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The Lounges of Orlando International Airport (MCO)

Orlando International Airport, otherwise known as MCO in airline speak (Please don’t call it OIA. Well, you could. But you’d be wrong 😉 ), was a destination for over 40 million airline passengers in 2015, which makes it the 14th busiest airport in the U.S. based on total passenger traffic. For many of those passengers, Orlando is their final destination and the need for them to spend hours at the airport waiting for a connecting flight isn’t as great as at a major hub airport like Miami, Atlanta, Chicago or New York-JFK. Subsequently, the airline lounge market has been stagnant, or even declining, over the past decade because leisure travelers weren’t the bread and butter customers for lounges. These lounges were designed with the business travelers in mind, giving them a place to be productive while waiting for their next flight.

Fortunately, times have changed and many more people have lounge access thanks to credit card benefits, so the lounges at Orlando Airport are finally starting to catch up.

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Bet You Didn’t Know You Can Pay For The London Underground With This

London is one of our favorite (or favourite) cities in the world to visit. It’s charming yet bustling. Grand and imperial, but still warm and comforting. We’ve visited London more than any other city outside of the U.S, and look for any reason we can find to go back.

Our trips to London usually consist of us traveling around on the London Underground system. In 2013, we finally admitted to ourselves that we would be visiting London over and over again so we went and purchased Oyster cards. Continue reading “Bet You Didn’t Know You Can Pay For The London Underground With This”

Help Us Plan Our Next Trip!

Sharon and I going to make a quick weekend trip (celebrities, you have been given fair warning!) and are looking for things we should NOT MISS.

It’s been almost TWENTY YEARS (I can’t believe it) since I visited the city of Chicago and 13 years since Sharon did. We have a whole day on Saturday to sightsee and really have no idea what to do. Ed Debevics, Sharon’s favorite Chicago food spot, is closed. The one thing I wanted to do isn’t happening because the Chicago Cubs don’t plan their home game schedule around my trips. How dare they! 😉

Wrigley Field — My one time seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley. This was a while ago but I still have the hat.

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Act Now If You Want Two Free Nights at a Swanky Hyatt Hotel

News started to filter out this week that Chase was going to change the sign up bonus for the Hyatt Credit Card. The current offer is:

Earn 2 free nights at any Hyatt hotel or resort worldwide after you spend $2,000 on purchases with the Hyatt Credit Card in the first 3 months from account opening.

Before applying, remember the following disclaimer:

This product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of this credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of this credit card who received a new cardmember bonus for this credit card within the last 24 months.

This sign up bonus is extremely valuable because it’s good at any Hyatt. You can read posts online of how people have stayed at the Park Hyatt in Sydney (it overlooks the Sydney Opera House), or the Park Hyatt Tokyo (it was featured in the film “Lost in Translation”) or the mega-Instagrammable Park Hyatt Maldives. You know, that place with those bungalows that stretch out into the never-ending blue sea.

If you were dreaming of a trip like that, you need to act NOW!!!!

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How Logging Into A Website Can Make Your Booking More Expensive

I’ve read plenty of online articles about how websites give different pricing to people based on which web browser you are using. Originally I saw posts that if you were using Apple’s Safari browser, you’d be shown a higher price because Apple customers tend to have a higher income and wouldn’t notice a few more dollars.

I’ve never noticed this myself so I figured that websites learned that people were smarter than that and would just use a different browser.

Flash forward to the present and when I tried to make booking thru Expedia.

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What U.S. Cities Do You Want To Visit?

It’s nice to think about taking a trip to some exotic location. Flying half way around the globe to visit an ancient temple or natural wonder. I’ve done it and, well, it’s fantastic.

DSCN3146 — Our visit to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, 2014

I also realize that whether I like it or not, international travel isn’t going to be getting any easier in the near future. Instead of complaining about whatever changes may be put into effect, I’ve decided to look into places to visit in the U.S. instead. We live in a big country and there are many different cities to visit. I’d encourage you to get out and travel around the United States – life is all about experiences, so experience as much as you can!

Here is a short list of places in America that I’d like to visit. Please note that this is my list and I think Sharon might have a thing or two to say about going to a few of these places (edit from Sharon – editorial comments? ME??? LOLOL!).

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Earning Starpoints When Riding With Uber

I admit I was either an early or late adopter of Uber, depending on who you talk to. I had been aware of the service for quite a while, and requested my first ride back in 2014 (the car got caught in Manhattan traffic and we ended up taking a taxi instead). Out first actual “Uber” ride was in Australia and the Uber was in a taxi because in Australia that’s all they would allow Uber to book at the time.

Since then, Uber has pushed the boundaries and has rattled some entrenched monopolies in the process, including the Mears Taxi and Van service in our hometown of Orlando. I’m a huge fan of Uber (and Lyft) if for no other reason than the taxi monopolies needed to have some competition in order to raise the low service levels they were providing to customers. So when I found out I could earn valuable Starpoints good for the Preferred Guest program just for riding with Uber, I was thrilled. In a comment on Facebook, one of our readers also said something about how they like to earn Starpoints when using Uber, so I thought this tip might be helpful to other readers. Continue reading “Earning Starpoints When Riding With Uber”