Peggy, we are BA from ATL to LHR and then on to Nice so we will use BA lounges. I am hoping we can use arrivals lounge for showers then the departure lounge to get lunch.

You will be able to spot us; we will be the ones transferring Turdley back to his original parents. ;)

Is anyone else working with Ben from pointspros on this cruise? Ben just got me amazing schedule from my little airport all the way to Nice, and all the way back from Rio. Biz class for 100K points. I think that is pretty good deal.

Olivia:

Which airline are you using. I might want to give this guy a try.

Thanks
FV

HI Olivia, as you know we use Ben's Pointspros.com and author of www.boardingarea.com/blogs/onemileatatime/One Mile at a Time (one of the best boarding area Frequent flyer blogs) to glean tips daily (am/pm) on earning miles & points. For example, Ben worked our air for Asia last march Voyager (HK to Bangkok) (FC/BC on Cathay Pacific) last April and he developed our initial air (FC (BA to London then Dubai) for our Voyager Dubai to Istanbul voyage this March-April. Prefer Ben over Gary Leff's, bookyouraward.com, award service--tho Gary is good too.

Olivia - didn't know you were on this one. We booked, along with Jack & Laura and Jim & Jill while on CANADA. Look forward to seeing you again, this is our only Regent this year.

JoAnn, I guess I didn't put myself on the roll call yet! Been booked forever, but wanted to make sure I could get award travel.

Frank, Ben ran into a glitch when trying to ticket me on what we had worked out through USAir (using Lufthansa and United flights). Seems they won't let you do it if the open jaw is longer than the other segments, and for me, it was. So Ben soldiered on, and I ended up with 2 one-way awards. British Airways going over (used American points) United coming home from Rio (using United points) Thank goodness I had points with both airlines. It was still 100K total for biz class. I would NEVER have been able to figure this all out on my own, would have lost patience!

Olivia, we're actually doing something similar: We have a British Airways Award using BA points going from IAD to NCE via LHR and a United Airways Award coming back from GIG to IAD with a stop in Sao Paulo. I had hoped to use BA (meaning AA) coming back, but it became such a hassle. I was able to piece together the return using some CO and UA miles we still had. We depart IAD on 11/7 and are departing GIG the day of disembarkation 11/26. Used 99K (points/miles) per person for Business Class.

I dread getting award tickets for TAJ MAHAL. For that, I may use one of the services.

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Eugene

Eugene, we probably would be on the same flights were it not for you leaving a day later! For some reason, I thought several were coming in 2 days early and so I booked for 11/7 arrival. I love the whole area, so will surely find something to do! Have not flown BA for over 30 years, I'm sure!

I will say that Ben was not about to leave a stone unturned, BUT he was helped by my having points in several places with different ccards. Thank goodness for those promotions where they give you a bunch in the beginning.

Not sure when you booked, but I got a non-stop flight to IAD from Rio. I know these things open and close and you may be staying on; I am leaving straight from the ship on the day we disembark.

From a helpful email from Eugene, I realized that I failed to notice the stop-over in Sao Paulo. Turns out we will be on the same flight, which almost never happens to me on a BK cruise.

I think that is just a stop Olivia, and you don't change planes, but not sure.

We have spent the day working with Ben at Propoints and he is just phenomenal. He got us great flights with a combo of AMEX and UA points that I could not even have touched on my own, We are now doing our own air for Grand Prix, which I had not thought we would do, thought we would just use Regent air. Of course it did take a chunk of miles and points, but as Frank says "isn't that what they are there for"? Andhe is right thats why we go thru all this.

Delta has just gotten terrible. For Biz Class round trip they want 262,000 miles per ticket. Delta miles have really become Skypesos...

Tell me Frank - I have some pts I can transfer later to Continental but not sure they are any better

I should ask Ben for a finder's fee :D

For my Silversea cruise in April we are paying 92,500 per ticket, Bos to NCE and then Rome to Bos.
We were able to get Economy Comfort because of my Medallion status, but its still too expensive per ticket.

I guess I will start trying to use my AA and US air miles and give them a try..

Peter!!!!! FOR SURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL Peter maybe you should. I know both Olivia and TomG used him for Grand Prix as well as us.

He was very good, very patient with my many questions, this being the first time I have used one of these point services, and got us great flights. Even Air France non stop to Paris and Air France isn't part of any of our miles clubs. So by getting the Air Credit from Regent, saving the deviation fees and upgrade fees, we can spend that money instead on three days in Paris!!! Really excited as we haven't been to Paris yet. We will probably just use the one night Regent Hotel in Monte Carlo, but not sure on that yet.

I think that is a great idea, Paris is a great stop on the way to MC. We might do something like that in April since we got 2 days cut short when we went on our Xmas river cruise, only 1 day in Paris which was not even close to being enough...

Yes, Peter you SHOULD get a finders fee. We used Ben for Nile 2 and got great flights and 1/2 the miles I could find the tix for. (120k vs. 240k)Thanks!
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Helen

Paris is a great city to spend some time, we spent a week there years ago and really enjoyed it. Getting f.f. seats on airlines is becoming more and more problematic and it's so great that Ben is so good, the day will probably come for us to use him as well. Agree Peter...you should get a cut of the action. :)

Delta sounds terrible to get f.f.seats. It sounds like they charge more miles than other airlines and don't offer one way flights for 1/2 the miles. Maybe they're good for easy flights only within the USA. Frank...love your skypesos analogy!

For those of you who are planning on staying in Paris - consider getting the Hyatt credit card - while redemption can be difficult, the 2 free nights signup bonus is an amazing deal at the Park Hyatt Vendome (rates there are 600+ Euros).

Marcie:

I cannot take credit for the Skypesos analogy, I got that from the Forum on Flyertalk.. I just think it really shows what Delta has become, I would say that for flights in USA Delta is terrible for my Hub being Boston, they have a huge new terminal there and they fly direct to Absolutely No where from Boston, I find myself flying AA or Jetblue because I really do not want to make stops and I have top tier status with Delta which for me is basically a waste except for that one or two trips I might take over seas per year. NO one way awards either.. Biggest airline in the World and I guess they have enough loyal following to keep up the madness..

Frank I feel your frustration - Delta is so bad I looked at flights 200 thou points PP IF you are lucky and NO one way booking

Joanna:

Thats just Europe.. If you want to go to Sydney Australia Biz Class its 370k per person, I mean are You kidding me....

Frank, I feel your pain. Last time I booked award seats on Delta, had to pay twice the miles as two different "regions". I liked it before because coming and going from Africa for the Roars, paid upgrades were great. Going on a cruise from Africa to South America, not the same, double the miles cost. Have finally burned off most of my miles, and never use this credit card any more.

Olivia:

Last year I could not get Biz Class back from Syd to Bos, so my last option without paying thousands of dollars was to use Pay with Miles option that Delta had, used almost 500k miles for one way tix in Coach, I got 3 seats and they were the bulkhead seats so my goal of plenty of leg room was reached but the miles I burned were outrageous but the good news is it didnt cost me any out of pocket so I guess they were good for something, just a long long Way, to build up 500k miles to blow them that fast...

And there are rumors that Delta is looking to buy American - God forbid!!! Not if Delta is in charge of the FF miles program please no!!!

There is another way to handle the increasing difficulty finding available reward seats and the ever-increasing cost (in miles and fees) of them. The airlines are running their own inflation program, at our expense, and there seems noting we can do about it. I disagree: the alternative is to let Regent handle your air to and from the cruise with its free air and business class upgrade programs. The airlines have debased their own frequent flyer 'currency', further weakening any brand loyalty they may have had left, and there seems little or nothing even the most frequent flyers can do about it. The airline industry has lost its way, and with all the bankruptcies its investors and employees have paid for its management's missteps!

We will fly to Nice and return from Buenos Aires on our Grand Prix extended cruise using the Regent air programs this fall. With some of the sale offerings advertised by some air travel consolidators and ‘bucket shops’, plus a very careful following of airline sales, we might be able to match or even beat the Nice fare, particularly if we just fly to London or Paris, enjoy a short stop-over, then take the excellent European trains on to Nice/Monaco. But there is no way we can match the Buenos Aires return without entrusting ourselves to Air Comet and the like; something I’m very wary of doing. No, we’ll stick to Regent’s plan, which has the added benefit of being there to pick up the pieces if something goes wrong, an increasingly common occurrence in this era of decreasing flights and full planes running late.

As Ngaire suggests above, if you have no-cost air deviations (SSS Platinum and above), use Regent’s air but make your own hotel arrangements. Regarding the long transfer, check web site http://www.monte-carlohotels.com/ which contains a fantastic offer – a free helicopter transfer "to" the Nice airport for a two-night stay. If they will make that "from" as well as to, even with an up-charge, we’ll go in two days early and take advantage of the offer, catching a cab from either the Freemont (249€/night) or Le Meridien (235€/night) to the ship. The hotel allowance savings will almost pay for the extra night; if the € continues its recent plunge, we may even save a bit! I admit, this sounds too good to be true; separately the helo transfer per person is 105€ from Monaco to the Nice airport and 125€ from it to Monaco. We’d gladly pay the 20€ pp upcharge to take advantage of this deal though – what a way to arrive to start our wonderful cruise!

We were going to use Regent air Count, But after contacting Ben at Pointspros, I realized we had the miles we could use, and for the AirFrance we had AMEX platinum points that could be transferred. So in our case we got the 1100 per person air credit, saved the 2000 per person it would have cost us to upgrade round trip and since we are not platinum, saved the 125 per person deviation cost to stay in RIO a couple of nights. We also got the Marriott Hotel in RIO with points. We may look into the Senior rate at the Le Meridian that has been mentioned above, but we have two other couples cruising with us and need to find out what they will do. Since the Regent Hotel is the Fairmont, at least at the moment, we are fine with that. If they switch out on us, then we may look at other options.

We have used Regent air in the past and been very happy, and a couple of times we have done our own air and everything has worked. Agree that it is more work, and can get complicated dealing with schedule changes and delays and such, but in this particular case if those things happen PointsPros will work with us to make other arrangements, so I'm comfortable. And as I said, with the savings we can do three nights in Paris someplace we have never been and have been wanting to go.

kudos Joann, for making your own travel arrangements (and saving some coin) doing what Ben at pointspro and Gary at bookyouraward refer to as "aspirational travel" i.e., using you miles/points to leverage your travel comfortably while saving $$ on airline tickets/hotel rooms that you otherwise prefer not to pay top dollar for. Ben is a wizard at finding you the "just right" award (BC/FC) award itinerary at best miles rate available.

I agree and disagree with you, Mike. I would never pay any airline what they charge for business class fares, and have absolutely no experience working with consolidaters, etc. I do use Regent once in a while, their upgrade prices simply can't be beat.

For my next two cruises, to Europe and back, and to Europe and back from RIO, I am flying free in biz. When you have the miles anyway, because you charge everything you can on cards and pay them off with no interest every month, it is a no brainer to me. Rack up the miles and it pays off in the future.

For my next Regent cruise in April and the one after that in November, I got the $1100 credit, and like JoAnn, did not have to pay almost $2000 in upgrade fees, and I have free biz class both ways for my flights. I just can't see why this would not be the first choice. The savings to me is $6,200, and I am a solo traveler. twice that for a couple if you have the points.

Hotels, I never take the Regent route. There's always a better way unless the airport is far far away from the port. (Oh, and I am a Priceline fan)

I agree Olivia:

I do not know the dollar amount but almost every cruise I have taken with Regent I have used FF miles and taken the credit. Some Biz and some Coach. I would have to say the savings would have to be in the several thousands especially the international flights..

Using points the way to go always envious when people get them :app: :app: :app:

i had no problem using miles for a cruise this fall in Business class on Delta. Every route I looked at had mileage seats available in all classes Non Stop to Paris and routing from Paris to Prague and returning from Budapest to Paris and LA. I even booked less than the 270 days out

Kathy, but were the seats on DL metal or its partners? Going to Europe, I can often do okay finding Business class on one of its partners, such as AF, but seldom on DL itself-- especially at low mileage.

The problem is especially difficult for Asia, I think.

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Eugene

Delta Always has seats available, You just have to pay more....

Usually ridiculously more on DL planes, which was my point.

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Eugene.

100K for Bus Class Seats RT on AF (which I prefer the service and food on anyway)

What kind of seats were in the biz section?

Lay Flat...we have been on this flight many times. The seats and service are excellent.

The AF seats from Dulles that we've always had weren't true lay flat. They were angled, which is fine for me but some don't like them. The food and wine is usually better than DL, and we generally like the flight attendants just as much as on DL.

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Eugene