Bora Bora - Our trip and why (we believe) BOB>MLE

[CZ60]

The planning:

DW and I basically planned on going to Bora Bora from the moment we were engaged, about two years ago. We originally had it planned for Jan 2016 and I can’t remember if we had Thalasso booked for then (I think we did). When the $400 +30,000 BA business class deal to London went on sale, we decided we wanted to go to Europe/Israel for our honeymoon instead and we did just that over Pesach 2016. So we rebooked Bora Bora for Jan 2017, this time in Le Moana as Thalasso had no availability anymore.

The more research we did, the more we realized that we did not want to go during rainy season. If we were going, we were going to do it right. And on top of that, the St. Regis Maldives had their thing going on. So we booked that for January and decided to once again, push off our Bora trip. I found 4 consecutive nights in Le Moana and decided that as the date got closer, if we wanted another night or two, we’d figure something else out (the calendar had scattered nights). Luck has it that I was browsing one day later and found Le Moana’s calendar WIDE OPEN. So I booked another 2 nights. We had two separate reservations – June 23-27 and June 27-29. After going back and forth, we decided to shave that down by 1 night and stay in the IC Tahiti for 1 night so that we wouldn’t be in PPT airport for 4 hours (and thank G-d we did that as you’ll see later).

This is where things got interesting. I couldn’t shave 1 night off online, because that would require cancelling and rebooking and from what I’ve read, there’s no guarantee that the nights would go back into reward inventory and at that point, the reward calendar was 0 for it's next 300. So I called IHG…

The first agent on the phone had the same qualms as me and decided to transfer me to a manager. The manager confidently said that he’s going to cancel the 2 nights and in 5 minutes, I’ll receive another email showing a new reservation for one night. Before I could ask him to wait on the phone with me while he processed it, he hung up. So I waited 5 minutes. And then another 5. And another 5. And another 30. (Mind you, I had already spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with the first few people!). And then I called back. Getting all the way to a case manager (Steve) who sounded American (finally!). After explaining the situation to him, he said that they will do a review and if what I said happened is true (phone records blah blah), then they will book a revenue stay, they will pay for it, and manually deduct the points out of my account. He was to get back to me in 5 days.

True to his word, he called me back in 5 days, but only to tell me that he didn’t have an answer yet and that he’d call me back in 2. This time, he didn’t call me back so I called on the 3rd day and got a different case manager who said she was going to review it right then and call me back in twenty minutes. I left her saying that I’ve been taken around the block on this and wasn’t too happy, the usual frustrated customer thing (I really was frustrated). She said not to worry and that she’ll have an answer that I’ll be satisfied with. She called back but I was in a meeting (I have a day job!) so I didn’t answer. She left me a voicemail saying IHG was going to pay for that 5th night, and NOT deduct the points from my account!

Was it worth the hassle? Maybe. I got a free $300 (valuing 60k points at .5) or a free $800 (revenue for the last night) depending on how you look at it, for 3 hours on the phone.

We wanted overwater for some of our stay so I emailed the hotel about that (and about the food sitch) and he was happy to offer me a few upgrade options:

- An Overwater Lagon Bungalow at the rate of 18 951 CFP per nigth taxes included.

- An Overwater Horizon Bungalow at the rate of 26 896 CFP per night taxes included.

- An Overwater End of Ponton at the rate of 30 928 CFP per night taxes included.

The rate is basically 100 to 1, just to make things simple.

We chose option 2 for the last two nights of our stay. The lagoon bungalows are barely in the water, and who cares for the end of pontoon?

We only did 2 nights and not all 5 because we wanted to try the beach bungalows, plus we wanted to run up a tab on other things not room related, plus we were coming fresh off of 5 nights in overwater in Maldives and had already experienced the thrill. Ruining the surprise, we both agreed after the trip that we actually enjoyed the beach bungalow more than the overwater, though for those that never experienced overwater before, that might not hold true.

We booked the 6th night in IC Tahiti and now had to decide flights.

I simultaneously had (2 years in the making) but also didn’t have (wanted to get below 5/24) enough time to get 320k AA miles to do RT in ATN J. Plus dw and I don’t care so much for business (although after our return flight, we made a bli neder vow to not go more than 6 hours on a plane in Y ever again). We booked Y on AF OW , 30k Flying Blue + $187 pp, and I had exactly 84K AA miles, good enough for 2 OW in Y. Boy do I wish I had signed up for a few more cards to get 160K (I have since got over my obsession of going under 5/24 once I got the reserve and have now come to the realization that I will probably never open a chase card for as long as that rule exists). But that’s for later.

Checking AF’s calendar, I couldn’t find one day where they had “classic” business availability, only flex, which prices out at 187k OW. I like business class but not to the tune of burning basically every last point I have and then some. ATN on the other hand was pretty wide open with business class on all of their flights around the time I was going/coming, I just didn’t have the miles to do it. You can all do your research on the planes and whatnot but ATN is not lie flat and didn’t look to be all that great. Obv, it’s better than Y.

So we were all set. Flying AF’s red-eye, June 22-23 landing at 5:20 AM. Air Tahiti (for the 100th time - not affiliated with ATN) at 7AM, landing in BOB at 7:45.

Return flight – Leaving BOB at 7:15PM on June 28th, landing in PPT at 8PM, staying in IC Tahiti one night, leaving PPT 11:45PM, landing in LAX 10:55AM on Fri June 30th.

We had to get to LAX. As far as I know, I couldn’t attach a domestic leg to my AF flight (If I could, please embarrass me and let me know). And since I was returning on Fri to LAX, I couldn’t attach a domestic leg to NY to make in time for Shabbat. Not that AA would have had any saver availability anyway. So we needed a RT to LA, and I was hell bent on taking a red eye July 2-3. Getting there, we could have went either June 21 or 22, depending on what was cheapest. I had a free IHG night that we could have used in LA if we went on June 21 (I only like to use this for 60k point/night properties) .

(AF doesn’t fly PPT to LAX on Thurs night/Fri morning so I couldn’t switch this around with the hopes of attaching the NY to LAX leg for free on the front of the trip. Again the likelihood of AA having SAAver was so low that it doesn’t really matter).

I recently signed up for the Alaska card using the upgraded offer of 30k + free companion + $100 statement credit after $1k spend. I got the companion pass after the statement closed in early June and immediately went to finding flights. None of the carriers had direct J availability and I hate stopovers, especially when carrying frozen food. Typical United to release Y saver within 3 weeks but the two flights they did release for were not good times for us. We concluded we were going to pay and at least earn miles on that flight. The prices were ridiculous ($500+ RT) on all airlines but thanks to the companion pass, we got BOGO. So we were to fly June 21 on virgin, landed in LAX at around 8PM. And returned with 10:10PM to EWR, landing at 6:30AM.

The last bit of hotel planning was where we would stay in LA over the weekend. We wanted to get in on the freedom 10% in March if we were going to pay for hotels. We ran out of SPG points in MLE and there are no Hyatt’s in LA so it was either IC Century City again or paying.

I told DW she can spend whatever it would cost for us to stay in IC Century City plus a little bit (buying points – I don’t buy free nights…) So she chose The London in Beverly Hills (magnificent as you will see).

We thought we got on the 10% Chase Freedom last minute but after fighting with Chase, they wouldn’t give us the 10% (story for another time/thread). So we cancelled what we had with them and booked through priceline (and the price turned out to be $150/night cheaper so screw Chase and their 10% lol).

To recap:
06/21 - JFK  LAX 5PM to 8PM
Stay in IC Century City

06/23 – LAX  PPT 12AM – 5AM
06/23 – PPT  BOB 7AM – 7:45AM
Stay in IC Le Moana

06/28 – BOB  PPT 7:15PM – 8PM
Stay in IC Tahiti

06/29-30 – PPT  LAX 11:45PM – 11AM
Stay in The London Beverly Hills

07/02-03 – LAX EWR 10PM – 6:30AM
Sleep in my bed without setting an alarm

To be continued…

[nobiggy]

Nice stuff!

[avadah]

I just finished your St. Regis Maldives TR and headed straight over here.
Keep up the great TR's!

[CZ60]

Thanks! Part 2 coming shortly

[Hjay]

Awesome keep it comin!!! Out of curiosity why wouldn't you buy a free night?

[CZ60]

Awesome keep it comin!!! Out of curiosity why wouldn't you buy a free night?

I'd rather not make this thread about that But it's probably the same reason as other people who wouldn't buy

[Hjay]

"I told DW she can spend whatever it would cost for us to stay in IC Century City plus a little bit (buying points – I don’t buy free nights…) So she chose The London in Beverly Hills (magnificent as you will see)."

Not looking to hijack ur tr just wondering the diff between buying point & nights. Sounds like your ok with points but not nights.

[CZ60]

"I told DW she can spend whatever it would cost for us to stay in IC Century City plus a little bit (buying points – I don’t buy free nights…) So she chose The London in Beverly Hills (magnificent as you will see)."

Not looking to hijack ur tr just wondering the diff between buying point & nights. Sounds like your ok with points but not nights.

I buy points from IHG directly, not from people. Cash + points then cancel the night and get the points. Or when they have their buy with 100% bonus, it ends up being close to the same thing with less hassle. But I would only buy IHG points if there is an immediate use for them. Buying nights requires buying from other people, not IHG.

[Hjay]

  Can you please get this thread back on topic!! 

[davidmal]

The planning:

DW and I basically planned on going to Bora Bora from the moment we were engaged, about two years ago. We originally had it planned for Jan 2016 and I can’t remember if we had Thalasso booked for then (I think we did). When the $400 +30,000 BA business class deal to London went on sale, we decided we wanted to go to Europe/Israel for our honeymoon instead and we did just that over Pesach 2016. So we rebooked Bora Bora for Jan 2017, this time in Le Moana as Thalasso had no availability anymore.

The more research we did, the more we realized that we did not want to go during rainy season. If we were going, we were going to do it right. And on top of that, the St. Regis Maldives had their thing going on. So we booked that for January and decided to once again, push off our Bora trip. I found 4 consecutive nights in Le Moana and decided that as the date got closer, if we wanted another night or two, we’d figure something else out (the calendar had scattered nights). Luck has it that I was browsing one day later and found Le Moana’s calendar WIDE OPEN. So I booked another 2 nights. We had two separate reservations – June 23-27 and June 27-29. After going back and forth, we decided to shave that down by 1 night and stay in the IC Tahiti for 1 night so that we wouldn’t be in PPT airport for 4 hours (and thank G-d we did that as you’ll see later).

This is where things got interesting. I couldn’t shave 1 night off online, because that would require cancelling and rebooking and from what I’ve read, there’s no guarantee that the nights would go back into reward inventory and at that point, the reward calendar was 0 for it's next 300. So I called IHG…

The first agent on the phone had the same qualms as me and decided to transfer me to a manager. The manager confidently said that he’s going to cancel the 2 nights and in 5 minutes, I’ll receive another email showing a new reservation for one night. Before I could ask him to wait on the phone with me while he processed it, he hung up. So I waited 5 minutes. And then another 5. And another 5. And another 30. (Mind you, I had already spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with the first few people!). And then I called back. Getting all the way to a case manager (Steve) who sounded American (finally!). After explaining the situation to him, he said that they will do a review and if what I said happened is true (phone records blah blah), then they will book a revenue stay, they will pay for it, and manually deduct the points out of my account. He was to get back to me in 5 days.

True to his word, he called me back in 5 days, but only to tell me that he didn’t have an answer yet and that he’d call me back in 2. This time, he didn’t call me back so I called on the 3rd day and got a different case manager who said she was going to review it right then and call me back in twenty minutes. I left her saying that I’ve been taken around the block on this and wasn’t too happy, the usual frustrated customer thing (I really was frustrated). She said not to worry and that she’ll have an answer that I’ll be satisfied with. She called back but I was in a meeting (I have a day job!) so I didn’t answer. She left me a voicemail saying IHG was going to pay for that 5th night, and NOT deduct the points from my account!

Was it worth the hassle? Maybe. I got a free $300 (valuing 60k points at .5) or a free $800 (revenue for the last night) depending on how you look at it, for 3 hours on the phone.

We wanted overwater for some of our stay so I emailed the hotel about that (and about the food sitch) and he was happy to offer me a few upgrade options:

- An Overwater Lagon Bungalow at the rate of 18 951 CFP per nigth taxes included.

- An Overwater Horizon Bungalow at the rate of 26 896 CFP per night taxes included.

- An Overwater End of Ponton at the rate of 30 928 CFP per night taxes included.

The rate is basically 100 to 1, just to make things simple.

We chose option 2 for the last two nights of our stay. The lagoon bungalows are barely in the water, and who cares for the end of pontoon?

We only did 2 nights and not all 5 because we wanted to try the beach bungalows, plus we wanted to run up a tab on other things not room related, plus we were coming fresh off of 5 nights in overwater in Maldives and had already experienced the thrill. Ruining the surprise, we both agreed after the trip that we actually enjoyed the beach bungalow more than the overwater, though for those that never experienced overwater before, that might not hold true.

We booked the 6th night in IC Tahiti and now had to decide flights.

I simultaneously had (2 years in the making) but also didn’t have (wanted to get below 5/24) enough time to get 320k AA miles to do RT in ATN J. Plus dw and I don’t care so much for business (although after our return flight, we made a bli neder vow to not go more than 6 hours on a plane in Y ever again). We booked Y on AF OW , 30k Flying Blue + $187 pp, and I had exactly 84K AA miles, good enough for 2 OW in Y. Boy do I wish I had signed up for a few more cards to get 160K (I have since got over my obsession of going under 5/24 once I got the reserve and have now come to the realization that I will probably never open a chase card for as long as that rule exists). But that’s for later.

Checking AF’s calendar, I couldn’t find one day where they had “classic” business availability, only flex, which prices out at 187k OW. I like business class but not to the tune of burning basically every last point I have and then some. ATN on the other hand was pretty wide open with business class on all of their flights around the time I was going/coming, I just didn’t have the miles to do it. You can all do your research on the planes and whatnot but ATN is not lie flat and didn’t look to be all that great. Obv, it’s better than Y.

So we were all set. Flying AF’s red-eye, June 22-23 landing at 5:20 AM. Air Tahiti (for the 100th time - not affiliated with ATN) at 7AM, landing in BOB at 7:45.

Return flight – Leaving BOB at 7:15PM on June 28th, landing in PPT at 8PM, staying in IC Tahiti one night, leaving PPT 11:45PM, landing in LAX 10:55AM on Fri June 30th.

We had to get to LAX. As far as I know, I couldn’t attach a domestic leg to my AF flight (If I could, please embarrass me and let me know). And since I was returning on Fri to LAX, I couldn’t attach a domestic leg to NY to make in time for Shabbat. Not that AA would have had any saver availability anyway. So we needed a RT to LA, and I was hell bent on taking a red eye July 2-3. Getting there, we could have went either June 21 or 22, depending on what was cheapest. I had a free IHG night that we could have used in LA if we went on June 21 (I only like to use this for 60k point/night properties) .

(AF doesn’t fly PPT to LAX on Thurs night/Fri morning so I couldn’t switch this around with the hopes of attaching the NY to LAX leg for free on the front of the trip. Again the likelihood of AA having SAAver was so low that it doesn’t really matter).

I recently signed up for the Alaska card using the upgraded offer of 30k + free companion + $100 statement credit after $1k spend. I got the companion pass after the statement closed in early June and immediately went to finding flights. None of the carriers had direct J availability and I hate stopovers, especially when carrying frozen food. Typical United to release Y saver within 3 weeks but the two flights they did release for were not good times for us. We concluded we were going to pay and at least earn miles on that flight. The prices were ridiculous ($500+ RT) on all airlines but thanks to the companion pass, we got BOGO. So we were to fly June 21 on virgin, landed in LAX at around 8PM. And returned with 10:10PM to EWR, landing at 6:30AM.

The last bit of hotel planning was where we would stay in LA over the weekend. We wanted to get in on the freedom 10% in March if we were going to pay for hotels. We ran out of SPG points in MLE and there are no Hyatt’s in LA so it was either IC Century City again or paying.

I told DW she can spend whatever it would cost for us to stay in IC Century City plus a little bit (buying points – I don’t buy free nights…) So she chose The London in Beverly Hills (magnificent as you will see).

We thought we got on the 10% Chase Freedom last minute but after fighting with Chase, they wouldn’t give us the 10% (story for another time/thread). So we cancelled what we had with them and booked through priceline (and the price turned out to be $150/night cheaper so screw Chase and their 10% lol).

To recap:
06/21 - JFK  LAX 5PM to 8PM
Stay in IC Century City

06/23 – LAX  PPT 12AM – 5AM
06/23 – PPT  BOB 7AM – 7:45AM
Stay in IC Le Moana

06/28 – BOB  PPT 7:15PM – 8PM
Stay in IC Tahiti

06/29-30 – PPT  LAX 11:45PM – 11AM
Stay in The London Beverly Hills

07/02-03 – LAX EWR 10PM – 6:30AM
Sleep in my bed without setting an alarm

To be continued…

Do you want a wiki? lol

[CZ60]

Do you want a wiki? lol

If it's free then of course

[davidmal]

If it's free then of course

for some members.

[CZ60]

for some members.

I called retention, they waived the fee for this TR,  I told them it'll be better than my last one..

[davidmal]

I called retention, they waived the fee for this TR,  I told them it'll be better than my last one..

That's bold of you... but looking forward!

[yoohoo]

How did you remember every last detail. Great stuff!

[Travelace]

Do you want a wiki? lol

Amazing! Can you pay some pics?

[CZ60]

Our flight to LA was unremarkable, and got us in on time despite a slight delay leaving JFK (better known as padding). We took uber from the airport, which was pretty cheap (we ended up taking uber everywhere while we were in LA except for our last day when we rented a silvercar). Not renting a car was definitely a good idea for us, since most uber rides were less than $10 within LA and less than $30 to and from the airports. Parking in the hotel would have cost $$, not including the price of car rental and gas. And one sidenote, I haven’t experienced this in NYC but the price difference between a pool of 2 people and regular uberX in LA is less than 10% on 9/10 rides.

When we got to the IC Century City and went to check in, we were given an option of taking a standard room right then, or to wait 10 minutes for a free upgrade to a suite due to “our loyalty”  - platinum status from having the credit card. That credit card is really a keeper for just $49/year. We agreed to wait and mentioned that we were on our honeymoon (every trip without kids is a honeymoon). After 10 minutes the woman came to give us our keys and said she upgraded us 6 levels to the honeymoon Suite and gave us 2 free breakfast vouchers for the next morning. Double score.

The honeymoon Suite was huge and so comfortable, with amazing views of the city.

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20170621_222026

Some pics of the hotel in general
20170621_215545

20170621_215528

Overall, we didn't spend much time there, but we thought the intercontinental was a nice hotel, although the location was out of the way from a lot of the fun areas of LA. Nothing an Uber can’t fix.

Thursday:
I'm not getting into a kosher discussion here but the free breakfast definitely helped get us started for the day. We needed it because we were going to walk A LOT.

We spent the day at Universal Studios. We were debating whether to buy general admission tickets for $110 pp or front of line tickets for $179. Based on our research, we were going during high season, when lines could reach upwards of 2 hours on certain rides but we didn't know if the front of line passes would be worth the extra money. Shoutout to my friend Jack F here who asked me if I have perks at work or some other program through my office. Our company does offer this (minor) benefit but it saved me $20 per ticket on front of line. For $159 vs. $105 (the price of a regular ticket on the website) I decided to just go for the FOL and we were so glad we did. We were able to go on every ride and sit front/best row at every show, and didn't wait more than 10 minutes for even the busiest attractions. The lines on some rides reached 90 minutes so it was definitely worth the few extra dollars. Overall we had a great day, the studio tour (included with the tickets) was fun and interesting, Harry Potter world was something to see, especially if you're a fan, and the rides were all fun, although many of the 4D ones were similar to each other. We especially liked the special effects show and the animal actors show, don't miss those if you're going. (I won’t bore you with pics of Universal because if I do, we’ll never get to the main event, and let’s be honest, that’s all you’re here for)

That night we went to the famous Fish Grill (on Pico) for dinner. We got fish tacos and fish and chips, both excellent. We are admittedly bad at getting pics of our food for the simple reason of we over exert ourselves when we go on vacation and become famished. Then when the food comes, we eat before even thinking of taking a picture. Then when we remember, it’s way too late. Sorry everyone! 9/10 on the food, 10/10 value , 10/10 location.

We then headed back to the hotel and showered in the spa then got our stuff (they were storing our frozen meals so this part always takes a good 10 minutes) and went to the airport. We left for the airport way earlier than we thought we needed to but there was so much traffic and the airport was an absolute mess- so many people and so few TSA agents taking their time with everything. The Tom Bradley International terminal in LAX is one of the worst experiences at an airport in my life. We ended up with no time to spend at the priority pass lounge (which I think was closed for PP cardholders at that time of night anyway??). I thought Newark was a bad airport. LAX, though more modern and nicer looking, is a MESS.

Also, instead of buying drinks for $20/drink in Bora Bora, I was told by friends to BYOL. Since I didn’t want to carry too much from NY to LA and through, I bought some in duty free LA. Prices are the same as NY but it still turned out to be a great move. Sitting by the beach, virtually unlimited scotch in hand, what could possibly be better?

The overnight flight on air France went by pretty quickly. The seat was pretty decent. I was asleep before we took off (in the upright position!) and I woke up with 2-3 hours to go. Dw also slept like a baby. One hiccup though is that even though we requested kosher meals by phone and were able to confirm that we will be receiving kosher meals on our online profile, for some reason the stewardesses did not have our names on their lists and did not have any kosher meals on the plane. Good thing we were stuffed anyways from Fish Grill, we fell asleep the whole flight and didn't care to not eat but the miscommunication would have been terrible under other circumstances. After the trip we made a quick call to Air France and told them about the issue. They were very apologetic on the phone and offered us $200 worth of gift cards for the trouble, one of which was an amex GC, the other a macys GC. I’ll take $100 over airplane food anyday!

One thing to note, it doesn’t seem like AF even offers a red-eye to PPT anymore! I really think we got the last red-eye from LAX-PPT. I don’t know if it’s a seasonal thing or a permanent change but not taking a red-eye is a potential disaster. Waste of day and you probably have to spend the night in PPT. Seems like the only option is ATN. Better start saving those AA miles..

We landed in Tahiti at around 5:30AM and had a flight on air Tahiti at 7am…Stay tuned to find out if we made that flight…..

[davidmal]

I love the window into the bathroom

my first experience of this was rooming with someone on a business trip to china
separate beds, a window into the bathroom with the lock & handles on the outside.

[ar]

Hey

Anyway we will still hear about the rest of your trip? Your title really got me excited...

[Shmuel4]

Sorry for stalking your youtube channel but...................WOW OMG!!!!!!!!!