New Braunfels Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

An Open Letter To The CEO Of Cedar Fair: Don’t Ruin Our Favorite Water Park!

On Thursday night I received an email from Schlitterbahn, the water park in New Braunfels that we travel over 1000 miles to visit every year.

We have annual passes so I figured it was a thank you for being a loyal guest. But then I started to read.

What?

I immediately Googled, found an article with the details and texted it to Sharon. Her response was the same as the one in my head. It’s four letters long and something that I won’t write on the blog because we’re (usually) pretty family-friendly around here.

We’re getting ready to make our yearly trip Schlitterbahn, and this news has been running through my head. I decided the best way to express my feelings was to write the CEO of Cedar Fair.

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I Need To Plan Some Trips ASAP!

It’s the time of the year when we need to decide our travel schedule for the following year. This is a necessary task because my work obligations make me put in for coverage if I want an entire week, or two, away from my job. The good thing about this is it forces Sharon and I to decide where we want to travel, Right now this is especially important because we don’t have any trips planned in 2019. What?!?!?!?! We need to fix that ASAP!

Now, we have “ideas” about what we want to go and when we want to go but it’s a different thing to set a date. It’s helpful because it was at this time last year we finally firmed up dates for our overdue visit New Orleans (where we had a parade to celebrate).

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Our Long Term Love Affair With The Best Water Park In The World: Schlitterbahn, In New Braunfels, Texas

Joe and I have been going to Schlitterbahn Water Park in New Braunfels, Texas, nearly every year since 2006. For us, it’s our “happy place” vacation, where we don’t have to plan anything; we know where we’re going to go for the whole trip and we can “just go,” and play, relax and eat delicious food. Well, and visit Buc-ee’s, too. Probably several times (but I’m not obsessed).

So many people we know have more traditional places to visit every year. The mountains. The shore. How and why did we wind up with a water park like Schlitterbahn as our annual “go to” vacation? Well, I’ll tell ya…

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I Want The Buc-ee’s TDECU Credit Union MasterCard. Here’s Why.

I have many travel credit cards to my name (even more if you count the ones that Sharon has). I keep some of them, like the American Express Everyday Preferred, because they earn a lot of points. I have other cards, such as the Citi Prestige and the Chase Sapphire Reserve, because of the travel benefits they offer. I keep even others because of the very specific perks I get – the Chase Disney Visa is a good example of that.

It’s rare that I come across a credit card that I’ve never heard about and even rarer that I find a card I want to have for no rational reason at all. But leave it to me…I found one.

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Flash Sale! Buy IHG Points For 0.5 Cents Each

IHG, the parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and the Intercontinental hotels, is having a flash sale to buy points for the IHG Rewards Club program. They’re offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles for now until March 22, 2018. I’m not a big fan of purchasing miles without a use in mind but it’s really easy to get at least 0.5 cents per point value out of IHG points. For a while, I found IHG points to be the best value of any hotel program.

I maxed out my IHG point purchase last year when I bought 60,000 points during one of these 100% bonus promotions, ending up with 120,000 IHG points in my account. Unfortunately, those points are still sitting there. I don’t feel that was a bad purchase; I haven’t found a good time to redeem them. I did lose out by holding on to them because the value of my points decreased when IHG increased the points needed to redeem a free night at several hotels we like to stay at.

I’m still going to buy points again during this flash sale. Why?

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