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Spankytoes

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Everything posted by Spankytoes

  1. Don't have an opinion one way or another on Houston. It's usually a piss break stop on the way to Galveston for me. The weather sucks but the food is good. Had some good times at Treasures back in the day. There was also a decent restaurant in the gayborhood that served a great brie and green apple appetizer on Sunday Fundays. Their Dallas obsession is weird as no one outside of Houston gave a shit about the Oilers. I'm biased on DFW. It's a great place to raise a family. There is enough to do if you know the lay of the land. The downtown area is a wasteland though Uptown is cool. Deep Ellum is seeing a bit of a resurgence, which is nice. Ft. Worth is a nice change of pace and my go-to spot for bringing out of town visitors that want the stereotypes. Dallas has the hottest women IMO. There is nothing redeeming about SA outside of the Tex-Mex. Not my cup of tea. Austin, on the other hand, is somewhat comical. Everyone there thumps their chest about how they used to be the hot chick while refusing to accept the fact that they have aged poorly. They are Dallas/Houston Lite now with better scenery and expensive housing. Austin pre-9/11 was the shit. I wouldn't want to live there now though. It's a cool place to go if you've never been out of Texas these days. I don't think about El Paso or the RGV unless they're in the news for a Cartel killing.
  2. 35 years spent in Dallas and I never once heard this. Dallas is more like the anti-Austin, if anything.
  3. I'm not sure you know what it is a travel agent does.
  4. I'm actually doing this trip at the end of August. (3 nights in Paris, 2 near Omaha Beach) If you want to do London, Flybe has daily service from Caen. A train to Munich from the North of France sounds awful.
  5. How were the stats pre-Mid 90's? Do you have data to show these these work on a significant level to curb what you claim to be the benefit? By the logic presented, Uber has decreased the number of DWIs people get before it was available nationwide. Shouldn't the government provide a slush fund for citizens to use Uber instead of spending it on the imprisonment, prosecution and fines assessed for people driving drunk? I guarantee it would be much cheaper to do that and would significantly curb the issue, therefore potentially savings lives. The government doesn't make a profit on that though. Stats are fun because you can misrepresent them any way you want.
  6. Walk me through my defense, since I am presumed innocent before being proven guilty. I get a red light camera ticket 2 months after the alleged incident. The ticket itself shows my car, my license plates and has a timestamp but does not conclusively prove that I ran any red light. How am I supposed to remember the details of the incident when I may not be aware that I've run a red light or did in fact not run a red light? But wait, red light tickets aren't actual tickets. If you don't pay, you don't go to jail, you get strongly worded letters from collection agencies. So I'm still out there, running red lights and shit, not paying your arbitrary fine that has not been passed into law and the roads are no better for it. Makes sense.
  7. Haha. We’re “roughing it” in Quebec this weekend
  8. Try leaving LaGuardia Golfing again?
  9. I'm not sure what to tell you. Everything you posted states that the ticket price may be discounted, not raised, due to age. You said that the fare went up and were asking "why". The only experiences I know of that would affect this are listed above, most notably your child being treated as an unaccompanied minor, which would occur if he/she was on her own reservation instead of on the same reservation as someone traveling with them that's 15 years or older. But, if AA gave you an answer, and you accept it, then this is all moot. They do not have a publicized policy that I'm aware of that would make the explanation provided to you accurate.
  10. Hmmm.... Is the child on the same reservation as someone older than 15? That's the only thing I can think of that would make that assessment correct.
  11. As a multi-city trip. (JFK-LIS; LIS-MAD) TAP rules allow for the stopover so no additional points were needed. I booked through Travel Awards- Flights on the TY site rather than transferring points. It was a straight booking on TAP through the TY site
  12. Then call the airline to book over the phone. Explain the situation and they will most likely waive the booking fee. A child tax isn't a thing I've ever heard of.
  13. I did not. Citi TY points don't have a whole lot of value as a transfer partner for me outside of JetBlue, which I only use for South America and the Caribbean for personal travel. (I use them sparingly to get to BOS for work) I know that you can transfer to Avianica, Ethiad, etc. and get a backend value, but I haven't really seen it benefit my travel patterns. I'm lucky in that I have 5 easily accessible airports (Well, really 4) around me. So I can use points towards a myriad of airfare deals. For example, I used 10,560 Citi TY points to book JFK-LIS; LIS-MAD on TAP Portugal with no further out of pocket for taxes. Because TAP allows stopovers in LIS, it didn't cost me anything extra for the LIS-MAD leg. If I transferred points to another program, I would cost me triple the amount of points used for 2 segments + I would be out of pocket for taxes. I did the same thing for JFK-LIS-MUC on a trip in September for Oktoberfest. Rather than using 30K Chase points on Lufthansa by way of United, it cost me 17,912 Citi TY points, which aren't as valuable due to Chase's superior partner options. My sweet spot for airfare using points is $425.00 or under each way. I'm willing to pay a tad more if the carrier is a OneWorld partner to earn miles. If it's cheap, like my MAD-JFK flight, I just buy it outright. Sometimes I use them for car rentals, especially in Europe where I can't do shit with my Hertz points because the automatic class always seems to be higher than the max award redemption class. Other times I use them for activities or airport transport. Instead of spending $69.00 to shuttle myself and 2 buddies from AMS to the Intercontinental, I redeemed 6,652 Citi TY points. I regularly book excursions with them as well. I used 16,211 Citi TY points + $73.30 to book my wife and I to Dunns River Falls, tubing and the Blue Hole in Ocho Rios rather than paying almost $450.00. It really just depends what works best for you. A lot of people discount the straight travel feature of these kind of points redemptions because it gets ingrained that they are always a bad value. Not really. While I would rather fly AA and enjoy my status to FRA, I am perfectly fine using Citi TY points to book a direct flight on Lufthansa because they are running a sale to save my AA miles for another trip/class upgrade. Before I book, I always lookup my flight pairings on Google flights to see what the market is and decide from there.
  14. In celebration of becoming an empty nester next month, I've booked a Thanksgiving jaunt to Lisbon and Madrid. We decided not to go to Dallas this year and it doesn't make sense to cook a feast for the both of us: My house to JFK- $5.00 (LIRR-Jamaica Station-AirTrain) JFK-LIS (Stopover in LIS)- 10,560 Citi TY Points LIS-MAD- $0 (Continuing flight) MAD-JFK- $209.90 (Norwegian Air) RT Private car transfer to/from LIS: 7,234 Citi TY Points 3 nights at the HIX Lisbon- 75,000 IHG points 2 nights at Hotel Indigo Madrid- 80,000 IHG points RT Private car transfer to/from MAD- 6,347 Citi TY Points Uber from JFK-My house- $35.00 Various Metro charges in LIS & MAD- $20.00 Tours/Entrance fees- $30.00 Total for 3 nights in Lisbon and 2 nights in Madrid (Including breakfast): $299.90
  15. Are you sure that you didn't change the baggage requirements? For example, Google Flights defaults to the Basic Economy price on AA. When you add in the Main Cabin to get a carry-on included, the price per ticket increases. Age shouldn't have anything to do with pricing unless you need extra services. (I.E. Unaccompanied minor, pre-boarding services, traveling with pets, etc.)
  16. Well...yeah. But I’d assume that if you were EP you wouldn’t be asking this question.
  17. This is key. If you booked a flight from DFW-LHR on AA, it would cost $150.00 to get your miles back for the first passenger. You would get refunded your taxes of about $6. If you booked the same flight on BA, you would get everything back minus your taxes. But, BA has a hefty fuel surcharge for TA flights, so it’s actually cheaper with AA. But, if you canceled a domestic flight booked with BA, there is no fuel surcharge. So you would only be out the $6 in taxes. AA’s fees would be the same $150.00 - taxes. I book flights with BA all the time because I can gamble with $6 if I have to cancel. It’s more important to grab the seat. (That’s what I did for the Sugar Bowl a few weeks before the Big 12 CCG) If you book on Southwest, you can cancel for free and hold the funds for your taxes for a future trip up to one (1) year later. You’ll need to look at your specific airline restrictions.
  18. I swear, Shaggy/Surly has the most cultured children per capita of any website. If I told my kids at 11 and 14 that I was going to take them to Amsterdam to check out museums or Bruges to people watch and embrace the local culture, because there isn't shit to do in Bruges except drink cherry beer in a tavern, they would have pissed and moaned about it. Especially when you add in a 10+ hour flight to get there. I don't deny that your kids have a passing interest in these things, but I think it's more of what you want to do than anything. If you offered them Disneyland Paris, a Harry Potter studio tour in London or a small town in Croatia, I don't think there would be a contest. Having said that, Interlaken is a fantastic suggestion for what you are trying to accomplish. Switzerland, Alps, scenery, camping, plenty of activities...it checks all the boxes. Just know that a mountain becomes "just another mountain" after Day 3. I would work my way through Germany/Austria and down to Switzerland. Do the Romantic Road all the way to Munich. Then a day trip to Salzburg. Then down to Castle Neuchwanstein and Innsbruck and then to Interlaken. Fly an open jaw back from Zurich.
  19. She has East Tatooine box face
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