Frequent Miler on the Air - Wild Card Challenge Destination 1 Check-In | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep376 | 9-25-26

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

This podcast episode is sponsored by Saily. Saily is an ESIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saily gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Download Saily from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. https://saily.com/frequentmilerGreg and Nick, along with Tim, are busy flying around the world for the Wild Card Challenge, which is going on now! That means they didn't have time to film our usual podcast episode. Not to mention, we want to make sure everyone gets the chance to hear an update for the first destination of the Wild Card Challenge, even if you missed the live stream last evening. In this episode, relisten to the Destination 1 travel summaries and scoring.(01:17) - Greg summarizes his Wild Card Challenge Destination 1(08:22) - Nick summarizes his Wild Card Challenge Destination 1(15:21) - Tim summarizes his Wild Card Challenge Destination 1(26:56) - Greg's scores(34:10) - Greg offers a rebuttal for his scoring(35:43) - Nick's scores(46:41) - Nick offers a rebuttal for his scoring(49:00) - Tim's scores(54:57) - Tim offers a rebuttal for his scoringSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderCheck out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Network, a collection of some of the world’s best travel podcasts. Explore more at Voyascape.com. For advertising or sponsorship opportunities on this show and across the network, email [e-mail] or you can find more information at Voyascape.com/advertsing.

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. This podcast episode is sponsored by Sayley. Sayley is an e-Sim service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saly gives you flexible prepaid data plans and over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave. your data activates automatically when you touch down.

Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saly actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saly keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saly from your app store and use our code frequent miler at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. Due to our wild card team challenge, Nick Tim and I are currently too busy flying around the world to create our usual podcast content.

The following podcast is recording from the first of three Wild Card Challenge live stream check-ins. Let's see who made it to destination one in time. Frequent Miller on the air starts now. We made it, but barely. The gang's all here. The gang's all here. So if you're just tuning in, this is our Wild Card Challenge first live in. Check in. If you're listening in podcast form, don't forget to give us a like, subscribe, all that jazz. We appreciate all that stuff. All right. I didn't mean to take it away from you, Carrie. I just figured I'd give you a second in case you were setting something up. That is perfect. I am setting something up. So I wanted to just give a little bit of information for our audience about how things are going to go this time. So in the past, we've had these long kind of debate sessions live for y'all. But this time, our travelers had just like a lot on their plate.

we have decided we're going to try to keep this to an hour. And so this time we're going to start with everyone sharing for 10 minutes about their day destination one summaries. We're going to start with you, Greg. Greg, give us a 10 minute summary of your destination one so far. All right, here it goes. So big picture is that I set some goals for myself that go a little bit beyond what the rules of the challenge are. So, for example, I want to fly mostly in business class. I want to stay in interesting hotels, not cookie cutter hotels. I want hotels that are really well located and interesting. You know, I prefer boutique or, you know, historical hotels, things like that. And I want to truly enjoy the destinations. And for me, that means actually having time in each place that I go to

actually spend time doing the things that I want to do to get to know the destination. And so, all right, with that behind us, here's what I did. On Tuesday, I went to, I flew from the Detroit airport and had lunch in the Lufthansa lounge there, and then flew to D.C. where I had dinner in the Chase Sapphire Lounge, which is disguised as an Emirates lounge, and it's fantastic. Then I boarded Avianca business class to fly to Panama, but via San Salvador. So unfortunately, I couldn't find any nonstop flights that were bookable with all the, all the restrictions I had, both self-imposed and imposed by the challenge. So I did have that one stop, which turned out to be a big problem because that flight to San Salvador was, very much delayed. And so I would miss the connection. In the meantime, I was actually impressed with

Avianca's business class, I think because I had heard such bad things about it, like that it's basically European business class. And so everything I'd read has been very negative. But service was excellent. They surprised me by handing out amenity kits and like blankets and pillows and things like that. And when there was this problem with the connection that I was going to miss, someone from Avianca actually came on board to find out what I wanted to do. He gave me some options and everything. I think it's pretty unlikely he would have done that if I was in economy. I can't prove that it wouldn't have happened in an economy, but that's what my assumption. So that was obviously a bad situation, but good that I like the flight better than expected. And in San Salvador, they gave

me a lounge room to stay in. So I was able to get a few hours sleep before the flight I was reconnected on a COPA business class flight to Panama the next morning at 4.50 in the morning. So I got a few hours sleep and got to Panama. I got to my hotel by about 9 a.m. And there I checked into an incredible hotel, the Hotel Plaza Herrera in Costco Viejo, which is Panama City's old town. And the in-person gave me a hotel tour, which was an amazing hotel, as I said. Then I had included breakfast before going out on the town for a Costco-Vio walking tour. which then was followed by a Panama Canal tour. So I got it all in in that day, a ton of stuff, including after the Panama Canal tour.

I ate at a great Panamanian food restaurant and ended the night back in my beautiful multi-story suite, one and a half bass, a huge balcony. So I enjoyed sitting out on the balcony and just soaking in the nightlife in Costco Viejo. Was that under 10 minutes? It was. Oh, nice. Anything else do you want to add to really sell your trip to us, Greg? Or are you happy with how concise you've been? Yeah, well, since I have a couple more minutes, I'll add a little bit.

I was thinking outside the box because I really wanted, once I discovered this hotel, Plaza Herrera, I really wanted to stay there. it's not a Marriott Hotel and I had Marriott points. So, you know, my problem was that Marriott hotels, there aren't any in Costco Viejo, which is the old town and I really wanted to stay there. And so I did a wacky thing, which is I used my Delta Miles to book, I used a combination of my Delta Miles and $150 Delta Stays credit. from my Delta gold business card to book this hotel. So it's kind of like a cash booking, but using miles for admittedly very poor value.

But I think of that as kind of sacrificing my pawn in chess. You do things that seem like a bad idea in order to get something really good to happen. And in this case, it was necessary for me to use my double. Delta Miles to get this great hotel and also to free up other types of points for future things that are coming. Future things that are coming. So cryptic, I love it. So a quick bit of clarification just in case it impacts on our schooling later on. You spend $578 for two nights at this hotel and used a $150 Delta Stays credit, which makes it $428. you redeemed according to your records 40,520 Delta Sky Miles, but in your post, it seemed like you were saying that you only got 0.7 cents per point of value, whereas that to me makes it look like you got just over one cent per point of value.

So I just wanted to clarify what kind of value you did actually get with that. Yeah. Huh. Okay. Well, I'm going to have to check the math on that. I guess if you want to look at that, well, yeah, I don't know on the top of my head. I might have done something wrong. All right.

So Greg's going to check his math. Then, Stephen, if that's all, unless you have additional questions, we're going to move on to Nick. Give us 10-minute summary of your destination one story. A quick bit of clarification on Greg's report there, just because I want people to know in case. I think he said the Emirates, the Chase Sapphire Lounge was the sky's disguised as an Emirates lounge, but it's anti-hot. actually, that they partner with it for that one. Oh, thank you. Just clarifying.

You're welcome. I wasted 30 seconds of my time, I did, Greg. Okay, now, so what do they do? Day one, I started in Boston, and I figure up using just 88 Lufthansa miles and more miles. So that was from Boston to Zurich to Paris, 88 miles. And of course, Lufthansa is known for their higher surcharges. So I did pay a hefty amount in surcharges, but since I have to get out of surcharges free card, the judges are going to hold about $48 and change of that against me.

So 88 miles and 48 bucks to get all the way to Europe is pretty incredible. Now, even if that hadn't, even if the surcharge is counted against me, it would still be really good value for the miles. You'd look at it more like a discount on the cash price. But, you know, if you're getting $100 or $150 off with 88 miles, that's a pretty big win. So I wanted to do that in part because it worked for the trip, but also in part just to show people that may not have been aware that that's possible. You can get across the Atlantic Ocean for next to nothing.

Now from there, I had a tight connection in Zurich, but I made it to Paris. And rather than sit in a lounge in Paris, I went to Park Asterix, which is a French theme park based on a French comic series. And so it's kind of like a cartoon version of ancient history, basically. A lot of fun. It was a great park, some awesome roller coasters. You got to check it out. I got to Paris just in time so that I could get to the park right about when it opened and spend

about three hours there. I did the tallest, fastest roller coaster in all of France there. That was definitely something we did as a kid. My vacations when I was a kid were we didn't fly anywhere for vacation. My vacations were always centered around going to an amusement from this when I was a kid. So that very much reminded me of being a kid. I didn't put it forth as though that was how I was going to meet my many challenge on this one because this wasn't one of my destinations. It was just a layover point. But you can actually take a shuttle bus from the airport to the amusement park and back. I did end up having to take an Uber on the way back to the airport because they shut the shuttle bus down for a while. I didn't realize. But it wasn't one of my

first two destinations. So I'm saying that that Uber does not count against me. Now, I of course mentioned that because one of my obstacle card was that I couldn't take ride share in my first two destinations, which of course are Guadalupe and Vietnam. So I figured it didn't count them. I flew on on Air France. I used 12,000 Virgin Atlantic Miles, transferred from Capital One. And about $50 in taxes. And I say that because with surcharges, it was $200 or so. But, of course, the judges aren't counting those against me. So I'm still getting terrific value.

So now I will have, or I did cross the Atlantic twice for 12,088 total miles. So 88 miles to get two years, 12,000 miles to fly from Paris to Guadalu. I did that on Air France. It's daytime flight because I status matched jet blue to Delta before the challenge started. I have Sky Team Elite Plus status now. So I got an exit row seat with like infinite leg room, pretty comfortable. They also, by the way, on both Swiss and Air France, had pillows and blankets, Greg. Just so you know, it's not only Avianca business class that features that amenity.

When I got to Guadalupe, I stayed at a place called Topicana Suites. It was $110 for a full suite, full living room, bedroom, and an outdoor kitchen on my huge balcony that had pots and pans and a fridge and everything with a hand. I got there relatively late, so I didn't enjoy many of the hotels amenities, but they did have a hotel bar that had a live musician until about 9 o'clock that I could hear very well in my room. And that was kind of fun, actually. It was cool jazz music, a lot of old standards, things that you'd probably know if you know kind of like old jazzy lounge music, but in French.

So that was cool. And so I stayed at Tropicana Suisse. And then this morning I got up and I went to the tentacle garden of Guadalupe, which was amazing. I got to feed Laura Keats. I landed right on my hand, a lurkens-colored colorful bird. So that was a lot of fun, strolled around the botanical gardens, beautiful flowers, really impressively large.

I was surprised. From there, I went to Lange de Gran-Ans, which is perhaps the best beach in all of Guadalupe, and had it almost entirely to myself. You'll have to check it out on Instagram. It was beautiful. The water is crystal clear. The sand is pristine. And maybe I saw 15, 20 people there total over the time I was there and not all at once.

So it's more like one person here and two or three there. Pretty sparse. You'll see if you take a look at it on Instagram. And then next up, I went to a waterfall in the National Park in Guadalupe that is a quick 10-minute walk from the parking area, free to park, easy, peasy. Oh, by the way, on the hotel backing up, it was $110. I had some Capital One credit from a price match that'll come back into play. The reason I booked through Capital One is because my venture card comes with $300 in Capital One

Stays Credit. So this was covered by that Stays Credit. So good value there in terms of the hotel getting basically an Airbnb with off street parking, but with also a hotel bar, right? Anyway, after the waterfall that I went to this afternoon, then I ran to the Memorial ATCE Museum in Guadalupe, which is a museum dedicated to the history of slavery and the slave trade, which was fascinating. Obviously a dark topic, but a really fascinating look at the history of it, far more than I had ever learned in school, that's for sure. So I was, I found it to be a really interesting experience. It's really highly rated and for good reason. They don't let you take any pictures inside.

So there aren't any pictures inside on Instagram. But if you go to Guadalupe and you miss that museum, I feel like you kind of missed the boat. And I had been to Guadalu before and did not know that museum was there. And I feel like you really kind of miss out if you don't do that because it's such an educational experience. So I did that, all of those things. And then the other ways I spent money, I spent 27 euros on the car rental for that, rented from Avis. super easy experience there, shuttle from the airport, and they dropped me back off at the airport, and I had to fill up the tank with gas, so that was 15 euros, and I stopped at a French

bakery to pick up some baguette and a croissant, and Eclare. The Eclare was horrible, but everything else was pretty good, and it cost me like 10 euros. So it was a pretty cheap day, and I got botanical garden, birds landing on my hand, beautiful beach all to myself, waterfall, in kind of a rainforesty area, and a really educational museum. So I feel like destination number one is going really well. Now I'm back at the airport. I had dinner in the air at France lounge. Of course, I get lounge access because I had matched to Delta. So I have Sky Team Elite Plus, which gives me lounge access, even when flying economy. And I've got an exit receipt for the way to Paris. Those exit receipts, by the way, were $120 or $144, depending on the

direction before I satis match. But for a status match, of course, they were free. So as well as lounge access. So there you have it. That's how I've done so far. Was that under 10 minutes, Steven Pepper? Yeah, you still had a like two or three minutes ago, so good stuff. Yeah. All right. I do what I can. Steven, any follow-up questions before we move on to Tim? I don't think so. No, I think we're good. All right. Great. Tim, now we need your 10-minute recap of your destination one story so far.

Okay, I need to start my plot. Okay, so just your quick overview, probably if you're watching this either live or after the back, you already know these sorts of things, but I just want to really read. view. So in terms of the cards that I have, I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve that has 100,000 points, ultimate reserve points, a $300 travel credit and a bunch of other various and sundry credits that I'm not going to go through right now. I have the Aero Plan card, which has 60,000 Aeroplan points. I have the IHG Premier card, which has 140,000 HG points, and the Capital One Venture One, which has 20,000 capital one miles. My obstacle is that I have to check in a bag.

at every single flight. Don't look really easy to yourself, Kerry. That's not going to for, oh, see, there you go. You're doing it again. And my power up is that I get a 30% transfer bonus to a program of my choosing, regardless of whether or not it exists in real life. The reason why that's important, why I bring it up now is because I'm using my transfer bonus to add 30% to what already exists as a 30% transfer bonus from ultimate.

rewards to Arrowplan. So for every Chase Ultimate reward that I transferred to Arrowplan for this challenge, and I'm not going to say how many I did yet, because I want it to be secret about how much of Museum wear and so forth. I'm getting 1.6 Arrowplan points, obviously. So 10,000 equals 16,000. Now, there's a superpower embedded in there, where because you can use Arrowplan points to pay yourself back for travel purchases at 1.25 cents per point, I can effectively redeem those ultimate rewards points for two cents per points for its travel. So there's that. Now, like Greg said, I also had sort of a couple

themes that I wanted to kind of come into this challenge with. One was that I wanted to show a lot of variety. There are some challenges to the timing and the destination and the timing that I'm not going to dig into right now. We'll just kind of go through it as we talk to it. But I wanted to turn the challenges in rooting into something that allowed me to show a lot of variety on my trip. In addition, I wanted to be able to display how you can be more flexible maybe with some of these things than what you might originally understand. Or what you might originally think. So for instance, I'm hoping that you will see some ways to turn to pivot and use flexibility

to do things that you might not expect to be able to. And lastly, I want to be surprised. and they're frugal. Those judges that are staring at me right now, the warm cockles of their, the cockles of their hearts are warmed by efficient use of points and frugal budgetary management. So I just want to bask under the approving glare of judges,

Yoder and Pepper with my resource allocation. So all that said, so my first destination was Costa Rica. I departed from L.A. I booked a economy ticket using Air France, or I'm sorry, aeroplane points, 12,500 points. There was no business class availability the entire time I was looking at it. And effectively flights to, because of the time of year it is,

there's no non-stop flights from anywhere on the West Coast to Costa Rica during, or during the time that I needed to travel on Tuesday. So I had to take a connecting flight, and the choices were either leave at the, leave it like midnight and get there late in the day or leave mid-afternoon and get there late at night. I chose the latter because I can't sleep on planes. I'm already, I'm already struggling off asleep. But deficit.

So I wasn't, I would still, though, even though it's booked as it shows a direct flight, you actually have to stop in Guadalupe, or in Guatemala on the way over. So the whole thing takes about eight and a half hours. Like it takes a, it's, it's, it's, it's got to Europe quicker than I got to post-Ary government so think about that. And I wasn't relishing getting, having my six foot three frame crammed into the back of a Avianca economy plane. And I had heard that you could get really cheap business class upgrades sometimes at the airport

at the checking counter when you asked. And this is something I've done with a couple of other carriers and it can't work. So because, you know, just pepper and the odor were forcing me to check in a bag and I had to go to the counter anyway. It might as well give it a shot. Well, they said that I could get upgraded to business class. So it's funny, Greg and I both actually threw out Bianca business class, the 8-20 business class, for 150 bucks for the entire eight hours, which now Greg said it's not

an over-the-top business class, but it certainly beats the heck out of eight hours in economy. And I was able to redeem 7,500 Chase alternate rewards points for that by the conversion that I mentioned earlier, which is terrific. The hotel that I stayed at in San Jose is a holiday and express San Jose, and there's absolutely nothing sexy about this hotel, but IHG, whose hotel points I have, they just don't have any sexy hotels in San Jose. They have one intercontinental that's kind of middling. It's poorly located, and it really wouldn't help.

It would actually hurt me in terms of what my parents would have helped me. But I also had, because of the Chase Sapphire Reserve, I have a $250 hotel credit that can only be used at specific brands. One of which is IHU, which is, which, so it's applicable to the Quality and Express. Since I was there for two nights, that applied to it. At the time of booking, it was $259. So I paid $9 cash in order to get a hotel room for two nights. It was three minutes each way from the hotel via shuttle. and the rental car that I ended up using was literally across the parking.

I walked out the front door and it was about 100 feet to the airport office. So they picked you up at the Air Force with a shuttle and then bring you back to that location. So it was super convenient. So part of the problem with Costa Rica right now is that it's low season because it's like it's the rainiest part of rainy season. And I actually had a marvelous day yesterday. is beautiful, super verdant green everywhere. But effectively what that means is that not a lot of people are going to Costa Rica. The positive aspect of that for me was that it meant that when I went places, there wasn't anybody there or there weren't very many people there.

The bummer is that to try and get guided trips is really, really hard for one person because most of these trips didn't have anybody on them. And so I had several trips with a one person or two that showed a one person minimum. that wouldn't allow you to book any less than two people. And when I contacted them, they said, yeah, sorry, nobody else is on that. We need these two people who made two great even. And then 24 hours beforehand, the two people that I did book, I was single with were canceled because I was the only person booked. Luckily, I anticipated all of this and in advance rented a four-wheel drive car for first

or 60 bucks that I redeem 3,000 Chase's Alternate Awards points, fully insured, which is good because a semi-driver actually hit me on the way back, though, but I won't use my 10 minutes for this. No, no, right. Even pause, pause, they're laughing. They're laughing. Pause it. And the thing that was great is that none of these guided trips really fit in what I wanted

to fit in. And I was able to do it all with my car, which was awesome. So the first thing is I went to the top of these two volcanoes right next to San Jose. And during the rainy season, they get clouded over every morning by like 10 o'clock I entered. But if you get there right at 8 o'clock when they open, oftentimes they're cleared. So I rented my car at 6.30 in the morning, drove up, got there was in line when the park opened, was at the viewpoint after orientation and getting my cute little Costco, my cute little pit helmet on.

And there was 10 people to viewpoint, and the whole thing was wide open, not a cloud inside. And it was just beautiful, steamy sulfur lake in the center. You could see for miles around. It was awesome. After that, I went through what's called the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, which was a magical place that had a series of five waterfalls that I was able to check out that were just marvellous.

you're able to walk behind some of them. Super cool, super powerful, really fun to be there. And then they had a bunch of others still like they had a butterfly, an aviary and a butterfly with like these huge butterflies that had wings that looked like owl eyes and that were the size of my fist. It was just, it was really a magical time. And then I ended up driving around the backside of the volcano and I don't have enough time to talk through the vagaries of that route that lets to say it was heroin at times. I'm glad I had a four-wheel drive.

And then ended up at a. topiary garden where this guy that they call senior scissor hands at this village at the top of the mountains for 60 years drained all of these hedges into these beautiful fanciful shapes in the front of this old 1900s church it looks sort of like if you were in a green hedge alice in wonderland and it took acid but there were all these little kids running around that's kind of what it was it was beautiful and then i got a takeaway lunch and that's it ding ding all right Right. Thank you. Now, Greg has a quick clarification on the question about his point value, right? Yes. So I had the wrong total price that Delta Stays was charging. The actual price Delta Stays charged was $433.64. So when you do the math, it is 0.7 per delta point value that I

I got. So where that $578 number came from is that's the price I found on other sites for the same two nights. So Delta Stays was advertising a really big discount. Some or all of that discount was because of my status. And they're giving me an amazing discount on this hotel. Okay. Helpful. Do you have any follow-up questions, Stephen, before we move on? I think we get All right So now we're going to present our scores Typically in past challenges

We've kind of like debated it live on camera But this time, Steve and I met ahead of time So we are going to assign you your scores But don't worry We know that people are opinionated And we want to hear your opinions So after we assign your scores we will give everyone a chance at a quick rebuttal

and then you, the viewers, will have a chance to give us your feedback as to whether or not we should take that into consideration. Okay, we will start off with flights. So just as a reminder for everyone watching, we're judging them based on four categories. There's wallet-friendliness, ingenuity, luxury, and duplicability. And for each of those, for each of the components of flights, hotels, and activities, they can score up to 10 points for each of those things.

So that's up to 120 points for that and then up to 10 points for their mini challenge. So they can score a total of 130 points in each of their destinations. So just a quick clarification about that. So starting off with flights, for wallet funliness, we gave you a 7 out of 10. So, like, redeeming 35,000 aeroplane points wasn't completely terrible value, seeing as like most of it was in business class, but it also wasn't like it was some kind of amazing sweet spot. So seven points for that. Ingenuity, we gave a six. Again, it didn't seem like there were like any particularly, like, smart things that you did for that, like, we're aware of at the moment. like maybe you can clarify that in the bottle if it was. For luxury, we gave you an eight.

It was going to be a seven, but then ended up bumping it up to an eight, because it sounds like Avianca business class is a little bit better than we're all anticipating. You did have one leg in economy, and you also set it up so he had two stops. So that's why you didn't actually score any higher than that for luxury, just because it wasn't necessarily an ideal itinerary. and then for duplicability, we gave an eight. So we figured it's probably a fairly easy award that viewers and readers would be able to recreate.

But whether or not people would want to book a two-stopper instead of a one-stopper would be another question because some people might prefer to like book economy, but also they wouldn't necessarily be restricted to having to leave after 10 a.m. like you are with your night owl. So that's the scoring for your flights, which makes that component. hotel, we've given wallet-friendlyness of five. So when you clarified the bad value that you got from your Delta Sky Miles,

I was inclined to move it lower. However, you did find a way to book the hotel for a cheaper cash rate than you would have paid through any other side. And that was a result of your elite status. So five points for that. Ingenuity, seven. You've got a couple of like an additional points or two there because you were able to like find this better deal with that. Luxury we gave you a nine.

Like it looked like a really beautiful property. You had like a two-story suite that had like a separate bedroom and living room and like one and half baths and it just looked like a beautiful hotel overall. And then duplicability we gave you an eight. So ultimately it was that you would, you effectively booked with cash even though you did it with Delta Skybub. but anyone could basically book with cash. It's not like it was some screaming deal with points otherwise.

And it might be something that people who do have Delta elite status would be able to get a discount on. And possibly if you've got Alaska Airlines status, you might be able to as well, because we noticed before through, was it Alaska vacations or like one of the Alaska hotels or something like that? If you have elite status with Alaska,

we notice that you could get some really decent deals through there as well. So that kind of thing, If you have airline status, take a look at their shopping portals because you might get a good deal. So that gives you a total of 29 points for the hotel out of 40. And then your activities, this is where you scored much better. So wallet friendliness, we gave you 10 out of 10 for that. You did a free walking tool where what you had to do was pay for tips. And then you did a activity at the Panama Canal and you were able to get a decent deal through Capital One shopping to

earn a bunch of rewards back. So overall, you spent less than the other two guys for your activities. So 10 out of 10 for that. Ingenuity, we gave you an 8 for that one. There was something that I was thinking of earlier, which is why I bumped it up from the 7. And I can't remember exactly what it was that caused me to give it an 8. But do you remember telling you? For whatever reason, I didn't write a note in that cell that I read it. I'm sure it was something really clever idea that you were just feeling. It absolutely was. But there was something to do with it that felt a little bit more clever.

I can't remember what the reasoning was behind that. Luxury gave you an eight. It seemed like you had a fairly relaxing day overall. I think the trip out to the Panama Canal, did that include transportation out there? Yeah, I actually forgot to mention that it was basically a private tour. I didn't know that when I booked it. It wasn't the price of a private tour, but there was no one else around books. it. The only reason I said basically is it was going to be a private tour, except a fan of ours

was in town and asked about joining me. And so I told him what tour I was on and he joined it. But had he not joined, it would have been just me and the tour guide who drove us around in her car. So that was, you know, that was very nice. It was a great way to see the town. I thought it was going to be in a bus. Maybe we knew that and that's why we bumped you up too many. Oh, no, I just remember the ingenuity thing was because of booking like the free walking tour. I think there's probably a lot of people who don't necessarily know that there are these websites where you can book three walking tours. So taking advantage of that like you had done, I think you did that during 40K to far away and possibly another challenge.

It's just a good reminder that that kind of activity is out there if you want to be able to learn more about a city without having to splash a lot of cash. And then duplicability we gave 10. Ultimately, both of these activities were things that people could easily be booked for themselves. And so, yeah, there wasn't anything to fault there. And then finally for your mini challenge, you chose, let me get up the thing that you chose. The mini challenge that you chose was many of our leaders travel with infants or young children. in this destination, find an activity that's educational and could be used as a world schooling activity

for a child pulled out of school for travel. Your Panama Canal experience with the Morgan Freeman IMAX and just the general experience, seeing how locks works, seeing how the canal works and global shipping and all that kind of thing, perfect for a homeschooling and world schooling kind of activity and an actual field trip. So we gave 10 points for that one as well, which means that overall you have scored

104 points for your first destination, which... That's awesome. So I'm 104 points ahead of the other guys at this point. So you're like, let's stop the counting here. Yeah, so enough for tonight, everybody. Okay, so real quick, flights, I agree with all of, everything you said about that. If anything, I thought you were pretty generous. I'm happy with that scoring.

The hotel, the only thing I'd say there, is why not attend for the hotel? It was really fantastic. It was pretty much the peak of what, at least what I like, you know, in a hotel. But still, I'll take the nine. And as far as the activities, I'm happy with the, very happy with the scores. I just want to mention one thing that I mentioned in my post. I also got a tour from the hotel itself.

And that was something that obviously is completely free, but it's not something they think to ask you if you want to do. You have to ask them. And so that's another thing that is a good tip. If you're in an interesting hotel, don't be shy about asking if someone could give you a tour because it was really interesting. I'd say it was probably more interesting even than the other two activities I did that day. and yeah so just a good tip there any other rebuttal moments I think it makes the most sense for us to let you rebuttal now

do your full rebuttal now right after you hear oh he got his minute he got his minute I'm fully rebutted okay you are fully rebutted all right we're going to Nick scores next then so Nick for your flights wallet friendliness we gave you a 10 ultimately considering you had to fly across the Atlantic twice in order to get from the US to

Guad Loop being able to do that for 12,000 virgin points and 88 lift answer miles and more miles, it's hard to get much better than that. Plus, you did benefit from your power card, which was get out of surcharges fee. So although you did account for your taxes and fees, ultimately you were lucky enough to not have to count your surcharges because otherwise the wallet friendliness aspect would have bumped down like probably at least a point or two otherwise. Ingenuity, we gave you a nine with this. You were going to have to struggle really hard given the circumstances to get to Guadalupe. So the fact that you came up with an itinerary where it was possible to again cross the Atlantic Ocean twice and still get to go out of loop in plenty of time to be able to enjoy effectively a full day,

on the island and enjoy a bunch of activities. It was smart what you did. Luxury, on the other hand, though, you earned four points. And again, that's not really your fault. Like, there wasn't really much you could do about it. But at the same time, we can't just give you pity points for luxury. However, you did make the best of a bad situation where you took advantage of airline lounges where you could, being able to board before other people by being in the

left answer lounge, I'm taking your advantage. of the JetBlue to Delta status match so that you were able to get exit-Rose C teams. So you made the trip basically as best as you possibly could. Otherwise, you probably would have scored less than four points just because of the route that you were having to take. Duplicability, this was a really tough one to score because ultimately people are going to generally want to duplicate

what you did for your trip. However, we did award a work. award seven points for that, which kind of feels generous, so I'll explain because I'm sure that we'll get readers rebutting us, if nothing else. So with the 88 miles that you used, although Miles Amor isn't a transfer partner of any of the major, like transferable bank currencies, you can transfer miles from Roeve, and you can get 1,500 Roeve miles just simply for signing up using the Freeple My referral link. And so that's more than enough. to get like dozens of 88 mile flights and stuff like that if you were wanting to ever do that.

And then being able to use 12,000 virgin points, they're like transfer partner for all kinds of transferable currency. So it's never going to be an issue being able to stuck up on virgin points. And again, what you did, it wasn't a routing that anyone would want to do. But if someone simply had to get to Guadalupe like you did within certain days, they would have to duplicate what you did if they weren't able to get non-stop flights from Miami or Montreal or one of the seasonal ones. I think

it's Toronto and one other city or something like that that has seasonal ones that are non-stop. So it feels like we're a little bit generous with the seven there, but at the same time it felt a little bit more fair given the circumstances. So that means for your flights, you scored 30 points, which

I wasn't necessarily expecting out of time you would score for that. So you look like you're happy enough for that. For your hotel. Wallet-threnliness, we gave a nine. It seemed like you got a decent cash rate for Guadalupe. Your accommodation options weren't amazing, but the fact that you were able to book what you got

for the amount of money that you spent was decent value, especially because you used your capital one stays credit rather than coming out of pocket. Ingenuity, we gave a seven. I forget why we scored you a seven. There was some reason why it was that rather than a five or a six. But yeah, we awarded seven for ingenuity. Luxury we gave a seven.

It looked like a decent enough place. It didn't look like the height of luxury, but the fact that you had a separate bedroom and living room, you had the kitchen, the outdoor balcony, a nice looking swimming pool and stuff like that. It looked like a really solid place to stay for a hundred-ish bucks. ingenuity seven in part was the location close to the part of the island that has more yes thank you yeah we were discussing this just before um just before we got that yeah ingenuity

it was because nickard done some research about the best part of the island to stay um in order to have kind of like the best um like weather the best kind of like beaches and stuff like that plus he picked a hotel that was close to the activities that he wanted to do that way he could do them in order depending on what the weather was looking like and things like that. So that was why you got like an extra point or two for ingenuity with your booking. And then duplicability, we gave a nine. Ultimately it was a cash day anyone could have booked that. It didn't seem like you did anything particularly special in that respect. So it would be something that any read would be able to book themselves. So that means for your hotel, you got 32 points out of 40.

And finally, your activities. This was a slightly tricky one to score. So you earned eight points for this one. So your activities in Guadalupe were very budget friendly. You got a cheap rental car, the beach was free, the waterfall was free. It was what, 20 euros for the botanic gardens and like feeding the lorrakeets with the nectar and stuff like that. So overall, you've got good value there.

the theme park that you did during your layover in Paris, it wasn't that cheap. It ended up costing you about 80 bucks by the looks of it all in. I'm taking into account the shuttle bus, the luggage storage and the tickets for the day. So for about three hours of entertainment, it didn't seem overly wallet friendly, but it also was an incredibly fun activity nonetheless. I mean, I would pay that in a heartbeat. Yes. So yeah, it certainly wasn't bad value, but it also wasn't a like frugal options. So for your ingenuity, you earned eight points. So do you want to give your thoughts on why he earned kind of like a few extra points?

Yeah, I just thought that was a really clever way to use a layover, especially if you've been to Paris before. So just like you, like, you know, you don't need to go see the Louvre like every time you go, which would probably take you longer anyway. So I just thought that was really clever. and that just you're going to sell me on that kind of activity. So well done. And also when you're going to be sitting an economy seating on the way there

and on the way back over the course of like just over 24 hours, then being able to get out and about and properly stretch your legs, get your heart pumping is probably not a bad thing to avoid like any kind of issues. So yeah, so that was like ingenuity that we thought was good. Luxury for your activities are nine. Like ultimately you got to do things at your own pace. It was nice and relaxed. You got to hang out at a beach, visit Botanic Garden and, like, sea waterfalls and stuff like that.

Just felt like an absolutely fantastic day. I was probably most jealous of what you did. Like, it just looked like a fantastic island day overall. And then duplicability, 10 points, because it's easily duplicable. Like, all of those places anyone could get to, especially if you're willing to rent a car. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were, like, tour activities or something like that on Guadalupe that you would be able to book that would take you there, but I'm not 100% sure on that if you weren't comfortable enough to drive yourself there. And then your mini challenge bonus points. So

the mini challenge that you selected was many of our leaders travel with infants or young children. In this destination, find an activity that reminds you of something you did as a child. So you ended up having a couple of things. So you had the theme park and you had like the beach time and things like that. So you earned 10 points out of 10 for that one as well. So that means that for all of that, you earned 107 points, which put you ahead of Greg, but... However, you earned negative five points for taking an Uber. Yep. Ultimately, that was one of my destinations, though. So as a reminder for people, you will have a chance to wrap up about this, but as a reminder of people, next obstacle card was that he wasn't allowed to take any ride shares in his first or second destination.

The reasoning behind that was the fact that in their third destination, all three of them were going to be meeting up in Melbourne, and we didn't want Greg and Tim to be kind of like inconvenienced or impacted by next obstacle, by not being able to take ride shares anyway or anything like that for the activities that they want to do. So we're like, okay, we'll waive it for the third location so they can all do that. But for the first two locations, Nick's not allowed to take any ride chairs. And I am kind of impressed with Nick's logic behind this, because ultimately, when he took an Uber was in Paris, which wasn't either of his two destinations.

And so I wasn't inclined to have you lose 10 points overall. But because you took advantage of the lack of clarity in the term. a letter of a law. You actually only ended up losing five points for that because, strictly speaking, it wasn't in either of your first two destinations, but you did still deserve to lose points because it went against the spirit of that particular obstacle. And Tim doesn't get to say, like, oh, well, I'm going to check my bag here, but not here. So, you know, Tim's obstacle follows him everywhere.

Yours has to also. So that's a hundred. Tim drew poorly. So that means that you earned 102 points. after taking that into account. So you're two points behind Greg, but ultimately that's still much better place than I thought you were going to be placed after the initial. And so just to make sure we have absolute clarity.

If you have any layovers or stopovers on your way to Vietnam or to Melbourne, you're not allowed to take any kind of issues. Just say that now we've done a bill and we've clarified our terms and conditions. We've inserted new wording there. And so, yeah. So now everybody knows what to expect. Negative 10 from here on out if you do that. But you do get a minute for your rebuttal.

So what do you have to say for yourself? Okay. Here we go. Well, overall, I think that was pretty good scoring. I got to say it was mostly pretty fair. The one that I would nitpick with was duplicability on the first section because, I mean, you're absolutely right. Nobody would want to fly to Europe to get to Guadeloupe, myself included.

But it was very duplicable. in the sense that you can get those 88-mile flights to Europe, like almost all the time through Lufthansa miles and more. If you go to Seat-Aro, you can find those flights really easily. And the 12,000 points for the flight from Paris Squateloup is available again, basically every day. So those are really easily depletable. Now, whether or not you want to duplicate it, that's a whole other question.

I don't know if that was, was that the judging rubric? That it has to be something people, maybe, maybe you put that in there. You'll have to remind me of the terms and conditions. Anyway, I think it was easily deplicable, but I understand that most folks would not want to get to wed to look that way. I didn't either, for the record, by the way, I did not choose to fly to the Caribbean and take like a ferry or something because it is for a KM season.

I was glad that you recognized my hotel choice because the location was certainly important to me for all the reasons you said. And the Uber, like I said, I would rebut that it wasn't one of my first two destinations, though I also understand your rationale there. So overall, I think the scoring was actually pretty fair, but I'm going to still say that I want the five points back because it wasn't clear in the tools. So I think I should have five points for that. I give one more duplicability point. So readers, listeners, folks if you're out there, convince the judges that I should get one more point for duplicability.

All right. All right. That's it. We and the readers have heard your rebuttal. And just as a reminder, we're not going to be making those adjustment choices today. That's something will give the readers a chance to give us their feedback in Stevens Post, which goes out tomorrow at 1145 a.m., summarizing all these scores. So comment there if you are swayed by our contestants and want to sway us the judges. But we might have some folks leaving now for flights, but we still want to hear from Tim.

So excuse us if folks have to go get flights. Tim, we're going to hear about your scoring and then we'll hear your rebuttal. So, Tim, fear flight. Wallet-thendiness, you earned eight points. Ultimately, you got a decent deal. You got booked economy for 12,500 points, and then you managed to get a good deal for $150 to upgrade to business class. Ingenuity, you earned nine points.

So I don't think a lot of people would necessarily think to go to the checking desk and see if they can get a cheap cash upgrade to be able to buy up to business class. So you had nine points for that one. Luxury, nine points. Again, you just traveled in business class. It looked like a comfortable ride and like stress free, given the fact that you didn't have to stop a strategy like Greg did. And duplicability, we gave a seven for that.

So ultimately, booking economy. to Los Angeles to San Jose and economy is completely duplicable. I imagine there's probably fairly good award availability for that a lot of the time. What's hard to know, and it might be that we've underscored you here, I'm curious what

you and readers will think. It's just hard to know whether or not you'd always be able to upgrade to business class for 150 bucks, like quite how widely that's available for that particular route. So that's why you didn't earn more points for that, but for like the business class element, but certainly for the economy side of things, yeah, I imagine that would be very duplicable. For your hotel, nine points for wallet friendliness.

So you used your $250 Chase Travel Select Hotels credit for that, along with like nine or ten bucks on top of that to top it up. That was a great use of the credit for an IHG stay. ingenuity at seven. It didn't feel like it was like complete genius or anything like that, but at the same time, it was a very good use of that select hotels credit. Luxury was your worst score. So we gave you a five for that because it was a holiday in Express, and it seemed like a perfectly fine holiday in Express,

but at the same time, it wasn't necessarily the Hyde Luxury, but that does mean that in turn you did end up scoring better for your wallet-friendlyness. and then duplicability, this is another one that was like tricky to score, and so I'm curious if you'll want to rebut it. We gave a six for this. Ultimately, anyone could book the holiday and express whether with points or with cash. Reason it was marked down a little bit is because the $250 select hotel credit is only applicable in this calendar year,

and it was like a one-off credit that Chase awarded to Sapphire Reserve cardholders. So unless they happen to renewing, it next year, then that part of it's not really duplicable, but booking the hotel that you did absolutely is. So I feel like six may be a little bit unfair, but we'll see what you and other people have to think about that. And then for your activities, wallet funliness was a seven. The stuff you did wasn't like overly expensive, but taking into account the entrance fees for the places that you went and the rental car that you got, I think it came to like 180 bucks or something like that. I think it was the most spending of anyone with that.

But it still seemed like good value for everything that you managed to do with that, which is why you own seven. Ingenuity was an eight. So something that particularly liked was the fact that you had booked your volcano ticket ahead of time. That's not something that I would have thought about at all, but you booked a early morning slot in order to be able to get in there because I would have rocked up there, potentially been disappointed that I couldn't get in right as they open. So the fact that you thought to check, that was fantastic. Luxury was a seven.

Again, this is like such a subjective one as well, where it feels like you could have maybe been scored higher with this, but because you were having to drive yourself around quite a few locations and like down the back of the volcano, which sounded like it was a more harrowing version of the Rotahana, I think you had said or something along those lines, which some people don't enjoy that drive as it is. So, like, more harrowing version of that down the back of a volcano. I don't know if that's necessarily luxury, but the activities you did all did seem like fun and overall relaxing for the most part. But cricket earned an additional point before, because he was driven around, like you had to drive yourself, but it also did mean that you were able to

take your time and do things at your speed, which is to a certain extent luxurious. So, and then duplicability, we gave a nine. Ultimately, everyone would be able to do what you did. The only possible thing is just that some people might not want to have to get up at 630 in order to be able to go get a rental car or something like that. And some people might not necessarily want to be able to drive them, like drive themselves around on that, like winding road and things like that. So it did feel like maybe we underscored you. So we will be open to potentially bumping up some of those points. But for your mini challenge,

yeah. For your mini challenge you picked, many of our readers travel with their significant other. Pick an activity your significant other would love. So you earn 10 points for this one as well because it sounds like your wife would really enjoy all the activities that you did as well. So overall, that means that you score 101 points, but it feels like maybe it should be a little bit higher, but it was so hard like scoring some of your stuff because of the subjective nature of this scoring. So would you like to rub us?

Well, my tendency is to let the readers just do it for me. I would, I guess I don't understand some of the, I don't understand the definitions, but let me put it this way. So in terms of duplicability, there is nothing that I did that nobody couldn't do. And it seems weird to downgrade my ability. Like it's sort of like saying that because you got this award, but it might not be available when somebody else looks for it. That's not duplicable. Seems like an interest in an odd standard to apply it to the $150 upgrade option.

Like, yeah, it may not always be there. It may not always be available, but none of the stuff are doing may always be there be available. So what makes any of our awards more duplicable than another? So I'm curious about that. In terms of, I'm confused as to why Nick got a nine for ingenuity for his hotel for booking something that was near what he had to do, where all of his activity for if I got a seven, even though I was right across from my rental car facility, was three minutes away from the airport, both early in a late departure and was closer to all of the activities that I'm planning. Somebody else got a higher score for being able to move at their own pace on their

activities. I think it was Nick Kew. Whereas I got to do that too, but I'm being downgraded because of a drive that I didn't even described in. And also, I'm getting downgraded for ingenuity on my activities. I know Nick says is a rigged. That's what I want to. I'm just trying to soak the readers here.

I found a being downgraded for wallet-friendlyness on my daily activities, even though I got a four-wheel drive, fully insured car for a full day for 30,000 points, found and did the entire day at my own pace, including a waterfall garden, including the waterfall gardens, for less than a half that it would have cost for me to actually do the same thing on a guided tour. But yet somehow it's less wallet friendly than breaks and did the whole.

We got some viewers chatting in as well. No, I'm not going to, I'm not going to necessarily say that you're wrong. I'm just saying that I'm confused because I don't really understand. And most of all, biggest thing of everything is I don't understand how you could give me a five luxury on hotel. When my breakfast had fresh rompe ton, soursop, and mango from local farms. And I get a five for luxury. I just don't understand what you mean by luxury. So that's my rebuttal.

All right. Heard. So readers, I hope you were, readers and listeners, I hope you were paying attention to that because we're counting on you to help us with these adjustments. These scores are super close. Stephen and I are having a very hard time figuring out the nuances of how to score, especially the activities, the duplicability. We're going to need your help with that.

So again, tomorrow at 1145, Stevens Post comes out summarizing these scores. We want you to come in Freakomailor.com. Give us your feedback so we can know how to adjust these scores. And then we will adjust them in the next live stream, which is, let me pull up the schedule here. Does anyone know offhand? It's going to be on September 26th at 9 p.m. Eastern time. So Saturday night, 9 p.m. Eastern. Yes, so y'all are used to seeing us at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

We're going to return to 9 p.m. Eastern Time for that next check-in on the 26th. Looks like we still have everyone in attendance. None of you had to leave for your flights yet. But I think that's all we have time for. Just please show up and help us adjust those scores. We're trying to involve you a lot in this year's challenge. So we want to know. We want to know what you think.

And I think that is all we have time for today. anything left, Stephen, that we need to say? I don't think so, other than good luck, travelers, going to your second destination if you're not there already. Yes. 10 points to anyone who's there already. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder.

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