Norway

About a month ago, I found a great casino deal on the Sky Princess sailing from South Hampton. This has been a dream of mine. The sailing itself would be $310 per person for an interior room. That was the easy part. Getting to London from Nashville took some plotting. I thought I would share how it all shook out.

I had my choice between 2 different sailings of the Sky Princess next summer. When I started running numbers, I could have easily done either date on points (just paying taxes and fees). My husband didn’t have the vacation time to go with me. I asked my sister and she wanted to go but couldn’t commit this far out with two teens at home. My trusty sidekick for 16 years, Tanner said he would love to do this cruise with me. I reminded him that there would be 3 cruises for us next year all in interior rooms. He agreed with me; for Norway, it was worth it.

Thanks to my American Express Platinum and Gold cards I had more than enough points for two round trip flights to London. I had been playing with the numbers for a few weeks making sure flights were available on points. Even though it is a great deal, it still has some expenses and I have to pay for everything immediately when booking a casino deal. I decided to move when I realized I couldn’t choose the July date and get affordable free flights. I checked the 2nd date and sure enough, I could still get free flights so I proceeded to book.

Here is how I did it:

Instead of running manual searches for all of American Express's travel partners, I had the website point.me do the work. (A free benefit with my Amex Platinum card.)

To get the best results, I searched for two one-way tickets instead of round-trip tickets.

Before I booked anything, I went through the process making sure I could get to London and back on points. I double-checked that tickets were available on each of the airline rewards sites. Once I could see the big picture I started moving points. Point.me can guide you through the whole process if you are new to this. They made the process so simple!

I moved 65,000 points from my Amex to the Airfrance frequent flier program. We had to pay $75.00 in taxes and fees for the two fights to London.

I then moved 60,000 Amex points to fly home from London on Virgin Atlantic. We did have to pay $300 each in taxes and fees for our return from London. I waited too long to take advantage of the direct British Airways flight from London so I decided Virgin Atlantic through Atlanta would be our next best flight option.

When I priced out the tickets for this trip (you can see below) it was over $1700 a ticket.