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Jim_Iain Live - 2nd Half World Cruise - B2B Singapore to Down Under 11/25 – 12/21

Jim_Iain

By Jim_Iain,
in Celebrity Cruises

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Jim_Iain "Live from...." Rare

Jim_Iain

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14 hours ago, abbydancer said:

Why would you lose the Book on Board credit?  I move bookings and keep it.  They have to manually add it, but they do.

It was a different promotion.   My agent advised me in advance.   I wasn’t concerned as the upgrade was so cheap and I have a huge OBC from agent. . 

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buncosquad

buncosquad

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5 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

It was a different promotion.   My agent advised me in advance.   I wasn’t concerned as the upgrade was so cheap and I have a huge OBC from agent. . 

When you say huge OBC, how much is that?

 

What is typical OBC amount from a TA? What is considered a large amount of OBC from a typical TA?

 

Curious, as I have no guage and I hear many state they get a great deal of OBC.

 

TY, and safe travels.

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Jeaannie55

Jeaannie55

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How great that you are travelling again, I love reading your reviews, although normally I just lurk in the background.  I was on The Eclipse sailing from Auckland to Sydney in Jan/Feb this year and loved New Zealand.  Looking forward to hearing all about your travels.  Safe travels to both you and Iain 

 

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Jim_Iain "Live from...." Rare

Jim_Iain

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16 hours ago, MisterMet said:

Jim an Iain

 

Looking forward to your next adventure.  Your pictures are always beautiful and your commentary is quite fun and very informative.  Cruising down under is definitely on our bucket list.  Got to retire first.  Not soon enough though.  We’ll chime in every once and a while.  Enjoy.

 

Trip and Pam

 

Thanks..  I never retirement to be such fun.   I always thought I would be bored and have to find something to keep me busy but....Not gotten boredd yet.

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Jim_Iain "Live from...." Rare

Jim_Iain

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16 hours ago, MisterMet said:

Sounds like a pretty good upgrade/trade off.  OBC is always nice, but a RS experience has got to be better, right?
 

Agree -- With unlimited Specialty, Free Laundry and 2 Bottle of Grey Goose  it's difficult to burn off the OBC anyway.   I think at the same time as my upgrade the minnimum bid for a MoveUp bid was $1,600 pp.

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Georgia_Peaches "Live from...." Rare

Georgia_Peaches

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4 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

Thanks..  I never retirement to be such fun.   I always thought I would be bored and have to find something to keep me busy but....Not gotten boredd yet.

Lol. Since I retired in 2019 I find myself so busy that I often wonder how I ever managed a full time job!

 

Have a great flight!  One more sleep and We are right behind you!

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Jim_Iain "Live from...." Rare

Jim_Iain

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Airline Booking –

As most of you have noticed, Covid really drove up the cost of air worldwide.    Business Class to Singapore was absolutely obscene so began shopping -   I finally found a really good deal booking with Chase Sapphire Mileage.     If you have a Chase Sapphire you can find some pretty good deals.  This time Singapore Air non-stop was running about $5,000 (and is now running $9,300).    Time to do some shopping.

 

I normally first go to Flights.Google.com and set up alerts and track the rates -   Many believe that Air Rates don’t vary much, but I can tell you they often change on a daily or weekly basis.

Here’s an example of one I was tracking -   We are doing a Sydney – Honolulu – Vancouver cruise in April so decided to buy a Round Trip from Sydney home on December 21 (Xmas High season) and returning on April 3.   While the graph shows the cheapest flight, I also track specific airline flights.   As we can see there is a huge swing in prices.

It is important when looking at the Cheapest Business Class to look at the details.   The cheapest fare shown was on ANA  because you had a 9 hour connection in Haneda.    Some others looked cheap until you find one of the legs is in Economy -  ugh.

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Jim_Iain "Live from...." Rare

Jim_Iain

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Long story short -   I checked out Singapore Airline web site and found they had a nice price of 150,000 miles each.    Went back to Chase Sapphire and moved the 300,000 miles Singapore Airline and was able to book using miles about 5 minutes later.  

 

I had to wait to book the return from Sydney until May of this year (11 months before our March Cruise from Sydney.   For some reason when I checked Chase for United Non-Stop I was able to purchase cheaper on Chase than on United Airline Site for the same flight.   It made sense since you also get 5X miles for Travel Booked directly via Chase Travel than the 3X miles you get for travel booked direct on another site.   I was able to book RT at $5,000 each on a United Non-Stop.

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Poconolady

Poconolady

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Yay, a Jim_lain Live review!! I jumped in here to comment before this thread goes onto anymore pages! I was in Singapore about four years ago, riding on the top of a hoho bus, a big burst of wind blew my sun hat off and it landed on the sidewalk, next to a policeman who was patrolling. He picked it up, smashed it and threw it into a trash can and then turned to look up at the bus. I was afraid he was going to arrest me for littering! It would not have been a good start to a cruise! Still miss that hat, it was packable, UPF treated and looked cute.

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Mike981

Mike981

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1 hour ago, Jim_Iain said:

Long story short -   I checked out Singapore Airline web site and found they had a nice price of 150,000 miles each.    Went back to Chase Sapphire and moved the 300,000 miles Singapore Airline and was able to book using miles about 5 minutes later.  

 

 

 

I had to wait to book the return from Sydney until May of this year (11 months before our March Cruise from Sydney.   For some reason when I checked Chase for United Non-Stop I was able to purchase cheaper on Chase than on United Airline Site for the same flight.   It made sense since you also get 5X miles for Travel Booked directly via Chase Travel than the 3X miles you get for travel booked direct on another site.   I was able to book RT at $5,000 each on a United Non-Stop.

 

 

Man if only I was as smart as you.

 

1 hour ago, Jim_Iain said:

This is an example of how dynamic air rates can be.   I started tracking the first day the airlines opened for booking about 11 months out. 

 

image.thumb.png.6262dbb5ebecd1269594044ba8d94a10.png

 

 

We tend to fly in the winter from MN to FL when we travel to get away from the cold and snow. Prices normally are rather rigid because A LOT of folks in the upper Midwest are trying to get away, so planes are almost always full.

 

I had day this spring where the stars lined up. There was a discount for the cruise we wanted and first class air had gone down significantly. So we are booked in our first Aqua room and flying first class, were not excited at all.

 

Interesting before I booked, the price I was getting for Delta's Comfort Plus was consistently high, but that is the world we live in now. Then one day the prices came down, I went and checked first class and it was only a $100 pp more, so I booked. Since then I have seen it several hundred more pp from what I paid. Such is the game. Oh and our room category (Aqua) has been sold out for a while, so I can't price check that anymore, but it also went up quite a bit.

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DUTRAVEL

DUTRAVEL

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Just returned home from the APEX Transatlantic and have already missed the first five pages! I had several lemon tarts in your honor. Sorry to report that Eden lunch no longer had the brownies and chocolate chip cookies (at least on the APEX).

 

Henrietta as usual will be reading your adventures on this sailing to me. Say hi to Iain for us.

 

Dianne

Edited by DUTRAVEL
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