Why Wait 'Til April? Hawaii Thursday!
Dec. 19th, 2021 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerWhen I booked a bunch of flights last Thursday there was one thing I hadn't booked travel for: Christmas. We don't celebrate Christmas, but since our employers give us days off for it we try to take advantage of the paid time away from work by doing something better than sitting home and catching up on housecleaning.
We'd pondered the question, "Where can we go around Christmas?" a few times already without coming up with a definite plan. We considered going out to Chicago several days early... but it's too cold for outdoors activities in Chicago, and with the Coronavirus Pandemic becoming the Coronavirus Endemic it's not really interesting to spend several days seeing shows and visiting museums. We thought about visiting relatives in Wisconsin who've just gotten through a rough patch and could use some company... but they made last-minute travel plans of their own.
Saturday morning I thought again about Hawaii. We have tickets to go in April... but no plans other than an arrival and a departure. "I can at least start exploring stuff to do," I figured. And pretty quickly, as my list of things I'd like to do on the island of Oahu grew, I started thinking, "Hmm, could we go now?" Answer: We could!
Rental cars suck. In Kona (on the Big Island) all the major agencies are sold out. On Oahu about half the majors have cars left... at a starting price of about $175/day.
Finding a place to stay under $300/night was hard. Hawk combed through AirB&B listings while I checked hotels. One great-looking AirB&B condo that netted out to $250/night disappeared under our fingertips by the time we'd cross-referenced the address to look at the location and figure out how necessary a rental car would be. The same thing happened with our #2 choice. 😡
We had similar bad luck with hotels. The cash prices were all fairly high— over $300 even for 3-star type accommodations— and the points rates were high, too. I did find a goods points rate at the Hyatt Regency... and by the time (a few minutes later) we transferred points to reserve it, the availability was gone! 😣🤬ðŸ˜
I ended up booking at a Hilton in Waikiki. It was, like, our seventh choice at that point, but at least the points cost was reasonable. It was $300/night worth of points, but it was points not cash.
By this point we had spend several hours working on bookings. With credible plans for flights, a car, and a hotel booked we took a break for lunch. It was already 3:30!
I had a suspicion the Hyatt might have availability open up. Sure enough, when we got back home from our late lunch/early dinner, they did. Hawk rushed an extra 20k points over to her account and booked a 5 night stay for 100k points. (These points work out to $300/night, too, but again that's better than $300 cash. Points have limited use so it's generally worth spending them vs. cash when they have equal value.)
The final F-U came when I tried to cancel my Hilton reservation. "Cancel through the 23rd" it said. I read that as December 23. It was actually November 23. D'oh! Seriously, who the fuck prints "Cancel by November 23" when it's already December 19? Well, it looks like I just flushed $300 of Hilton points down the drain.
Most of the trip is paid for with points. The flights are on points, the hotel(s) are on points. Our main cash cost will be the rental car— and what a cost it will be! In addition to running about $175/day for the car it'll be another $50/day or so for parking. At $225 a day for the privilege of having a car (and we'll still have to pay for gas) the car is getting close to the cost of our room!
We'd pondered the question, "Where can we go around Christmas?" a few times already without coming up with a definite plan. We considered going out to Chicago several days early... but it's too cold for outdoors activities in Chicago, and with the Coronavirus Pandemic becoming the Coronavirus Endemic it's not really interesting to spend several days seeing shows and visiting museums. We thought about visiting relatives in Wisconsin who've just gotten through a rough patch and could use some company... but they made last-minute travel plans of their own.
Saturday morning I thought again about Hawaii. We have tickets to go in April... but no plans other than an arrival and a departure. "I can at least start exploring stuff to do," I figured. And pretty quickly, as my list of things I'd like to do on the island of Oahu grew, I started thinking, "Hmm, could we go now?" Answer: We could!
If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again
While we did ultimately make plans to visit Hawaii over Christmas it was not easy. ...Well, one part of it was easy: the flights. Yes, inexpensive flights were still available. And the 2-for-1 of my Southwest Companion Pass made them extra inexpensive. But everything else was hard.Rental cars suck. In Kona (on the Big Island) all the major agencies are sold out. On Oahu about half the majors have cars left... at a starting price of about $175/day.
Finding a place to stay under $300/night was hard. Hawk combed through AirB&B listings while I checked hotels. One great-looking AirB&B condo that netted out to $250/night disappeared under our fingertips by the time we'd cross-referenced the address to look at the location and figure out how necessary a rental car would be. The same thing happened with our #2 choice. 😡
We had similar bad luck with hotels. The cash prices were all fairly high— over $300 even for 3-star type accommodations— and the points rates were high, too. I did find a goods points rate at the Hyatt Regency... and by the time (a few minutes later) we transferred points to reserve it, the availability was gone! 😣🤬ðŸ˜
I ended up booking at a Hilton in Waikiki. It was, like, our seventh choice at that point, but at least the points cost was reasonable. It was $300/night worth of points, but it was points not cash.
By this point we had spend several hours working on bookings. With credible plans for flights, a car, and a hotel booked we took a break for lunch. It was already 3:30!
I had a suspicion the Hyatt might have availability open up. Sure enough, when we got back home from our late lunch/early dinner, they did. Hawk rushed an extra 20k points over to her account and booked a 5 night stay for 100k points. (These points work out to $300/night, too, but again that's better than $300 cash. Points have limited use so it's generally worth spending them vs. cash when they have equal value.)
The final F-U came when I tried to cancel my Hilton reservation. "Cancel through the 23rd" it said. I read that as December 23. It was actually November 23. D'oh! Seriously, who the fuck prints "Cancel by November 23" when it's already December 19? Well, it looks like I just flushed $300 of Hilton points down the drain.
The Plan, So Far
So, what we've landed on as a plan is to fly out from Oakland, California on Thursday to Honolulu, Hawaii, returning on Tuesday. We picked Oakland even though it's the least convenient of the 3 Bay Area airports because it had good prices on good flight times— no getting up at 4am for early morning departures or getting in past midnight after late-night arrivals. We'll stay at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki... though we could just as easily forfeit $300 of points there (first night's stay) and stay at the Hilton. 😅 At the moment neither stay has been cancelled. So Hawk and I could even stay at separate hotels! 🤣Most of the trip is paid for with points. The flights are on points, the hotel(s) are on points. Our main cash cost will be the rental car— and what a cost it will be! In addition to running about $175/day for the car it'll be another $50/day or so for parking. At $225 a day for the privilege of having a car (and we'll still have to pay for gas) the car is getting close to the cost of our room!
no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:41 am (UTC)I checked "turo", an app that's like AirBnB for cars. Most places it's so people can rent someone's exotic car for a day just for the experience. Here, it was looking like I could get a 2015 Nissan Sentra for $275/day... Ouch.
Luckily my lovely wife knows someone on-island who makes extra money by renting out their daughter's car when she's not using it. So I wound up driving a Scion iQ for the week I was here, and it only cost $75/day.
Buying a new car is also stupid difficult. You go to the dealer, and there are something like four vehicles for sale on the whole lot.
We eventually figured out that it was well worth the $2K to ship her white car over here. It's not a car we used that often anyway, and of course it's long since paid for! Far cheaper than buying a car or renting for more than a week or two!
Probably not a good solution for your situation, of course. Since it took about a month for the car to get shipped from the Port of Oakland to Hilo.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 10:12 pm (UTC)