We have been looking forward to visiting Atlanta, Georgia for
some time. We love marine life and are anxious to visit the Georgia Aquarium
- currently the world’s largest aquarium. Opened in 2005, the aquarium houses 120,000 animals,
representing 500 species, in 8.5 million US gallons (32,000 m3)
of marine and fresh water.
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Whale shark in the open ocean |
We are especially excited to see the whale sharks on display. They are the largest fish on earth,
measuring up to 40 feet long. The
Georgia Aquarium is the only aquarium outside of Asia that houses whale
sharks. It also offers the only
opportunity in the world where you can SCUBA dive with these gentle giants
(which I intend on doing!).
Of course there are plenty of other things to do and see in Atlanta, but we are definitely most excited to see the aquarium.
How are we going to get to Atlanta, Georgia and the Georgia
Aquarium for free?
We have plenty of Chase Ultimate Rewards points and American
Airlines AAdvantage miles, and wanted to find the "cheapest" point
value flights. I checked AA.com, Southwest.com (UR transfer partner),
United.com (UR transfer partner) and determined that Southwest airlines would
give us the best value. We enjoy
the fact that the first 2 bags checked in are free with Southwest.
If looking to book a flight with cash, I recommend checking out kayak.com or expedia.com for discount airfare tickets.
When logging into my Southwest account, I noticed that I only
had 5,368 Rapid Rewards points. For the flights we wanted to book, we would need 52,438 Rapid Rewards points.
I then went to www.ultimaterewards.com to
transfer 48,000 points from my Palladium card to my Southwest account to get
enough points for our free trip.
The points transfer took place instantly and I soon had enough Southwest
points to book our free roundtrip flights.
We paid with some of our Chase Ultimate Rewards points to get 2
round trip tickets for 52,438 Rapid Rewards points and $10 cash total.
If we were to
book a Southwest Flight with cash, the round trip flights for both of us would
have cost a whopping $925.40!
In this case, 1 Chase UR point = 1.76 cents. (925.40 / 52,438 = 0.0176).
This emphasizes the value of an Ultimate Reward point. Would
you rather have free flights worth $925.40?
Or would you rather convert your
52,438 UR points into $524.38?
I typically hold my UR points until I find a flight / hotel partner that I would like to transfer to. The flexibility in point transfers really makes the Chase Ultimate Rewards program fantastic. Here's a refresher of the updated Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partners:
If you don't have any immediate travel plans, and you need some spending cash, you can also transfer Ultimate Rewards points directly into cash with 1 UR point = 1 cent.
For hotel stay in Atlanta, we wanted to use our Club Carlson
Gold points. I have around 160,000 Club Carlson Gold points and wanted to
use up some of them for this trip.
I like The Country Inn & Suites hotels because they are
very basic and inexpensive hotels that offer extra amenities including: free
high speed internet, free daily hot breakfast with waffles, omelets, breakfast
burritos, and more. Plus, you can earn
2,000 bonus Gold points when booking your reservation online.
When searching for available hotels in the area, we found 2 that potentially met our needs, both under the Country Inn & Suites
family of hotels:
The Atlanta Downtown South at Turner Field, GA for $102.33 or 28,000
points per night and the Atlanta Airport North, GA for $63.20 or 15,000 points per night
Based on Tripadvisor reviews and the close proximity to the
airport, we chose to stay at the Atlanta Airport North location, which cost 45,000 Club Carlson Gold Points (15,000 x 3) for our 3-night stay in Atlanta:
If we were to book this 3-night hotel stay, it would have cost
us $218.04:
In this calculation, 1 Club Carlson Gold point = 0.0048
cents. Club Carlson Gold points are definitely not as valuable as a Chase
UR point, but still a useful form of currency.
Club Carlson award stays are completely free, no fees or taxes whatsoever. Club Carlson hotels also have a great cancellation policy - no fees
or penalties if reservation is cancelled before the day of our stay, with full
refund of points.
For those interested in earning Club Carlson points very
quickly, they do offer 2 types of personal credit cards and 1 business credit
card. You can see more information
here.
This is how I just scored us 4 days and 3 nights in Atlanta, Georgia with the roundtrip flights and hotel stays paid for with points. Total value = $1,143.44. Total points spend: 52,438 Chase Ultimate Rewards points and 45,000 Club Carlson Gold points.
July 4th can't come soon enough for us. I’ll be writing a trip report soon after
we return from our mini vacation.
Here's another picture of a whale shark at the Georgia aquarium (just because these creatures are so amazingly beautiful):
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