Frequent Miler on the Air - Wild Card Challenge final scoring and winner announced! | Special Feature Episode | 10-7-26

Episode Date: October 8, 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/frequentmilerThe Wild Card challenge has officially wrapped, with the final scores and official winner announced in our live YouTube broadcast on October 7th, 2026. Review the scoring and listen to the live broadcast here.As a reminder, for this challenge, our contestants picked from different wild card decks to set the parameters of their trips. First, they selected travel destinations, then hotel, airline, and transferable points cards, which provided their points and miles budgets. And finally, they selected power-ups and obstacles to make their travels a little more realistic to the challenges our readers and listeners face, and make things a little more interesting! Finally, they had to meet together in Melbourne, Australia, a destination that was revealed as a complete surprise in our card draw livestream.Total scores after Destinations 1 & 2As a quick reminder, here were the scores each of the contestants earned after the first two destinations:GregDestination 1 = 102Destination 2 = 106Total score = 208NickDestination 1 = 105Destination 2 = 115Total score = 220TimDestination 1 = 107Destination 2 = 123Total score = 230Destination 3 scoringDuring the livestream on Wednesday night, we judges awarded the scores for their third and final destination: Melbourne, Australia.Here's a breakdown of what each of them earned:GregFlightsWallet-friendliness – 8Ingenuity – 9Luxury – 6Duplicability – 10AccommodationWallet-friendliness – 6Ingenuity – 6Luxury – 9Duplicability – 10ActivitiesWallet-friendliness – 7Ingenuity – 10Luxury – 10Duplicability – 10Mini challenge descriptionMany of our readers use miles and points for their honeymoons. Pick an activity you could imagine including in a honeymoon trip. – 10Additional bonus pointsWe were impressed with Greg's gameplay whereby he paid for his hotels using airline miles and paid for nearly all his flights using hotel points - 10Total points for Destination 3 – 121Total points for Destinations 1 & 2 – 208Total points for the entire trip – 329NickFlightsWallet-friendliness – 7Ingenuity – 8Luxury – 7Duplicability – 10AccommodationWallet-friendliness – 7Ingenuity – 8Luxury – 8Duplicability – 10ActivitiesWallet-friendliness – 10Ingenuity – 9Luxury – 9Duplicability – 10Mini challenge descriptionMany of our readers travel with picky eaters. Order a dish you think is locally authentic, but wouldn't scare off a picky eater. – 10Additional bonus pointsNick was a real trooper considering he had to fly across the Atlantic three times despite not having to actually visit Europe as part of the challenge, as well as for managing to fit in so many activities despite the lack of sleep - 10Total points for Destination 3 – 123Total points for Destinations 1 & 2 – 220Total points for the entire trip – 343TimFlightsWallet-friendliness – 10Ingenuity – 10Luxury – 10Duplicability – 10AccommodationWallet-friendliness – 9Ingenuity – 9Luxury – 10Duplicability – 10ActivitiesWallet-friendliness – 8Ingenuity – 10Luxury – 9Duplicability – 10Mini challenge descriptionMany of our readers travel with young children. In this destination, find an activity that would be infant-friendly, but not a snooze fest for Mom and Dad. – 0Additional bonus pointsTim had arguably the best set of cards that were picked for the challenge, but what he did with them far exceeded what we imagine many people thought he'd be able to do with them - 10Total points for Destination 3 – 125Total points for Destinations 1 & 2 – 230Total points for the entire trip – 355Rewatch the livestream below(01:15) - Recap of Greg's previous score(01:40) - How did Greg get home?(04:08) - Greg's final score(07:49) - Team rebuttal for Greg's score(11:28) - Recap of Nick's previous score(12:18) - How did Nick get home?(15:03) - Nick's final score(20:09) - Team rebuttal for Nick's score(24:11) - How did Tim get home?(27:46) - Recap of Tim's previous score(28:03) - Tim's final score(35:19) - Did anyone wish they'd made use of the option to fully redraw cards?(39:47) - At any point in this challenge were you truly dead tired?(46:33) - What surprised you most about your activities or destinations?Visit 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 – “swappin’ back n’ forth” by up @ nightCheck 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. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the Frequent Myler team answers your questions live.

Welcome to our final live stream for the Wild Car Challenge. Nick, can you give us your song and dance? Absolutely. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a like, give it a thumbs up. If you're listening in podcast form, leave us a review. And let us know what you think. If you're on YouTube, leave us a comment. And wherever you are, don't forget to go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our

email list where you can follow us on all the various. social media also, of course. So thank you very much for doing all of the things, giving us all the thumbs up and all of the like, subscribing to emails and enabling your notifications so that you know when we're live like this on YouTube. So anyway, without further ado now, hopefully that gave enough song and dance for Carrie. All right, here you go. Turn it over to Carrie. Yes. All right. So hopefully most of you have been following along with the challenge and know that we have scored two of the destinations of the three which our contestants visited. But we have one more round of scoring to finalize to crown a winner.

And that's what we're going to do tonight. First things first, Stephen, can you recap where everyone left off in their existing scores? Let's start with Greg. Cool. Yeah, the last time that we heard scored everyone, it was after Destination 2. So at that point, Greg had a total of 208 points and was in third place. Nick had 220 points and was in second place, and Tim had 230 points and was clearly having the lead. So that is our scoring recap for Greg.

Greg, before we give your current scoring, can you give us a quick comment on how you got home, particularly if that was interesting in any way? Oh, sure. I mean, so after the challenge was done, so both Nick and I had booked amazingly, a Qantas first class award had opened up from Sydney to Dallas. And so I actually used Alaska Miles to book from Sydney to Dallas to Detroit. And that's how I got home. And there was a longtime follower of our podcast, our blog and everything, on the same flight.

In fact, I think she was the one that let Nick know that this award was, available and he had grabbed it and I tried to and then it went away and then I kept checking and it reappeared like a day later or so so I was able to grab it too and that was fantastic and it that's what led to Nick and I being able to actually record the latest full-length podcast from the Qantas first class lounge which was pretty awesome yeah that went really well so I think that means we're going to give a I have a quick question question for for Greg real quick. Why did you decide to choose to book it was if I remember correctly that award was cheaper using American than at mess points. Correct. I decided to choose why did you

book it with I mean, assumed you had enough of both. Right. Yeah, because with city having shut down all my cards, I don't have really good ways of earning more American Airlines miles. And so when it's even roughly close, I'm going to use Alaska Miles. I have over 2 million Alaska miles from transferring lots of points when it was available to do so with Amex and signing up for Hawaiian Airlines cards and all that kind of stuff. So it just made sense. Plus, it gave me status points for the flight. And unfortunately, I would have earned more had I signed up for that. that community thing just a day earlier.

I would have earned 10% more status points, but still, it was, it's, uh, that's good. Got me, it's getting me close to the next level of status for Alaska. Nice. All right. So now we're going to find out your scores. Um, for the folks tuning in from home. We're not going to recap their full itineraries because we've kind of done that several times now already.

Um, but we should have some time for questions at the end in case you do need some reminders. So Stephen, what do we have for scoring for Greg's third destination, his final stage? Cool. So for his flight, so this doesn't take into account the first class award home because that was done after the challenge was over. But for his flights to Melbourne, Australia, he scored 33 out of 40. He would have scored higher, but we actually deemed him a little bit on the luxury element, because even though he was in business class, for the longest stretch of the leg from Los Angeles to Sydney. To get from his destination two to his destination three,

he had six different legs of the journey in order to get there, because he went from Columbia to Miami to Fort Lauderdale to Cleveland to Los Angeles to Sydney to Melbourne. Wait, is that right? So that might have been seven legs or something like that. So although it was a lot of it was like very luxurious, ultimately having like, like quite that many legs meant that he got dinged by a couple of points on that.

But overall, like, it was 33 out 40 for that. For his hotel, he scored 31 out of 40. And that was, again, just from getting dinged because he had used Delta Sky Miles to book that. And it seems like he got a fairly good rate for the hotel itself. So in that respect, it was wallet friendly. But because of the way that he booked everything, which we will be coming back to later on, in his scoring, then he did get dinged a little bit because it was, what, 0.7 cents per point for the Delta Skymails or something like that.

And then for his activities that they did altogether, that was where they did the speakeasy, like, bar crawl kind of thing. He earned 37 out of 40. Like, that was a fantastic activity. And the only thing that he didn't get 10 points for was wallet friendiness, because it wasn't the cheapest activity, but it did still seem like you got pretty good value for, like all of the fun and all of the drinks and all of the kind of like fancieness that I knew had during that.

So all of those elements come to 101 out of 120. But you also have a few more points. You had the mini challenge, which yours was, I think it was finding an activity to do that would be good for your honeymoon. So that was the speakeasy call. And so you won 10 points for that. At first I thought, like, would you necessarily do it on honeymoon? And it was like, yeah, like, it's kind of like fancy enough. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and like you might want to go drinking.

And if you're in Melbourne, it's like a really fun activity that you like might not do otherwise. So it's like, yeah, okay, that deserves 10 points. And then finally, we also had some additional bonus points for you, kind of like outside the standard scoring. So you scored an extra 10 points because we were really impressed with the fact that you, like with your gameplay element where you used your airline miles to book hotels and your. hotel points to book airlines. You detailed that in a post. So I recommend people check that out if you haven't actually read that already because it was really fantastic what he did.

And it meant that he did get, even though he got kind of like poor value for the Delta Sky Miles, overall for the trip, he did end up being able to put together a much more impressive trip than he would have. Yeah. Yeah. Extra points for that. So now instead of giving you a chance to rebuttal any of that, we're going to give the whole team a chance to rebuttal any of that. So is there any of that that any of you disagree with either in favor of more points for Greg or less?

Well, I have a question, first of all, about the 10 out of 10 for his activity. Would he have still gotten 10 out of 10 had Greg and I not shared a drink from a ceramic skull? I don't know. Was that one really? What did you say? Was it not a copper pineapple? I think it was a copper. I don't know.

It might have been it. I think it was a pineapple. Was it a pineapple? I didn't even notice it was a pineapple. Yes, I did. Of course. We planned it. Yes.

Because a skull would be a little too cryptic maybe. I mean, to be fair to click, he would have actually scored 15 out of 10 for the activity if you had gone to an Italian restaurant and had the turkey eating spaghetti Lady of the Treve style. And so he did get parked down a few things for that. We didn't want to record that. that, you know, very private moment. So I just left that out. And I'll tell you why, trying to find an open Italian restaurant in Melbourne at 1 o'clock in the morning is tough.

We also, we had to find spaghetti that had three ends to it. So that's a bit more challenging. I'm pretty sure the HR department also discouraged usage of spaghetti in that way. Yeah. Yes. That's right. All right. Any rebuttals here from anyone.

If not, we'll move on. Nick, do you have any rebuffles? No, I mean, I was surprised that Stephen said that there was some question as to whether that was a honeymoon activity. I feel like, I mean, back me up in the comments here if you're watching this live. Like, if your significant other surprised you on your honeymoon with a speakeasy tour to a bunch of hidden speakeasies, would you think that was a pretty good surprise for the honeymoon? I mean, I think that that seems like a shoe in. I felt like that was definitely worth 10 points. So well done on that.

No, I don't have any rebuttal. I think that overall, that was pretty fair. I think that maybe Greg was surprised at getting dinged for five or six or eight or however many legs it was on the way to Melbourne. But, you know, the airport change in Miami and the extra couple of legs. I could see where you would ding a little bit for that, especially, you know, for those of us that flew right from our destination too to Australia and premium economy. I think without any stops in between. I just want to be clear. Yeah, I think that that makes sense.

Yes. I'll agree with you, judges. Well done. How many stops? How many stops did a ticket get from Sydney to Melbourne? Whoa, whoa, put out on that. Fair. Tim, how about you?

Any rebuttal? No, I just, I was curious to, I mean, I agree with Nick. I think that, although I do say that I think that the splitting of the, and it was actually really funny because when the Perwind, the server came around and was telling us about drinks. And she talked about this drink for two. And I was like, oh. we need that. And Greg was like, I don't know. It's like a drink for me. No, no, no, no, no, Greg.

Was that your idea? We need that. It was, it was Tim, Tim for the save on that. But honestly, even without that, I don't even know, I don't think it, I think it would have been a good honeymoon activity. Yeah, no, that, that's true. I agree with that. I was, I was just wheezzling my way into a double drink. Well done. All right. Stephen, is that all? Well, so just as a quick recap, that means that he scored 121 points for the final destination, which puts his total overall at 329 points. And I think that the top score was 400. Am I right about that?

400 points they could score? Okay, yes. So, Stephen, where is Nick's score at currently? Nick's score coming into tonight, he was at 220 points at the time. So how much, how many points does Nick need to pass Greg for first place? For first place, he would. need 110 points to support. So I have 110 written down here, Nick, and I am going to...

Okay, you're going to keep track. I mean, we're going to read this with you. Lodge your rebuttals to make sure that that happens. I appreciate that. So due to technical difficulties, we're going to have to stop the scoring right now, and we're just going to have to be announced as they've been announced. Your calculator's networking? Yeah.

To find another 17,000 points. Yes. All right. So we've had the recap on Nick. Is there anything else you wanted to recap with Nick's scoring or just the total is all we need before we hear a bit about how we got home? Yeah. So yeah, he was at 220 points before. So I don't think there's anything to recap there. So yeah, Nick, anything that you have to say about the Qantas first class, what was the best part of that? Yeah. So actually, I found the Qantas first class and I sent a message to longtime reader, Kathy who I knew lived in Sydney because I said, oh, wow, I found this. And I thought maybe we would

end up in Sydney and meet up because I knew she was a frequent miler fan. And she said, actually, she was looking to get to the U.S. that day also. And I said, well, book the same flight. You know, it'll be fine. And backwards. Get it. And yes. And so she did book it. And then she felt bad that she maybe stole a seat from somebody else. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no need to feel bad. A few hours later, Greg found a seat on the same flight. So it worked out. fine and and so that was good. Worked out amazingly well, like Greg said. Loved the Qantas first class.

It's not a cutting edge product as compared to other first classes on A380s, but the seat's huge and the service was great. Greg and I both really enjoyed it. And the timing on that is perfect because it leaves at noon and it gets in at noon. So you get plenty of time to eat and enjoy all the first class amenities and get a full night sleep and still enjoy some more first class. So that was the way. As we found,

It's especially good if you hardly sleep the night before at all. Especially good. Or the entire five years before. Then you get a really good night's sleep on the plane. You wake up around like normal time for East Coast time. And boom, you're back. Right back. It's a decent tip.

Just exhaust yourself. Yeah. Yeah, no, it really is. And I enjoyed the complimentary hotstone massage in the lounge before we flew. That was great. I used American Airlines miles. Now, I did think about using Alaska miles like Greg in order to earn the status points. but I thought about it and realized I'm not going to earn any meaningful level of status with Alaska this year anyway. So the earning the status points wasn't going to matter for me. So I figured that it's fewer American Airlines miles and I do still have access to more AA miles. So, so I went ahead and booked via AA for 110,000 miles. But unlike Greg, I didn't have the foresight to realize, oh, I can probably book that all the way back to my home airport for the same price that it would cost to get to Dallas. And I forgot to include those.

legs in my booking, so I had to book that separately. So that's a bummer, but otherwise, I really enjoyed it. And again, as we've said already, that wasn't part of the challenge. So those first class flights, that was, our challenge was one way to end up in Melbourne. And then the way home was just however we, we wanted to get home. And that was a great way to do it. All right. So with that in mind that we're not scoring that particular part, let's get to Nick scoring. Okay, so for next flights, which again, this doesn't take into account the Qantas first class, it's basically how he got from Vietnam to Melbourne. He scored 32 out of 40.

You didn't really get dinged in particular on anything, but because you had flown in premium economy from Hanoi to Sydney and then you had to take an economy flight from Sydney to Canber to Melbourne, and you just didn't score quite as highly, but yeah, 32 out of 40 for that. for your hotel you also earned 32 out of 40 so that one the wallet-friendliness didn't seem quite as high I'm just trying to think back to what you actually like is that right 75,000 points but it was you know the relatively low value from area at points not or at least not it wasn't quite our reasonable redemption value from area out points oh actually oh okay oh carry

I read it. I pre-bite. A message moment? Last minute change. I think we should bump Nick's score up by one point because I completely forgotten that he had been like, I forgot that was the hotel way of being re-booking. Because I had been looking back at the email he'd originally sent us with this it where it cost $85,000. He actually booked it for $75. So that's my bad.

Yes. So that actually makes your hotel element 33 points. So really quickly, if I'm doing the math here, that means that Nick now needs 45 points to get fired from his position. We rarely fire people for beating the boss. Don't worry. But Nick, you have to remember, it's not 45 out of 40 because you also have this little mini-channings.

That's true. In that case, I've beaten the boss before. I'm not scared. All right. So for Nick's activities in Melbourne, that was where, you took the guys around to have some authentic Australian, was it Jaffers and... Jaffles and Lamingtons. Lemmings, that's it.

I was going to say Lankistines or something by you. So for that activity, it was actually very reasonably priced compared to what the other two guys organized for their activities. So you scored highly on wallet friendliness. And overall, you got a 38 out of 40 for that, despite poisoning the boss with desiccated coconuts. I want the record to show I didn't force him to do that. Tim wisely chose the Japanese Forest Lemington, which had no coconut. I just want to mention that that was an option on the menu. If you read my post that just published just before this,

I explain the whole idea of the Leamington and the choices, or at least the choice that Tim made that I was surprised, scraped in, but I gave him credit for choosing the OG. Anyway, I did not mean to interrupt the judges with the wonderful one. Yeah, are you pre- jumping the gun on your, yeah. Get a rebuttal too soon. I think that's it though.

Oh, well, I have a few challenge. Your mini challenge, yeah. So Nick means seven points. Seven points. Can he get seven points on his mini chart? Or a pass? This could be quite tense. Seven in the map.

You had to organize something that was food related, but which a picky eater would be able to enjoy as well. Do we consider Greg a Pippi? A somewhat of a picky eater who didn't like desiccated goat nut. and he did end up eating that. So do you really think that you deserve seven points for that? Yes, you won't 10 points for that. There it is.

Because actually in your group, you were the picky eater, I think, more so than Greg. I was going to say, I think I deserve 10 points for making it seem like Greg is the picky eater. But that's not all. That is not all, though. So early on, Greg and additional bonus points, for part of his trip. And we thought that Nick deserved 10 additional bonus points as well, because he was a real trooper on this challenge. He flew across the Atlantic three times in economy, even though he didn't have to actually visit Europe as part of this challenge.

But it was kind of essential in terms of like getting to Guadeloupe. And despite that, he managed to fit so much into all of the days that he was in the various countries on very little sleep. And so we thought that deserved to be recognized outside of the kind of like standard scoring procedure. So an additional 10 points for Nick. Yes. I was waving to the crowd. Yes. I was listening to this.

Thank you. Thank you. So for Destination 3, that puts you at 123 points for that part of the challenge, which means that your overall score is 343 points now. 343. Wow. All right. All right, I'll take it.

However, I'll take my moment in the lead. Check with your team to see if they have any rebuttals here. So, Greg, do you have any grievances with the ways that we have judged this? Either too high or too low? No, I can't think of it. You really want to. How do you tell about the food activity, Greg? That's what I'm curious about.

Should that have gotten to 10? Well, I think that's good as long as Tim got a lot more points for his activity than Nick did, because Tim's activity was a lot better than Nix was. So if Tim didn't get at least five more points than NIC, and you should lower Nix score. Ooh, all right. I think that might play cost-scoring system if he go five more points. I'm just saying, well, you could figure it out one way or another by.

Our graph only goes so far. I want to, from my rebuttal, it's not really a rebuttal. So much as it is, is a sort of digging into the bottle. What I, to your point of Nick being the pickest, it makes me giggle. To your point of Nick being the pickiest eater, so when we went to get the, there's still some, some confusion about if it's Jaffles or Jaffees, we think it's Jaffees, spelled Jaffee's. I don't, I don't really know. But we're, but we're, so if there's anybody that's Australian, let us know how we should. Please tell us by spelling phonetically.

So we're not confused. What I loved about Nick is that he had all of these, you know, it's a grilled cheese, right? So he had an opportunity to say, okay, easy for a picky eater. But instead, what he did when he took us to the vegan Jaffies playing. It's healthy. It's healthy. It's looking out for you. And now I got to say, I might have gotten food poisoning from it, but I was pretty fine with my Jaffies.

Nick and Greg on the other hand. And Nick, especially, Nick was like. You know, everybody that seems like the traditional one is the beans on toast sort of thing. So I want to get the vegan beans with the vegan cheese and the vegan toast. And literally, once it was all done, I look over at Nick. And Nick has like, he's eaten the bread around his beans. And there is this pile of beans on his plate. There are literally beans in my water.

He was so about tossing beans. I think Tim grabbed him off my plate. There was beans in my water glass. I don't know. As a British person, the fact that Nick didn't properly eat beans on toast, I think we might have to deduct like 20 points from him. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. And in his defense, there did seem to be quite a bit of quite a few beans on his beans and toast.

So what do you think, Stephen, all these all these gripes about the mini challenge that we awarded a 10, should we modify? I think we should keep it as it is because, yeah, I mean, I've been to Australia a couple of times and I haven't had a chance to try Japples or Lemington. and it's made me curious about them. So I'd definitely be up for that. All right. Well, so here's the thing I would say. Both of those were things. So the challenge was not just to find food for a picky eater,

but it was to find a dish you've never heard of that would be acceptable to a picky eater. So my challenge wasn't just finding something a picky eater to eat, but also something that I haven't heard of. And ideally, then something that Tim and Greg hadn't heard of either, which I did manage to do here. They hadn't heard of them either. So I will give myself a pat on the back for that. But I don't disagree with Craig.

I suddenly cared about the terms selectively. Well done. We converted you somewhere along the line somehow. Somehow, somehow. But I agree with Greg that Tim's activity really knocked it out of the park. So I'm curious to see what the judges did there. But I said both in the previous live stream and in the post that I published my last journal post that Tim's activity was probably the most fun I've had with an activity on any of the challenges.

So that was a terrific family activity. Yeah. I'm sure you'll hear more about here. All right. So high praise. So that brings us to Tim. Can we hear just a quick comment about how you got home? Did you get home?

Barely. Barely. Yeah. So yeah, I ended up, I flew Qantas as well. But being, even in the after challenge, I didn't want to offend the frugal sensibilities. of our judges. Smart.

And so instead of flying Qantas first, I slummed it in Qantas business. Sorry to hear that. You know, and I got to say, it was nice being back there with the every man instead of up with the Yeah.

You know, but I got to say, and I have never seen, and is this a quick, quick and dirty Qantas business review on my particular flight, I have never seen a bigger gap. between, I shouldn't say, I've seen a bigger gap, but there was this, a huge gap between the hard products or like the seat, the screen, the cabin temperature, like all of the stuff, and the

soft product being the catering and the service. I love the hard product. The seat was marvelous. It had, it was one of the most roomy business class seats in terms of my six foot three frame being able to actually sleep comfortably. The betting was great. The entertainment choices were great. The screen was great. It was just terrific. The service was weird.

So weird. And two examples. I'm sitting, you know, it's a daytime far. We left in the evening, so I'm like waiting for dinner to be served. And I had my particular steward didn't really do anything. And I don't know if this is the way business service works, but it's like everybody else was doing stuff. And she just sort of like walked back and thought.

fourth. She wasn't like the purser or anything. She was the cabin, but it seemed like other people were kind of, she was kind of lagging behind a little bit. But at one point, I'm literally writing my post, typing some stuff, and I turn over, and she's like right here, reading my shoulder. She's like, oh, that looks really interesting. What are you, what are you writing? Strange. Strange. That's some work stuff. How that happened? That's fair. That is weird. And like, the cave, the catering was terrible. But it was just, everybody was just really weird.

Like, no, no proactive refills. I would hit the button for the call button. Nobody would come over. But the weird thing. Over your shoulder. Yeah, but then they're reading over my shoulder. But the fun of this thing was when I got up and I slept for probably six, seven hours. I couldn't sleep like nine or ten hours because I was in first class like Nick and Greg.

But I got up and there was no nobody, there was no water anywhere, like no proactive water anywhere. I know water and I was like really parched. So I got up and I was sort of kind of stumbling around trying to figure my glasses. And like and this another cat of cabin crew walks by and has a tall water bottle. So I thought, oh, they're taking water around. And I said, oh, great. Is that water? And he said, yes, but it's mine.

And for me. No. Hey, but can I get you some? No, nothing. Just walked away. I'm like. Strange. Are you sure?

you weren't on American Airlines? Just kidding. I wonder. Maybe American just gets like the Qantas serve business class servers that have, or attendance that have been like phased out of Qantas. I don't know. It was really weird. It was just a really weird.

Sounds a bit twilight zone. Yeah. That is weird. That is weird. So, anyway. But anyway, so before we get to the scoring, though, I do want to know. So Nick is at 343, Stephen. Where was I at the beginning?

You were at 230. Okay. I need 113 points to pass Greg. And I need 99 points to pass Greg for second place. All right. Let's see if he can get that. So can we get a recap on his scoring beyond just that or that's all we need? Okay.

Yeah. So he was at 230 before. So just as a quick reminder for him getting to destination two, he'd scored 40 out of 40 for his flights. And for destination three, he also scored 40 out of 40 for his flight. because that was all booked as part of the same award ticket for 125,000 aeroplane points. So he managed to put together like an absolutely fantastic itinerary. So absolutely top marks for that.

For his hotel, he stayed at the park high at Sydney, booked using Chase the Edit, using those edit credits, and redeemed some ultimate rewards using point boost for even better value. And because of that, fact that he managed to get upgraded to the presidential suite, which looked absolutely amazing. He scored 38 out of 40. So he's already well on the way to surpassing both Greg and Nick. So if I'm doing my math correctly, I now need 21 points from my activity to pass Greg, and I need 35 points to pass Nick. Is that correct? I think so. I haven't been tobing it up as we go along,

But that sounds about that. I think I actually was wrong on the math, and I actually need nine points to pass. Okay, whatever. Glad you cleared that up. All right. So we still need the activities, right? Yes. So for his activities where he took all the guys to one, two, three, boom, you scored 37 out of 40.

It didn't end up being 40 out of 40 because the more than plenty of nests. Like, it was pretty good value for what it was, but it did cost a fair bit more than next activities and you did get deemed one point for luxury because ultimately how luxurious can it be when you have to be careful of the floor which is lava so really like come on right so but we still have mini challenge we do have a mini challenge um so for the mini challenge tim's activity was that he had to book something um that was going to be infant friendly um parents were new forms um well What? No, it did. It said family friendly. Not saying.

We reviewed the footage earlier. We reviewed the footage of you reading your challenge. You forgot between the time of reading your challenge. No. Planning your challenge. Oh, no. There was nothing different. There was nothing infant friendly about that challenge.

Yeah, that was nothing in. They're not even allowed in, are they? But before Stephen gives me a terrible grade. Wait, wait. Is this a pre-buttal? I just want to say that. that even if there was actually stuff that was infant friendly, and once I saw that activity, I wouldn't have done it. I would have taken the hit because I wanted Nick and Gray to this one,

as opposed to the one that would have been infant friendly. However, I completely did not realize it was supposed to be infant friendly. I actually assumed you just sort of made the decision to just say screw it. But anyway, go on. I just thought it was family friendly. Gosh, darn it. I mean, and to be fair to Tim, if he had switched around the mini challenges that he picked, so for his first destination, he could have picked infant-friendly for that one, and he would have scored top points for that. And then that one would have, for Melbourne,

he would have had an activity that your partner would love. And so he would have scored top points for that. You are lucky, though, because we didn't take away any points for the mini-challenge, but we also didn't award any points for that because ultimately you just simply weren't allowed to take infants in there You have a little to participate in. I don't want to be.

Maybe an infant of yours would be four feet tall. We don't know. So now I just want to be very clear that an infant is defined according to Webster, an infant is defined as a child in an early stage of life, which I feel like is fairly nebulous. This is a pretty good room. Yeah.

So I don't know. Going from, I mean, I'll let, I'll let my co-activity people rebutted. Well, first, Steve, the early stage of life is so. But we haven't finished the scoring. Yeah, yeah. We haven't given you the official score on this yet.

Right. Yeah. Because Greg had earned some bonus points outside of the scoring parameters, so did Nick. And Tim has also scored 10 bonus points because he did have arguably kind of like the best overall collection of cards picked for the wildcard challenge. But despite that, like, he did manage to, like, blow out of the water. I think a lot of people's expectations for what could be achieved with the welcome offers and the activities and the destinations and things like that and the

obstacles. And so, yeah, we felt that he deserved an additional 10 points just for being able to showcase what was able to be done that people probably wouldn't have expected. So that means that your score for destination three was 125, which puts your overall total at 355, which means that Tim is the winner, unless we get convinced otherwise. Unless we get the rebuttal. So much pressure. Congratulations. Well done.

All right. And totally deserves it. Any rebuttals? Sounds like you're in total favor. No, Tim one. And I think it's really interesting, the point that Stephen made. And I think several readers and followers of the challenge. have made the same point that you could have looked at Tim's cards at the beginning and said,

oh, he's got a really strong set of cards. You know, I bet this is going to be easy for him. And but then if you look at what he did with them, you'd say, well, he didn't just take the easy options. He went for things that were really complicated and showcased some awesome stuff. I mean, that era plan award was masterful, the way he used the edit, the way he used all the credits. I mean, he managed to, in a challenge where he didn't even have the U.S. as one of his destinations, uses Chase Saffire tables and stub up credit. I mean, I think that really he took that, I think he took that to heart and said, you know what, I'm going to use everything I can and use every trick in the book. And he, I totally agree with you, Stephen. I agree. Also, he built a

trip that, you know, maybe the pace isn't something people would want to replicate, but, you know, all the components of it, you know, you look at these things, say, wow, I want to do that. And, you know, I'd be really happy to stay there. I'd be really happy to fly that. And I definitely want to do that in Costa Rica, that in Seoul, that in Melbourne. So, yeah, fantastic job all around. Yeah. Congratulations. Well, Greg, I think, was just relieved that I didn't have any dried coconut for him.

But once there was no dried coconut as a part of it. I felt like Nick and Tim were neck and neck until neck. Like, force my mouth open and push that coconut in there. Yes, yes. So I do have a question for Nick. So, Nick, during the initial card draw, you had the opportunity to redraw your cards. I feel like your scoring got affected quite a bit just by virtue of the fact that you had to go to Guadeloupe and the cards that you had and the itineraries that you had to book. and so you just simply weren't able to score as highly as you might have been able to,

despite putting together a very impressive trip. Do you wish that you had taken advantage of the opportunity to repick your cards based on what you had seen? Because you think that that might have helped you put together an even stronger challenge element? Or are you happy with what you did overall? No, I'm very happy with what I did with what I had drawn, number one. that's for starters. No, I appreciated and enjoyed the challenge of doing it and it was a fun trip. Number two, I liked the fact that, so if you read my post about my stop and Guadalupe, I went to Guadalupe before and I didn't love it. And it wasn't a place that I felt like I needed to go back to. And so I wasn't particularly excited when I drew it in the challenge. And I had so much fun there this time. I saw it like a total, I saw it through totally different lens. I walked away feeling very differently than I did the first time. And so I think that that was, that's valuable not only in like, okay, yeah, figuring all this stuff out, but also in reminding people that you may go somewhere and think, ah, this isn't really for me, but maybe it's worth another shot at some point in the future. I think it's a good lesson to not judge a place by the first time you visit wherever you went or whatever time you were there might not have been right. And so it's worth another, another shot. So I was glad to have that opportunity. And also I loved Vietnam. I mean, Hanoi was great. And I don't think, I, I

I have been to Taiwan. That was the place that I drew and we kind of did like a fake redraw. And I don't regret getting the chance to explore a little bit more of Vietnam because I was excited about it from the beginning. And then as I got reading into it, I got more excited about all the different things. So no, I don't regret it is the short version of the long story. It was challenging and I couldn't do things quite the way I might have wanted to with the cards I had. But the destinations I think worked out really well. And obviously I was able to do it. And so I think that that is useful to show people that even if you don't have the most ideal points, you can still make it work. So similarly, Greg, I'm curious. Did you regret your stay in the zone choice at any point?

The staying in Columbia, picking Columbia over China, the China zone. Yeah, a bit. I regretted a little bit not my choice as much as the fact that I got that power up at all. because I feel like it made the beginning too easy, and so it made it hard to showcase what I could do with points and miles in an interesting way. So the only really interesting thing I did was getting from, you know, that area to Melbourne. So it was like one interesting thing, you know. So I think it would have been more fun if I was like in three separate zones.

altogether. Yeah. So your power-up was kind of more of an obstacle in your view. I mean, no, I mean, it did make it easier for sure, but it made it less interesting, I think, by doing it that way. Less interesting points-wise, I guess. I liked all the destinations. You know, I really had fun with the flipping the points around and using my miles to book hotels, and I stayed in some really fun hotels, really good hotels. And, you know, that was really fun. I'll tell you the truth, afterwards. Actually, I think it was like while flying home, I was, like, realizing, like, all these

interesting things with Miles, like, I could have done that I didn't think of until afterwards. And I was like, oh, man, I should have done that. I should. So I don't reggae any of things I did do, but I came out with a lot of other creative ideas afterwards. And so now I'm like, I need to do this game again. Well, I almost think it would be fun to turn this into like an actual deck people could like use to give themselves challenges.

Did you at any point wish you had redrawn the entire since we gave everyone the option to redraw? No. Okay. So now for those watching at home, we have a few minutes for a few more questions. We'll start with this one, which is an all play, but we'll start with Nick for obvious reasons. You guys have a high tolerance level when traveling at any point in this challenge were you truly dead tired? Oh, well, you know, yeah, so I think that's coming to me because I did have one night where I didn't sleep at all. You know, yes, but is how I'll answer that.

So first, I tend to function relatively well off of low sleep. Three or four hours a night I can go for about a week and not feel as bad as I think other people would. I've always been able to go off of low sleep. That's not to say I don't enjoy sleeping for a long time. I just don't often get an opportunity to. And that's okay. I could do that. So that is perhaps less of a challenge for me.

Like my wife, no way. In fact, just earlier today, she said, I would never go on one of these challenge trips with you. It's way too fast for me. And she's, I mean, she's not wrong. It would be it wouldn't fit for her because she wouldn't enjoy doing that on little sleep. Whereas I don't mind that.

That's kind of fun for me for the most part. Though I do admit that that night I didn't sleep at all. At some point during the cooking class, I started to feel really. tired. And the issue for me is that when I get that tired, I really don't want to eat. Like, my stomach just does not feel like eating it. And we cooked a lot of food. So when it came time to sit down and eat that, I was like, I am way too tired to eat all of this food. And so I, you know, I didn't make it through everything. I knew I wouldn't. But I made it through less than I probably would have if I had had a full night's sleep because I just can't enjoy eating as much at that point.

So that's the one time when like it really hit me there. But you know, I didn't fall asleep at the table or anything. And I was still running around doing things for the next few hours. You were operating that knife pretty pretty sluggishly. I was I was being extra careful. A knife was pretty sharp and I was concerned. But but I slept well on the way to Australia after that despite it being just premium economy.

So like no, I don't know that to me that's part. of the fun, so to speak. So it doesn't bother me all that much to run on low for a while. By the time it's all over, I'm usually pretty exhausted. Once we get to Melbourne, I was pretty tired. But I got a good night sleep and then I was basically good to go. All right. Tim, how about you? Dead tired? Always. Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, I don't, you know, and I don't like, so like a little behind the curtains, it's not, but part of it is not just doing the travel. It's that we're trying to record things. We're trying to then get the footage that we're recording back to Annie and Carrie.

We're writing posts, which those daily posts would be right, at least for me anyway, it usually take around two to three hours. And so it's trying to do that in the spaces between the challenge and still, like, it kind of crowds out sleep. But so there was actually a, I think three nights in a row once I got to Asia where I was literally in the middle. I was on my phone filtering video to send or like kind of choosing curating video to send to Annie and Carrie and I fell asleep with my phone in my hand and then like woke up hours later and like, oh my gosh, I need to get the video of these guys.

And that's sort of, I mean, there's a consistent level of fatigue for sure. And this particular one, it was kind of a bummer. I got sick the week before or the weekend before we started. So when I left, I was kind of recuperating a little bit. But I mean, you know, honestly, at the same point, at the same point, there's a lot of stimuli too. Like, you know, like to next point, like we're, you know, I mean. Literally in next case with a coffee making class. Yeah, the coffee class.

But like, you know, for instance, on the way to Melbourne, you know, like I stopped and did a sushi dinner and did borderless, then went to the lounge, then got on the plane, then woke up and went to the opera house. then with that like it's like there there is a certain when I really when I really feel like it's really tiring but when I really feel it to Nick and Greg's point is at the end when I it's like once you get home yeah well I'm really glad in the flight home you know but before Greg jumps and I'm really glad Tim made the point that part of the lack of sleep for us is that we're trying to report on all of this in real time and I replied to a comment somewhere about that or somebody mentioned I should be dinged for not sleeping enough because they wouldn't want to do that. And I said, yeah, but even if you wanted to replicate my trip,

nobody would travel to space probably. Even if you did, you, you'd be getting sleep. Yeah, I think you wouldn't be sending videos. You wouldn't be writing a post. You wouldn't be doing all the things that Tim just talked about that take hours out of every day. And if you want to pack your day full, then it's going to take you hours after the day is over to get it done. And so there's only so little, you know, time that you have to sleep.

So, yeah. So that's why we sleep so little. I would have slept more if not. if I weren't trying to report on it. Right, for sure. Would you really go? Greg, how about you? Yeah, you don't really.

In real life. Yeah. How about you, Greg? So ironically, I think my, my tiredest point was our last live stream from Melbourne, where we're all sitting together. I literally, like, I think while I came around was Tim or Nick was talking, I was like, I really want to put my head down on. You're just still trying to do the honeymoon activity theme.

But in this challenge, I was, less tired in general than on any challenge before. And a big part of that is probably that 10 a.m. flight restriction that I had. It's funny because your power up was an obstacle and your obstacle was a little bit like how you switched your airline and your hotel points in miles. Right. Right. That's true. But there were so many flights I couldn't buck that there were so many awards that were like, this is perfect. Oh, it's 9.50 a.m. I can't buck it. Oh, man. That's so funny because I I don't think I booked any flights that took off before 10 a.m. I don't think.

I don't know. Maybe there was something, but, but yeah. And did you check a bag on the other end? No, I did not check a bag. Carrie's point there was that those were Tim, Tim's obstacle is the bag having to check a bag. And Greg's was the no flights before 10 a.m. I should,

I should have taken Greg's obstacle. But yes, I actually, I did catch myself with my eyes closed once or twice during that final live stream, actually. Now open those. Hopefully nobody saw. Well, well, not that you said, we're all going to go back and watch that and check it out, see if we can spot it. I think the glare hopefully, hopefully covered up on the glasses there.

All right. We'll make this, I think, the last question here. Each of you, what is something that surprised you most that you liked about one of your destinations or activities? We'll start with Nick. You kind of touched on this a little bit before, but let's get specific. Okay. What surprised you most that you liked? Well, all right, so Guadalupe, because I wasn't terribly excited.

about Guadalupe in the first place, but the beach that I went to and the name of it, you'll have to check the post right now because I can't, I can't think of the name of it. Granddance, right? Or granddance. Yeah, plage de granddance. Plage de Granddance or something like that. That's it. That's it.

Thank you. You guys read my post. Well, I've been there. I know you've been there. It's a beautiful, beautiful beach. And, you know, I've been to a lot of beaches at this point in my life. So while I love the beach, I mean, obviously I got the Hawaiian shirt on right now, I don't necessarily think that I would have thought that a beautiful beach would actually make me say, wow, this is incredible.

Even though I enjoy that, and I was surprised at how beautiful that beach was and how much I did enjoy it. And it was so empty. I can't believe that there weren't more people. I mean, it was hurricane season, I guess. So it was low season. So for that reason, probably it was less than it would have been otherwise. But still, I mean, what a deserted gorgeous beach. So I think that surprised me that I was so enamored with that. I think that would be that if I had to pick one thing, I think that'd be it. It wasn't, no, let's not say it was my favorite activity. I really enjoyed getting the Blazor made in Hanoi. That was a lot of fun and amazing that they were able to do it in 24 hours. And while I shared the one on Frequent Myler, I actually got three made that day.

Did you go back to the one you said you were jealous of? No, I know, I was. I picked two up there. I got one made at a place that I was overall less happy with but the jacket itself came out well and two made actually at the place that I had written about. So it was incredible to me that I was able to do that in 24 hours. They were all done literally 24 hours after I got there.

Pretty incredible, yeah. Yeah, we need a post about that. All right, Tim, how about you? What surprised you most about something you liked? So I'm going to cheat and I'm going to do. a mini surprise off of both of them. What I, I've actually spent a fair amount of time in Seoul and in Korea over the years. And I think what was fun about, I really enjoyed, like very quickly I gave up because of just

how crazy the holiday stuff was while I was there. I gave up trying to actually like book any sort of activities because everything was just packed and just said, okay, I'm just going to go where people, what are people doing? you know like how are and it was a lot of fun like I just said I really had a lot of fun and it was sort of fun to be able to kind of not try and maximize soul so to speak but just kind of do stuff that I had been there previously never been able to do before like go hiking or go to uh uh or actually the healing balloon was a lot of I love that helium balloon ride that was like the best $18 I spent over the entire trip that was so much fun and that's one of those things that like I would

have had no idea had I not done more, you know, was I, was I just glancing into soul? I would have had no idea. Yeah. And then the flip side, I would say Costa Rica, just in general. And I was, you know, I've heard in Costa Rica, I've never been there before, weirdly. I've always wanted to go. And I hear a lot about probably because it's where a lot of the hotels are about the Caribbean coasts and the Pacific coasts. And San Jose in the San Jose area is like, yeah, you know, You know, it's a big crowded, blah, blah, blah. And it is crowded, but gosh, I mean, I was so taken with, I mean, I had a marvelous day being able to tool around and check out. And all this stuff that was so, that was right by the Capitol was just astounding to me.

And the whole, I mean, the whole experience, when I got back, I'm like, man, if the thing that I am most, I mean, Vietnam, I really want, I've never been to Vietnam. I was really jealous of Nix. I almost went to Vietnam. I had a Vietnam visa because I thought I was going to have to go to Vietnam. Did you account for that, by the way, in your trip expenses? I'm just in that. Speculative. No, that's actually a good point.

I don't think I did. Negative 27 points. Oh, man. Almost won, Tim. Luckily, it was only $25, but you're right. I don't think I did. I forgot about that. But yeah, it just really made me, I really wanted to spend some time digging into Costa Rica.

and I don't want to give short shrift to central Costa Rica in favor of the coasts. Yeah. All right. Great. Greg, how about you? Yeah. I'd say in Meneaging, two things about that, like surprise me in a very positive way. One was I talked about before when I went to Guadipay.

You know, I thought it would be a great place to go for the visuals because I knew it would be colorful and, you know, look good on camera. But I did not think I would like to spend time in this very touristy, you know, town. But I actually loved it. It's so vibrant. It was just really something that just shocked me. It's not usually my thing. The other thing is much more general. The people were so nice and fun. I mean, I didn't have a lot of time to spend with, but when I went out on the food tour the first night I was there. You know, I interacted with some locals and and people were just so nice and I just love that like if music started playing, everybody started swaying their hips. And it's just, it's like a different, you know, it's a different culture from from the US obviously

and in a good way. So I enjoyed that. I think it's really neat. I think each of you, if I'm not mistaken, has returned with your family. to a place that you went on a challenge, right? Nick, you went back to Roveneemi with your family. Greg, I think you went back to Bergen, Bergen. Yep, and to sort of Norway in general, went to the fjords. And I did team labs with the family also. Oh, I didn't know that.

Cool. Tim, maybe you'll go back to Costa Rica. Yeah, I think that's good. And in Vietnam, I'm going to go back to where Nick went without his family. Right. I don't think my kids are ready to cross the street in Illinois. That's for sure. Yeah.

A little chaotic. Yes. All right. Well, I think that rounds out this hour for us. So thanks so much for following along. Congratulations to Tim. Don't worry. We will be posting kind of a summary of this scoring.

So there's one more chance for you guys to give your feedback. I don't know how much will be swayed at this point. But feel free to give us your feedback. And congratulations to Tim.