TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
This blog has been a labor of love so far. If you like what you see here, please let others know by passing them a link to my blog, thank you!
TRAVEL
AWAKEN video. It will blow you away. Found here first.
AWAKEN from Cameron Michael on Vimeo.
14 Adventurous Photographs of a Serial Trespasser. By Dashburst. Dang it, another two ruin photos from Detroit, so unfair 🙂 
The Incredible Story of How a Couple Got Married on a Runway at Detroit’s Metro Airport. By Jaunted. I am a sucker for feel good stories, especially when they involve Detroit airport 🙂
Yep, another one. Looks like a Greek company is trying to brand the area I spent every summer as a kid. Love it! And they insist this was not photo shopped. Hmm…
Southwest 72 Hour Sale. Ok, you likely have less than 48 hours. Re shop your flights now as it appears other airlines may be matching!
MILES/POINTS
75 Direct Flights From Los Angeles That Can Be Booked With British Airways Avios. By DansDeals. I like these posts. I can save them in my Evernote and then recall them as I need them. If I lived in LA I would certainly use 4.5k BA miles to…Fresno, woohoo!
Maximizing the 2 day Sears/MileagePlus 16X promotion By Frequent Miler. Today is the last day for this excellent promo. It even made me (allergic to shopping) take notice. I assigned task to Mrs. TBB to find stuff we can use and/or stack up and send me links.Waiting…
Register for Hilton’s 4th Quarter More Nights, More Points promotion here. Stay two nights and double your points for your entire stay. Stay three nights to triple your points, or four nights to quadruple your points. October 10 to January 31, 2014. List of non participating hotels (ridiculously long!)
ON MY MIND
Our Alaska miles expired (oh the horror) but a phone call got them all back “I was thinking of switching all my flights away from Delta and would love to start flying Alaska, I guess you don’t want me”…It worked 🙂
Another blogger mentioned on Twitter that his Credit Karma affiliate links are to be taken away shortly. Which makes me think evil thoughts “Will only pumpers get to have and pump them out to their audience?”.
There is a great promo to get you to open an ebates account. I could surf over there and grab my own referral link but I am just too lazy. This is the last sentence I write before hitting Publish. If you do not have an ebates account, it is one of the few online things I highly recommend as my experience with them has been absolutely stellar. If you want a referral contact me, you know what to do.
I need to get a life. All I do is Money & Miles.
ODDZ & ENDZ
Sculptures & Installations: 20 of the most amazing and incredible masterpieces in the world. By The Blog of Francesco Mugnai. I had a really really hard time to pick the best photos to feature in the body of my blog post. These blow my mind!
North Korea, in yet another WTF moment, rushes to construct new ski resort.
BLOG BUZZ
We are back. Million Mile Secrets and the multi part trip reports. Not bad this time, only 11 parts to a short trip to the Dominican Republic. I could be doing my Mega Trip report in 365 parts, a post per day…imagine that 🙂
I think I am numb to all credit card pimp & pump posts that I see every day. I have my permanent pages almost ready. I need better titles: “Blogs I love”, “Blogs I read” “Blogs I ???”. Cringe, hate (don’t like it, do not hate anyone but yellow rubber duckies), can’t stand? “Blogs I love” are the ones I absolutely read every single time a new post comes out and get a great joy out of them! “Blogs I read” well, these are the good ones I read out of a ridiculously long number of blogs out there! And the third category is, well, I am having a hard time coming up with the proper terminology for it! I am open to suggestions here. These will be permanent pages to lay out the state of the blog land, according to Siskel TBB.
I leave you with this…
Great photos as usual!
First? Moi?
Ah, non!!
Sam, so so so close 🙂 John, congrats and thanks!
One day I’ll understand this fascination with me first me first… 🙂
Yeah, me too.It is kind of amusing, it has become some type of tradition or something
Too bad your so prejudice against rubber duckies! They’re so prolific for being plastic. I personally haven’t met a rubber dickie I haven’t liked!
Lol
I’ve gained a new (sick) respect for MV. The dude manages to slip more than one Citi Hilton Reserve link (that pays him commission) into a post that might as well be copied and pasted from others about the Hyatt Visa no annual fee the first year. Now all he needs to do is find a reason to throw in the US card and he’ll achieve perfection.
Check PMM. This must be the mother of all pump posts. Tries to lure you in with 15% off on a place I never heard off and then goes off on a mega cc pump post. Still shaking my head
Wow, the last cards on his list don’t pay commission (I think – Hilton Surpass, Mercedes-Benz Platinum) so they don’t even get linked to.
I agree with you about ebates and hope you get some referrals. They’re the only cash portal that has never given me a hassle. Love the fact that they “push” payments via paypal quarterly with no min. instead of making you request the $ and hitting a threshold. I’ve stopped recommending any other cash portal b/c it’s a bird in the hand.
We agree on ebates, top notch indeed.
Chase’s BA card must be a special this month.
Interestingly I heard from a IB exec last week that Chase is moving away from the current blog cc pimping channel. Curious to see if other banks will follow!
It would be hilarious to see the effect of that
If you need a preview of what it would look like, head over to MileValue
“You can do ______ with the US Airways MC!”*
*if you just do this, this, this, this, this, this and this, while not doing this, this, this, this and this during this 2 week window 8 months from now and fly out of Tulsa through oshkosh
Well, it would be quite interesting to watch the developments in this space if Chase does move away from blogs. I have not seen or heard anything yet. But I do know that there is something going on at Credit Karma. Both of these companies will be at the (Financial) Blogger conference I am attending next week. And a whole bunch of others, including Commission Soup or something like that. I aim to learn about how this crap works 🙂
“If you want a referral contact me, you know what to do.”
uh. I don’t.
You can email me:
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
I did not want to throw it out there in the body of my posts or on twitter to avoid people accusing me of pumping. Pumping is just NOT me!
You may have heard by now of the meteorologist that read the IPCC executive summary and resolved to stop flying last week.
You wouldn’t have read it on any of the major miles/points/travel blogs, because then they would have to be about travel, with thinking authors rather than cut-and-paste donkeys and airport lounge connoisseurs entranced by their own farts. You might think that new data or a newsworthy perspective would allow a post for pause and reflection, but f— you, there are banks to shill for and champagne to gripe about.
You might have read it on FT, where the article was treated with a mix of sarcasm/disdain and calculations trying to figure out if his numbers are right.
In case you were wondering, plane flights still aren’t so good for the climate. Also: water is still wet, and the Pope is still Catholic.
I’m less enamored of this hobby/business daily, and this is one of the major reasons.
Don’t worry, I’ll go away soon.
Agree with this post entirely.
>>> champagne to gripe about
This particularly hit home. Every F!@#ing mention of EVA airlines J seems to include that it is a wonderful airline because they serve Dom Perignon in J. Seriously?! Everyone’s an expert on Champagne now?!
I couldn’t care less about champagne…I never liked that sh*t!
I do monitor Quartz and I like the site for a different point of view. I do remember seeing that headline and decided not to mark it to look into it further. Very important info, thanks for pointing it out to me. My mileage run days of flying for the sake of miles and not leaving the airport are over. Looking back, I was an idiot and a bad bad man 🙂
The real reason he’s calling it quits? Because he’s a DL flyer and DL.com probably quoted 975,000 miles p/p to do that Hawaii and Europe trip he wanted 😉
You are probably right 😉
Also, by sheer coincidence (of course), VFTW and MP trotted out links to the BA Visa with tiresome repetition of the fact that Avios are useful for short-haul flights and that there is a 2-for-1 benefit. One would have thought that by now a monkey with half a brain would have been able to navigate to the BA website and book a flight with Avios given the exposure given to this by the bloggers.
MP let us know how to get 2 for 1 while only paying over $1k in surcharges/taxes/fees for the privilege. Monitoring this crap all day and seeing the nauseating repetition and cc carpet bombings that occur leads me to drink late at night and listen to some seriously angry head banging music. Hey, everyone copes differently 🙂
Well I liked how she talked a bit about infant tickets with the 2 for 1 visa. whatever it’s worth, that post was certainly one of the better ones of the ba visa posts today.
Hey, don’t you have a midterm, go study now 🙂
But she doesn’t seem to advocate taking kids to Europe. It’s a shame, we had a blast. My kid still gets excited when he sees a picture of the Eiffel (pronounced Knife-el) Tower or Big Ben. Our 11-day trip cost less than the BA fuel surcharges.
I’m just not a personal advocate of taking toddlers on big long trips unless they are to visit family, or you have no alternative but still want to go. We are lucky to have grandparents who were happy to keep our little one while she was in that toddler age range and we went to Europe. As much as I love her, I don’t think bringing her would have enhanced the trip for anyone at that age.
However, I am in the middle of planning a trip to Europe that she is coming on in about 6 months when she is 4. I think she will have a blast at that age, and she too already gets excited when she sees the Eiffel Tower is in a book or on TV because she knows she is going there. Certainly not against kids in Europe, but I do think that there are better ages than others to bring little ones. 😉
My kids have been pretty good travelers and we took them along since they were babies. Wish we had the luxury of grandparents nearby to unload them 🙂
The only time we had an issue was on the Air Tahiti Nui flight to the island from LAX. My daughter cried the whole way. It must have been the plane smell, they have a distinctive smell (I love it). One lady said something nasty and to this day we all remember it (10 years later). I looked at her husband and said to him “I am sorry”…he was clearly embarrassed by her nastiness. Oh, it was coach by the way :–)
We have traveled with her since she was young, but there are some trips that just wouldn’t have fit her needs and personality very well at the time. Europe was one of those times. We are very lucky to have helping hands to utilize from time to time when the nature of the trip doesn’t fit the nature of the child. 😉
People travelling with children less than 4 are simply selfish. Kids hate long flights/don’t remember anything that young and would rather be at home playing in the tub with their rubber ducky.
I don’t understand your thinking at all, but glad to hear you’re giving it a shot. I hope you’re planning on a decent amount of time there, the time change is always the hardest part for the kids. I recommend Cars 2 on the iPad for the flight over, lots of fun Paris, Italy, London scenes.
TJ, perhaps we have just been around different infants/toddlers. 😉 We are looking forward to the adventure now that she is at an age where I think it will be a success for her and us.
“Well I liked how she talked a bit about infant tickets with the 2 for 1 visa. whatever it’s worth, that post was certainly one of the better ones of the ba visa posts today”
Dan on many occasions has had far more useful content about the infant tickets. And he’s not purportedly a family travel blog
A family travel blog that mentions CC’s when relevant to the topic. A CC pushing blog that mentions family travel when relevant.
MP has long since become the latter.
I disagree, there’s still a lot of good original family travel topics, the credit card shilling isn’t bad by BoardingArea standards, but the actual travel reporting has shifted sharply towards the View from the Wing mode of travel.
If I ever stay in an Andaz, I am having them pancakes lol!
Chase, from rumors, is about to put all but a few bloggers out of business. If a blogger who was cut off has any juicy details please email me!
Totally unpoetic names for your third category (sorry, I am muse-less for the moment):
Blogs I Avoid
Blogs Not Worth Your Time
Blogs I Don’t Recommend
Blogs To Do Without
or
The Best, and then: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
But please don’t wait for snazzy names to get them posted.
I like “blogs to do without”
my vote
There are SO many of those, I need to be eclectic enough to feature the ones I can REALLY do without 🙂
Or, to keep the lawsuits at bay, perhaps:
Blogs I Avoid
Blogs Not Worth My Time
Blogs I Don’t Recommend
Blogs I Do Without
That way it is just stating simple facts, not necessarily recommendations re: how others should behave.
I have a question: are Avios useful for short-haul flights?
My assistant is massaging the Chase BA link and is working on very detailed response to your question.
Ah phuck it, the answer is:
Yes 🙂
No. Not useful. FANTASTIC is the right word!
TWA44: I like the creative suggestions, thanks!
Thank you for the 50 shades of oatmeal picture, that one made my day.
Yeah, as soon as I saw it, I immediately thought “TBB worthy!”
Special thanks to you George. Convinced my parents to use their Fairmont nights at Lake Louise after seeing your reports/tweets. They checked in today got a lake view junior suite plus a bottle of champagne! Loving it so far.
I did not bother using my certs at the restaurant, I used them all at checkout. Much easier process.
There is a Western like restaurant downstairs. Food is decent. But there is a dish called “Platter” or “Combination” or something and it is HUUUUUGE. Both hikes to the right of the lake each end up in a separate teahouse, not sure if they are into hiking. Not too strenuous but long! They can book with the conscierge asap a 5.30 canoeing in the lake: one boat just $54 and comes with the breakfast! WELL worth the money…actually it is darn cheap for the magical experience of seeing the sun rise. I get goose bumps thinking about it. Must be much colder now and hope the air is clear for the views of the lake. Around 6pm they have free marshmallows outside, very tasty. Moraine Lake is nearby and worth the drive and the short pleasant hike around it. The springs is not a big deal, neither the gondola. There is an amazing sushi place in the town right off the main strip. A little further there is a tiny Greek restaurant and they make a mean mean burger. Tell them to enjoy. Great to hear they got the lake view, so so worth it!
Just curious: was it full of Japanese tourists?
Of course there were some. But I wouldn’t say more than 10%. I was expecting more
Drew Macomber wrote a piece for FTG.com….. and they acknowledged under the headline that he wrote it
Remember when MillionMilePlagiarizer was better than FTG at disclosing things?
Not plagiarism, he just made a decision to brand everything on the site as MMS. Dishonest, maybe, but not plagiarism. I’m sure Drew was compensated.
It was the textbook definition of plagiarisim – he tried to pass off Drew’s work as his. It wasn’t just an article written by Drew that he wasn’t acknowledged for under the title – it was an article written by Drew THAT WAS WORDED IN A WAY THAT MADE PEOPLE MISTAKENLY BELIEVE MMS WROTE IT
Unless of course Drew and MMS have the same mother-in-law?
If that’s not plagiarism, nothing is. It’s not a coincidence that MMS has actively tried to censor and brush aside anyone who even remotely had questions about it (including TBB)
It’s hard to call it plagiarism when both parties are complicit in the publishing of a piece of writing.
Excellent point TJ!
I wonder how much of this is going on. If I offer to ghost write something I intend to ask three times my regular rate or at least double. Thinking out loud here. I agree, plagiarizing is a strong word and, officially down to the letter, probably does not apply here. But I am no writer.
It seems Drew was around quite a while and MMS was one of his first paid gigs, from what I hear. It seems he will become a regular at IB/FTG 🙂 Ariana picks the best 😉
Well, my take on FTG is that it has certainly improved recently. But it is so far gone that regaining its credibility is an uphill battle and if it was a stock I would never buy it 🙂
As long as the moronic pseudo cc pump “challenges” continue this is a blog that is fully secured in my “To Avoid” list. I apologize in advance to the few writers who chose to take the money and put their names under this corporate owned blog. And yes I do realize who owns FT 🙂
My own opinion as always…So, what’s with Chase lately, inquiring minds need to know. I will talk to them next week, it is the main sponsor of the financial blogger conference!
Hmmm…did I miss something? Seems no one mentioned Travel Is Free’s post dedicated to the topic of “complaining”!
My view on all of that is that I will not “publicly” (post something online) complain unless I have already tried to settle my issue with the company privately. I find the very idea of “expecting some gift/settlement/remuneration” for every little thing (e.g., a broken reading light above your seat) disturbing. I’m sure there are many of us in this hobby, however, that consider it part of “the game”, however.
My personal litmus test for “crossing the moral line” is this: would I take the same action (e.g., complain and ask for compensation) if I had to do it face to face? What if I had to do it face to face and it was not a large multinational corporation, but a mom and pop shop owned by your neighbor? In the past, I would have complained more, but I think it was due to the fact that I was complaining to a faceless, huge corporation “that wouldn’t miss it if they threw me a bone”.
I do know of the blog post you are referring to at TIF. It was in the bubble, I wavered whether to include it. As other material made into my Buzz post, I decided I had no room for it. It was a bit too long and kind of wavered (ranted on) on several points…I felt a bit lost. Just some constructive feedback to DM who reads me.
I agree. I remember giving a presentation about 20 years where I had too many slides and went over the allotted time. The feedback I got from someone I respected was just this : “It’s quite difficult to get your point across in less words”. I still have trouble remembering that…
Boy did FTG mail in the travel challenge today
The “challenge” – a direct American Airlines flight to/from their largest hub
Maybe next weeks challenge will be showing us how to get between EWR and ORD with United?
I guess they didn’t want to put too much effort into this week’s challenge since only 1 of the 2 cards in the post will pay them commission
As long as this blog feature shows up in this form, FTG (the blog)’s place in my “To Avoid” list is secured This list is in my own opinion of course.
SiskelTBB