is really hard for me to determine with SWA though until I see how many points I will need for the Hawaii flights! Just checking every day to see when they tickets will go on sale!! Come on SWA!!!