Is it 5:00 somewhere because I need a drink!

DonnaM · Post by **DonnaM** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:12 am

Or a vacation! I have never had a more difficult time booking a trip. We are coming down next month for 4 nights with our son and his gf. I couldn't use Usair miles or Amex points because we have to fly Cape Air going home. Only Expedia and Orbitz have the flights. Then they charge more for booking 4 people at a time rather than 1 or 2 but I bit the bullet to make things easier. But then I couldn't book all of us on Orbitz because my son and husband have the same name. So, I booked 2 on Expedia and 2 on Orbitz so 2 sets of confirmations. Then, the Westin website wouldn't let me book 2 rooms at the 4th night free rate so I had to make 2 reservations. Don't even get me started on the $40 per room per night resort fee and the $40 more for 1 King bed rather than 2 doubles. The $700+pp flight cost is bad enough!!
The good thing about this trip?? We are coming down to check the progress on our new house that is being remodeled. Yay! We haven't been back down since we bought it last summer so I am excited to see the progress at Beneath The Mango Tree.

PA Girl · Post by **PA Girl** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:34 am

Well, that is a pretty great reason to be heading to STJ!

I completely understand your frustration. I gave up on trying to get to STJ this summer.

Concerning AMEX points, did you call AMEX travel and speak to a travel agent? Just a suggestion for the future -

I called for the first tiem ever for our last February trip and they did a great job booking us on to flight, some of which showed no availability. (she called USAir and had them unblock seats.)

Double check me on this but I think they can link Cape Air to your main flight so you can use points for the tickets. We ended up using American Eagle from SJU instead because she found us a $29 flight but I am 99% sure she was looking at Cape Air options too.

DonnaM · Post by **DonnaM** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:49 pm

The Indian gentleman that I spoke too couldn't find Cape Air when putting in the trip details and I wasn't inclined to have him mess around with our trip. We are going back in September to move in so we can hopefully use them then. I am used to paying around $500 a ticket for non-stops out of PHL so it was some serious sticker shock! We could have paid less with more/longer stops but we didn't want to do that on a 4 night trip and EWR was no better.

GotToGetAway · Post by **GotToGetAway** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 6:37 pm

DonnaM wrote: Beneath The Mango Tree.

Is that a Jack Johnson reference or just a coincidence?

philbetm · Post by **philbetm** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:15 pm

I looked at Us Airway FF seats available early next June for the number of miles Hubby and I have...at one a.m. this morning I jumped for joy...they had them !!! When he got home from work at 7 a.m. for me too make sure we could go...they were GONE .

The seats now open for that same time are 2x the amt. of miles...

We don't have that many built up. This past June 9th., We had to pay almost $800 per ticket out of CLT. And we had promised to take our Daughter, Son-inlaw and 2 grandchildren ...so it meant 6 tickets ! Never have we ever had to pay so much to fly to STT in the 9 years we have been going. Almost had to mortgage the house just for tickets !!

Could we share a drink with you at your house Maybe...

Backtotheislands · Post by **Backtotheislands** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 12:38 am

It's ALWAYS 5:00 somewhere!!

Congratulations for fulfilling one of my dreams . . . a house on St. John!! Hope it's moving along nicely!

DonnaM · Post by **DonnaM** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 7:36 am

Yes, Better Together is one of our favorite songs. My second choice was Sea Change but my husband and sons weren't feeling it!
We used to get fairly good fares because we booked far in advance. Now that we have our own place, we will probably go on short notice. There must be a sweet spot where there is lots of seats left 2-3 months out and I just have to find it.
BTW - I didn't mean to sound like a jerk in my previous post. It was a communication issue that I worried about between having 2 people with the same name and the possibility of the Cape Air flight getting bungled. We're going back in the fall to move in and then hope to take the whole family in January after football season is over so plenty of occasions to use the miles.

GotToGetAway · Post by **GotToGetAway** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 10:07 pm

Love Jack Johnson (and Beck for that matter).

Best of luck with the house and the flights!

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