Join Justin Vacula on the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast for a special episode recapping his Emerald Princess Europe cruise.
Dive into the intricacies of traveling at a low cost with credit card points, miles, and benefits.
Hear about his adventures in Europe, from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the rocks of Gibraltar. Learn about his experiences with various loyalty programs and the unique opportunities they offer. This episode also features a special guest, Darren, and provides useful tips on maximizing deals and offers.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast
00:47 Emerald Princess Europe Cruise Trip Report
01:36 Travel Adventures and Casino Fun
02:14 From Boston to Rome
04:12 Cruise Experience and Onboard Activities
06:39 Dining and Entertainment on the Cruise
22:18 Exploring Ports and Local Attractions
27:15 Casino Troubles with Onboard Spending
31:28 Exploring Onboard Credits and Spa Experiences
32:44 The Value of Points and Business Class Flights
33:51 Booking Challenges and Travel Hacks
36:23 Gibraltar and Wildlife Adventures
39:12 Lisbon and Mediterranean Cruise Reflections
41:22 Southampton Stay and Hilton Hotel Issues
48:07 Return Journey and JetBlue Mint Experience
54:54 Meeting Pari Kim from Love On The Spectrum
56:18 Closing Announcements and Upcoming Events
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin Vacula: You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula here to help you travel the world at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Emerald Princess Europe Cruise Trip Report.
Visit meetup.com/philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel [00:01:00] credit Miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are May 17th and June 22nd, 2025. Find a link in the show notes. For more content between podcast episodes, follow hurdy gurdy Travel podcast on Facebook and x follow Justin Vacula on Instagram.
Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube where you can also become a channel member for daily content including travel videos, podcast clips, community and bonus content. Welcome back to the show, Darren.
Darren Remsburg: Thanks Justin. Great to be back. And all our listeners, I know you’ve been traveling again and I can’t wait to get back into it.
Hear all the things you’ve been up
Justin Vacula: to. Yes. Gone for about two weeks and now back in Pennsylvania.
Darren Remsburg: How many hours after you landed did you
Justin Vacula: load your first online casino? Oh, I was extremely tired, so I went to sleep around 10:00 PM and played the next day. [00:02:00] For sure. Don’t want to be gambling in a tired state.
It’s a good reminder ever.
Darren Remsburg: Not for lack of interest. You were making good decisions to make sure that your, your bets were solid, your EV was positive. All the things.
Justin Vacula: All the things. Yes. And back from Princess Cruises. And it wasn’t only princess. I went to Boston, flew to London, flew from London to Rome, stayed in Rome, and then went on the cruise.
So this is a good opportunity to break down that entire trip. I can’t wait to hear about
Darren Remsburg: your quote unquote free cruise that you flew all the way over to Europe to take. I know a lot of folks that are not in the travel hacking world would be like, how can you get a free cruise if you have to fly to Europe to start with?
But we both know the big thing can start for free. Or close to free in the airport lounge. Let’s start there. What? What lounges Ooh, yes. Did you take advantage of on this big trip? Justin
Justin Vacula: in Philadelphia. I went to the Chase Sapphire Lounge. At this point, I don’t see going [00:03:00] to the Delta or the Amex lounges in Philadelphia at all.
Hang out in the Chase lounge. It’s the special QR code made to order menu and the buffet that’s out there. Lots of drinks, lots of space. It’s a really great place to hang out. So as usual, I get to the airport early. And partake in the chase lounge. So that was nice. On the exit. This time it was for breakfast.
I went to the lounge for breakfast and I flew to Boston, stayed in Boston for two nights, and this time I wanted to give myself additional wiggle room because I had a pass trip. I was supposed to go to South Korea and it was a flight from Philadelphia to Detroit and Detroit to South Korea, but that Philadelphia to Detroit flight got canceled.
So the whole trip. Was canceled, so I figured, okay, I’ll stay in Boston for two nights just in case there’s any problems with the flight going there. There’s any delay. I don’t want to cut it too close and lose the cruise.
Darren Remsburg: Yeah, as positioning flights can be problematic if you [00:04:00] can’t, if you can’t make ’em, it becomes really challenging if there are different p and r and know a lot of folks have run into that, and so a lot of discussion about what’s an appropriate amount of time and of course, depends on how far you’re going and what your options are, so.
Glad you made this one. Yes. And I know you were also, for those of you that watch those of our listeners and also listened to a previous podcast and YouTube episode, you got to meet up with a certain train enthusiast when you were in Boston.
Justin Vacula: That’s right. We’ve been building up to it for a while, but the meetup indeed happened with Purple Princess Perry.
We met at the Hyatt Regency Boston Harbor where I stayed. And recorded a conversation so you can listen to that as a previous episode or watch the video as I took my Insta 360 x four camera. So it was a really good discussion. Cool to meet her in person. Hung out after, went to dinner, hung around the harbor area, so it was a really good opportunity.
A little bit of a bonus out of this whole cruise experience. Ab absolute, a big bonus.
Darren Remsburg: And remind us, Justin, where did you get that, [00:05:00] that camera that you’ve been using in
Justin Vacula: for videotaping lately? Ooh, it’s the Dell credits from the American Express Business. Platinum. It Dell credits
Darren Remsburg: de, that’s like a drink.
Someone’s out there is drinking. And the Dell credits.
Justin Vacula: Yes. Dell credits for good this time, rather than people talking about buying all these LED lights and just making their TV look pretty Indeed. So that conversation went really well. It’s up as an audio podcast and it’s up as a video on the Her Gardy Travel YouTube channel.
Listeners can check that out if they didn’t already. And the cruise, by the way, you were talking about it being free or comped. In this case, I had an offer match as I went to a meetup with the Point Me to New York Group and someone had said, Hey, princess is doing an offer match promotion. You can email Princess and they will match another cruise offer.
So I sent what I believe was my MGM Platinum status cruise. That was a balcony cruise with celebrity. Princess said, Hey, we’ll give you [00:06:00] a balcony cruise as well. So originally it was supposed to be a 10 day British Isles cruise, but weeks later they sent an email saying that they had to cancel the cruise because of a problem with the ship.
The ship needed to be docked for maintenance. So they said that now you can pick a different cruise and they’re throwing in a thousand dollars in free play. As a gesture of kindness or inconvenience, as they were saying. We’ll get into that later, and they were willing to reimburse some flight change costs, not too much.
I think it was only about 250. So instead of the British Isles cruise, I went with this European Explorer cruise. So I had to pay taxes and fees, which was a few hundred dollars, and I purchased the Princess Premier Package at the time, I believe it was somewhere around $60 a day, but it since went up, which included.
Wifi gratuities, digital and print photos, complimentary drinks up to $20, [00:07:00] and some other benefits. So a few hundred dollars for the taxes, fees, a little bit for the package, and I thought this package was great value because I’d otherwise be paying for gratuities, paying for wifi on two devices. So this was the only cruise package that I had ever purchased.
I thought the Princess offer was pretty good. Originally, it was supposed to be the British Isles, but then it ended up being a European Explorer cruise out of Rome.
Darren Remsburg: I think one of those, again, one of those things where we, we talk about free travel, but a lot of times we can find deals that are at a deep discount and I think folks sometimes get stuck on, no, if it’s not free, I’m not interested or.
I only want to generate points when they’re free, and I’m not interested in the discounted points, but I think this is another great example of something that would’ve been probably thousands of dollars from a retail perspective, and you were able to get at a deep discount, do some travel into some places you hadn’t been before, and allegedly.
You were gonna [00:08:00] get a thousand dollars free play on top. Now we’ll get into that, how that worked out. Uh, spoiler. Uh, but yeah, it sounds good. Remind us how, how you flew there and what kind of miles you used, all that kind of good stuff.
Justin Vacula: Yes, I got a good tip that Eddie Hod Airways sharing with JetBlue had availability to go to London.
So it was a flight from Boston to London for about 75,000 membership rewards points. So it’s Amex points. I transferred to Eddie Hod and I was able to book the JetBlue flight through Eddie Hod. Unfortunately, using JetBlue points directly, the rate was a lot higher. It’s really strange to me still that for some reason you’re using far fewer points with these partners.
But it happened to be the case, so it was 70 5K one way, and I booked the return. I booked them separately rather than a round trip in case there’s an issue with one. It’ll probably be easier to resolve. I think that’s the best practice [00:09:00] here with booking these flights. So 150 KMR. It would otherwise cash out 1 cent per point at $1,500, but since last year, had lots of opportunities.
I reached my cash out maximum for the year of the 1 million Mr. A little flex there, so I put the points to use and went to Europe as past podcast guest. Justin Walter suggested I go on international trips and not focus so much on the domestic. So having gone on many Caribbean cruises, gone on northeastern cruises, I went to Alaska.
I’ve done a lot of the domestic cruising, so I was looking for different opportunities in Europe. I.
Darren Remsburg: To quote a famous meme, Justin, why not both? It sounds like this was a, was really a, a good itinerary.
Justin Vacula: Yes. I had to book another flight, though was part of the problem here, so I couldn’t change the aha flights, or at least they told me that if I wanted to change, it had to be within the year of which it was booked.
So I was really hobbled [00:10:00] here as if I wanted to go on the British Isles cruise. It was a year from now, and I had booked it earlier than that. Of course, I had to keep the same flights or else if I wanted a refund, they said there would be a 40% point penalty. So America really loves math on that, but the numbers a spelled disaster as the infamous or famous Scott Steiner had said.
So I ended up keeping the JetBlue flight, the Eddie Hod flight over to Europe. I just had to book a cheap flight to get from London to Rome, so that’s what I did. I had to wait a few hours in London, the layover, I used a Plaza Premium lounge, which wasn’t too great, but it was a quieter place. It was complimentary food, so I took it and went to Rome, and the Hilton Rome airport exceeded my expectations.
I stayed there for two nights. With my Hilton Diamond status, there was complimentary breakfast, although it might have been complimentary for gold status as well. I got access to an executive lounge and I also got a room upgrade to the executive [00:11:00] floor. The lounge was really nice as it had complimentary alcohol, snacks, and even some entrees later at night or more substantial food.
Anyway, so it was a really nice lounge experience and I thought the hotel was really nice and it was a covered walk within the airport. So once I got through baggage claim. I followed signs to get to the hotel and it was maybe a 15, 20 minute walk and it was very close to the Leonardo Express train, which I later took to Rome.
So it was nice to just walk outta the hotel. You’re right at the airport, you’re right at the train station, and you had lots of opportunities to explore.
Darren Remsburg: Yeah, it sounds like a perfect location for what you’re gonna do. Explore what? Two days prior to jumping in your jumping
Justin Vacula: on the cruise. So I arrived the first day super tired.
I didn’t get much sleep on either of the flights, so I, I just took it easy the first day. Stayed in the hotel and I used the second day for exploration. So I took that Leonardo Express train to Rome. I saw the Coliseum, [00:12:00] the Roman Forum, and I went to a hard rock cafe in Rome that wasn’t too far from where I was.
Anyway, I had an offer for 15 off of 25 at Hard Rock Cafe. I used that for a lunch or a late lunch on the go. After all the exploration and walking, it was a good time to take a break, drink a lot of water, and I got a decent amount of food there at the Hard Rock Cafe. I uploaded a lot of photos from the cafe.
They had a lot of Rome themed guitars in there and a lot of different imagery, so it was a pretty cool place. Normally I wouldn’t eat on the go. I’d just have the hotel food. But since I was out for so long, I had breakfast at the hotel. It was a later lunch. So I got a lot of exploring, uploaded a lot of videos to YouTube of the Leonardo Express train, the train platform, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum.
So I’m continuing my streak of uploading content every day on YouTube. That’s what I’m aiming for. So lots of the travel videos. [00:13:00] Are up there from Rome, and later on listeners will get to see the cruise port stops that we’ll get into later.
Darren Remsburg: Yeah. It’s a great reminder if folks are listening and haven’t had a chance to check out your hurdy, Gerdy Travel YouTube channel to do that, that you’re Yes.
That you’re featuring new content every day.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, aiming for it for sure and have been pretty successful. And it was nice using the trains to get around. It was really cheap if I were to have taken an Uber or taxi. To get to the town area, it would’ve been much more, and this is the theme throughout the entire Europe experience, that some of these trains were maybe five to 10 US dollars with a conversion to get around.
Compared to if I were to take the shuttle, even a shared shuttle from the airport to the cruise port, it would’ve been $80. So I was very happy to pay a few dollars to take one train and then use another train to get to the cruise port. Which was csia or [00:14:00] csia. I have a hard time pronouncing these things, so that was a good money saver to take the trains around and was certainly inspired by Perry from Love on the Spectrum, who I recorded the conversation with these trains.
Did
Darren Remsburg: you, did she map that out for you? Did you map that yourself? Did you use an app? How did you figure out the local trains?
Justin Vacula: UPT was very helpful and I, and I checked its work with the hotel people and they confirmed that the information was accurate. I love chat, GPT, so I, yeah, really helpful for travel.
I used it many times throughout the cruise. I asked it to suggest a walking tour for me to see some iconic locations, and I found out information wall. I was on the cruise. What are the dining times? What was going on? It wasn’t always super accurate, but it was definitely a good place to start from. Good tip there.
Yep. So off to the cruise port, I took the trains to the cruise port. There was a shuttle that you could pay to take the shuttle to the cruise port, but chat GBT was suggesting it was about a [00:15:00] 30 minute walk. So I took the scenic route, taking some photos. I went to the Michelangelo fortress, which was on the way.
That was interesting. A former military installation and maybe current as it was, still walked off, but I got to Sightsee on the way. Ended up being a lot of walking, some of these days, could easily get in 20,000 steps, but it was. Good exercise to walk off some of the cruise food later, I’m sure. So the cruise port was nice.
It was far away from the airport for sure, but the trains helped me get there. So I had to get on the ship around 4:00 PM and I left the hotel early just to make sure that I had ample time in case there were some train delays. I got confused. I missed one. Whatever happened. If I got there early, it’s not a problem.
I just hang out at the cruise port rather than hanging out at the hotel. Yeah,
Darren Remsburg: makes sense.
Justin Vacula: They let me on early and right when I went on, I had the buffet and the luggage came shortly after. So even though I got to the cruise port, maybe around one-ish.
Darren Remsburg: So this would’ve been the first time you cruised [00:16:00] on Princess, right?
Because you status matched over
Justin Vacula: Yes, it was the offer match to get the complimentary cruise with Princess. I didn’t get any status with them. Oh, sorry. I just was able to offer Match and get the complimentary cruise. Taxes, fees and package. But yes, it was the first princess cruise, and the boarding process was pretty easy.
It was waiting in line to get a bus to get to the cruise board that was complimentary. Walk through a few lines, show your passport, and they gave me what they call a medallion. So they gave you a lanyard, or at least they gave me a lanyard with the premier package. And then there’s this medallion that hangs from it that you can use to get into your room.
You can use it in conjunction with their app and order. Drink service, food service. So if you’re sitting in one of the dining areas and you want to order alcohol, for example, then they’ll just bring it to you. They’ll find you based on your medallion. So I think that was a cool feature. Virgin Voyages had something similar with a wristband type thing, and that would help you open your room door, but I don’t think it had a tracking technology [00:17:00] built into it.
So that was a cool thing with Princess, although it was a little bit clunky. Because you could go in the app and it’ll tell you a route to go to the dining areas or other places, but it wasn’t always updating as I was walking around, but I was able to follow the directions and still get there anyway.
And it was humorous that they had some sensors throughout the ship and it would say, go to the International Cafe on deck five and you can get complimentary coffee tea there that I had the package, it was any drink up to $20. And I would scan and they would ask, oh, what’s your room number? Oh, what’s your last name?
And I’m thinking if I scan the medallion, isn’t that the whole point? To not do the other things? I don’t know what the deal was with that is if I’m like stealing others medallions, even though my face is on the system, like I would peek over and I’d see my face on it. Diet theft. The diet was the princess
Darren Remsburg: cruise.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. Some petty theft there, I suppose. I really wanted that chai tea. Sorry sir. What were your, it sounds like
Darren Remsburg: you got on and pretty easily and were able to get lunch right away. What were your initial impressions of the [00:18:00] boat and
Justin Vacula: service? Yes, they were very kind coming to the table. Do you want any water?
Do you want any drinks? So I was able to order. Using the package. Although they came to me, there were other times where they didn’t, and I was still able to order, even if I were to get something like a chai tea, I’ve had a lot of chai tea on the cruise for sure. So the service was nice there. There were people approaching throughout asking you to upgrade, oh, you want to add this wine?
You want to add this dinner? So with the Premier package, I had what they called the casual dining, which was steamers, which was a seafood menu, and then there was. Barbecue menu. So there were the two casual dinings and the Irish pub, but there were others that you can add. So even with the specialty dining, which was the Italian restaurant, and I believe it was Crown Grill, which was advertised as steakhouse, you can add another place that had crab eggs and other seafood that would be add-ons.
So there were a lot of opportunities, oh, add this for 10, add this for 20. A lot of nickel diming, I think going on, as was the case [00:19:00] on some of the other cruises. Although with the virgin voyages, it was all included. So. That wasn’t the case, but just say no to the extra stuff. In this case, I just stayed with what I had in the package, which everybody has the buffet, and then I got the casual and the specialty dining, so that was nice.
And the Italian place I went to Sabatini’s. It was interesting. I was in the restaurant for about two hours. Even at some point, the ser, the servers apologize and say, oh, everything is made one at a time and it’s made fresh and custom for your order. So it was a long time sitting in the restaurant, but I had my phone with me.
The wifi was mostly good, so it wasn’t a big deal compared to the main dining room. Or maybe I’d be there for about an hour. 15 minutes.
Darren Remsburg: Yeah, two hours is quite a long time if you’re not constantly being served. Appetizers and secondary dishes and desserts is. Yeah, that’s, that’s quite some time. I guess, like you say, you don’t have any else, any place to be necessarily when you’re on the boat.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. Personally on land, I wouldn’t put up with that. Me being in a restaurant for [00:20:00] more than an hour, I think is just too much. Just wanna get out, just get on with my life. So it was one drawback, oh, the food quality was pretty good. But for me, eh, I’ll just try different things. I’ll try the variety. I think of all the places, the Irish Pub was the most interesting because they had live music.
I believe the live music started around 7:00 PM That was multiple nights. I went there, have the Irish themed music and they have their own specialty menu that you can order from. So I think that was really interesting. I even uploaded some reels or YouTube shorts on that too, although some of them, I think there was one that was like Ed Sheeran Perfect.
And they said that I couldn’t monetize it because the melody was too similar. Oh gosh. War on happiness there can’t have that. They should. Should included
Darren Remsburg: Gerdy. Justin, that would’ve been enough.
Justin Vacula: And then, ooh, yeah, Patty Gerie is the YouTuber I’d recommend for that. And of course the Band Cellar Darling, which I met and chatted with, I uploaded for a previous episode.
So lots of Hery Gertie music, but unfortunately no Herty Gertie’s on the ship. Business [00:21:00] decision. None that I know of. Yeah, some positives at Princess. I thought the housekeeping was pretty good and ambitious. There was even one time where I thought they were overly ambitious. Where I had the do not disturb light on and they called and said, oh, we’re just checking in to make sure you didn’t want the morning service, because the morning service is ending soon.
And personally, I don’t require or want or demand twice housekeeping a day, but it seemed like they really wanted to do it. So I said, okay, fine, I’ll go. I’ll go to the International Cafe and come back. I went downstairs to let them do the room. So I think that’s a cruise tip. Let housekeeping do their thing otherwise.
They’re gonna keep asking, and this happened to me on other cruises too, especially I’m just by myself like, hang out in the room. It’s okay. Don’t really need housekeeping that often, but they seem to want to insist on doing it.
Darren Remsburg: Did they, did the premier package include a tip for the housekeepers? I know that’s often an expectation for cruises.
Justin Vacula: It did include gratuities and explain the gratuities are shared between all of the team members, [00:22:00] so that was one benefit of the packages. If I were to pay something like 20 a day in gratuities, maybe 2040 in wifi, it made sense to pay a little bit extra to get the additional things like the photos, the drinks, the dining options, and much more.
So good value, I think, from the package. Excellent. Initially, it was interesting that the first day getting on the ship, there was the sailing away party. There was the meet the captain welcome, like all those things that are pretty typical of ships. It was quite packed. There were, I think, four days of stops right at the beginning of this one.
So there wasn’t a sea day in between. And I think after day three, my feet were really hurting, but I was still determined to go out and do everything. So there were definitely lots of stops here. The first one was Levono, which was in Italy. There were a lot of canals. There was another fortress that was there.
The streets were really interesting. I went to a train station and took a train to Pisa, [00:23:00] so I got to see the leaning Tower of Pisa, which was really cool.
Darren Remsburg: Mediterranean cruises. Yeah, everything is quite close together, right? There’s no, no need to sail very far to, to get to your first stop. What were your, did you have some videos of Levora and in Pisa that folks can check out?
Justin Vacula: Oh, yes. They will. Come on YouTube. I’ve had so much content throughout this trip, and then I ran the Perry episode and some clips. So I’m now catching up. I will upload the room tour on the 13th, May 13th is the plan. And then after that is going to be a lot of the port videos. Yeah, LaVona was really nice and once again the trained to pizza saved a lot of money and I think it was only about $4 one way.
So super, super cheap. And it was only about a 20 to 30 minute ride I, I recall. So Levono really nice place. Lots of the canals were. Cool to see. Had to take a shuttle to get there. There were a few times where the crews would stop in some sort of [00:24:00] industrial area and you weren’t always able to walk, so you had to take a shuttle to get there and sometimes you had to pay to use the shuttle.
So it was weird. They didn’t include it in the price is if you get out, you can’t walk there, so you must take the shuttle and then you have to pay for it. So I think it was a little bit of nickel dimming. Going on there. Although otherwise they might’ve just added it to the cost. But for me, getting it comped, then that would’ve been covered.
Darren Remsburg: I agree with you there on the nickel diming.
Justin Vacula: Yes. That was Los Saint Cmar to Long France, long name. It was a marina area. Some interesting buildings. There was a big place where crew, where ships had been assembled that is now abandoned or not in service anymore. So walked by that and saw that. Lots of art in the street.
A big park area and lots of murals. So it was interesting, although this was May 1st as far as I remember, which was a Labor Day type holiday. So a bunch of businesses were closed, so some people were talking, [00:25:00] oh, places are closed, and not even getting off the ship. But there was still a lot to see and do.
And personally, I’m almost never going to a restaurant. Eating at the port stops. ’cause I figure I could just eat before I get off the ship and then eat when I get back on. Or if I get something, it’s gonna be something small, a drink. Some people in the comments were, oh, you should try the local cuisine when you’re there on the cruise ship.
They tailored the menu to the local cuisine and there were tons of options. It’s interesting. So each
Darren Remsburg: free prior to each stop, the chefs on the boat changed what their menu items were to match the next intended stop.
Justin Vacula: I saw that in the main dining room. I saw that in the buffet area where they had like local kind of things on the menu.
That’s fun. Is that common? I’ve, I’ve, geez, I haven’t been on a cruise for 30 years. Probably. It’s mixed. I’ve, I’ve seen on other ships, oh, we have American night, Italian night, this night, that night. But not necessarily the local deeming. So I saw that with Princess. It might be the case on others, but I remember it from [00:26:00] this one.
So yeah, it was two long France. That was day three. Day four was Barcelona, Spain. I really liked the architecture. There were the gothic cathedral and section there, so you could see all of the older architecture. It’s funny, a friend of mine has a YouTube channel called Cool Buildings, and I felt like the cool buildings guy going through this, taking all the photos, taking the videos like, oh, look at this architecture.
Oh, this is interesting. This is neat. That was Barcelona, Spain and I also went towards the metro area that was in the city center, and there were a lot of fountains there, tons of pigeons. There were people feeding pigeons everywhere. It was funny. I see a lot of pigeons in these open squares, but the amount of pigeons there was just wild in between the two fountains that they had in the city center.
So it was really nice. Lots of marketplace areas, vendors. So there was definitely a lot to see in Barcelona. Did you make it to La Familia Cathedral? Ah, perhaps there were lots of cathedrals. That could have [00:27:00] been one of the, I think that’s the
Darren Remsburg: one that’s been under construction for hundreds of years. It’s just a fascinating depiction of nature and earth.
Yeah, that’s, it’s on one of my bucket list to see when we make it over to Barcelona, which, yeah, we haven’t done yet. We’ll be close
Justin Vacula: this summer. Finally, day five was a sea day. Take a break from walking sleep in. A little bit, and the casino was open and I skipped over it a little bit, but I went to the casino early on.
You have to be in international waters for the casino to be open. You mentioned, I got this special email that says, as a token of our gratitude, or sorry for the inconvenience, but. We’re giving you a thousand dollars in free play, and it was very clearly indicated in the email that it was free play. I first tried to access the machine using my medallion, and I got an error.
It said like EFT transfer error, so I couldn’t access my account on the [00:28:00] machines. I thought this might be the case because I had some adverse action on a previous cruise when I cruise with Holland America. It’s a past episode. I wasn’t able to do any room charges and my account was locked, and they didn’t tell me why, and this time around I went there, got the error.
They said, oh, we don’t really know why this is happening. We’ll look into it. We’ll get back to you in 24 hours. They didn’t get back to me. I went up back to the casino a future day and they said, oh, there’s a note on your account that your account is locked due to, they said excessive room charges. And I had an idea that this was on Carnival where I was room charging on Carnival and they locked me out in Holland America ’cause it’s the same back end that many of these cruises participate in.
So I explained to the manager that the reason I did the room charges was because I didn’t bring cash with me on the ship and I wanted to gamble. I gambled with credit charging to my room, the credit card attached because I’m getting a rebate in points and miles. [00:29:00] Otherwise, I’m just not going to gamble.
I’m giving you guys action. I don’t see what the problem is, so there’s a little bit of back and forth there. The manager even said, well, we would appreciate action rather than no action, but there’s only so much we can do. Oh, it’s the landside and we can’t change that. We’re sorry. Sorry. I asked, what about the free play?
So I have this thousand dollars in free play. Oh, we’re, we’ll get back to you on that in about 24 hours since they never got back to me. I went up and they said, you can’t access the free play because your account is locked. And I said, okay, I understand my account is locked, but I don’t see what that has to do with the free play.
Because I have this email here that says free play and oh, we’ll get back to you on that. Oh, so several days in and I go back and they say, actually it was applied as an onboard credit. I think there was a mistake that you weren’t supposed to get a thousand in free play. What do you mean? The email here writes?
The email says free [00:30:00] play, not onboard credit. Oh, it had to be onboard credit, and then you would charge to your room and then it would offset that, but you can’t charge to your room, so you’ll have to use it for other things. So it, it felt like a massive bait and switch there. They sent an email saying a thousand in free play, and then they’re saying, oh, it was a mistake, or, oh, your account was locked, so now you can’t have the free play.
I said to them that I would accept promotional chips as a compromise that I could play blackjack. So if you gimme promotional chips, which I know they have, I’ll take a thousand in promotional chips and play through that. But unfortunately no budging, the war on happiness continued and I did not get that a thousand dollars in free play.
So you only had
Darren Remsburg: one option, Justin. This was your calling. It was time to whale out with your a thousand dollars room credit.
Justin Vacula: Yes, that’s right. So I ended up getting a full body massage for the first time ever. I got a manicure and pedicure on a cruise ship for the first time ever, and got a lot of stuff from [00:31:00] the gift shop, and I went in the photo area and I got JBL.
Earbuds for $200. I looked on Amazon. They were the same as the list price, 199, although Amazon had it 25% off, but I got the earbuds as well, so I ended up using all of it. The massage was interesting. It was definitely like different sensations. I felt like ticklish at times. I felt more relaxed after the experience for sure.
So that was nice. It was something different. And the manicure pedicure also felt good and. I guess it is like better appearances, although I don’t really care about that too much, but it was something to do. Otherwise, maybe some listeners have some idea for this first world problem of too many onboard credits because I don’t think it’d be appropriate to go to the gift shop and get all this clothing because then I run into baggage limitations or if I get the stuff shipped home.
But like how much? How many clothes am I really going to get? Was I really going to. [00:32:00] Donate like $700 worth of clothes to the local bird will. Yeah, eh, so I ended up with the, I ended up with the spa. Whaling house. So what do
Darren Remsburg: you think, Justin, are you gonna be looking for massage opportunities in the future, whether on a cruise
Justin Vacula: ship
Darren Remsburg: or at a casino?
Justin Vacula: Is it changed your life? No. If I could’ve taken the free play, I would’ve just taken the free play because it’s just like paying for it at that point. So if I had an option, I’m always taking the free play, but. I don’t think I’m gonna go back and spend something like $150 for a massage. And this happened in the past when there were some win credits where I booked with fine hotels and resorts staying at Winn and there was the a hundred dollars off, but it was still expensive and I, I just didn’t do it.
It just wasn’t worth it to me. A nice experience, but not something that I would pay for. And it’s similar with these flights where. The business class flight flying with JetBlue Mint was a really cool experience, but I wouldn’t pay thousands of dollars to take that flight, but I was happy to use 75,000 Mr.
To take the
Darren Remsburg: flight. Yeah,
Justin Vacula: it’s
Darren Remsburg: [00:33:00] interesting how we change our value based on how many points we have available. And you said earlier we can always, or not always, but also times we can cache those points out as well so they, there is some monetary value, but. I would agree that essentially $750, right? 75,000 points.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and I reached the cap as well. So then the other option would be like six tenths of a sample per point $450. I’ll take the business class flight at that point. That’s fine. Or you’re just holding onto all these Mr. For what, like seven months? Then cashing them out later. I’m like, ah, it’s okay. I’ll, I’ll take the flight.
And like you said,
Darren Remsburg: there’s certainly opportunities. It’s funny, the different partners in the booking arbitrage opportunities, so certainly you found a great one there with Etsy Hod points to Book Blue. But like you said, you ran into the classic Etsy hod problem of changing or canceling flights. They just, they don’t like that.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And I explained to them the situation, the situation that the cruise changed. It wasn’t me just voluntarily flaking out. Like, I could send you guys the email saying [00:34:00] that they canceled the cruise and they still wouldn’t play ball. And they say, oh, it’s a voluntary change. And British Airways said the same thing too, because I had the flight and then they’re saying, oh no, it’s a voluntary change because it’s not a problem with our service.
It was them doing that. I’m like, come on. Yeah, pay the toll, the $50. And I, and then I had to pay for this ETA, I believe it was the electronic visa that was like a $10 fee for going into the uk. So it’s like, all right, just get. Nickel dime some more. So we rated the gift shop, otherwise I was going to play video poker.
It was possible to get $400 in free play if you played through 10,000 in coin In. So I thought that was pretty cool, is you gained tier with them. So it was one tier per $5 wagered and 10,000 in play would give you 2000 points. So America really loves math on that. It was a 97% return to Player Jacks or Better Game triple play.
For a dollar 25 times three, so it was 3 75 per hand with the [00:35:00] five credits, so I would’ve played that charged to room and potentially used princess gift cards to pay off as that’s a possibility. If I say a possibility, because the reps at customer service have to enter the gift card information and they might make up rules about how much you can actually redeem.
I didn’t thankfully purchase gift cards beforehand. ’cause my idea was I’m going to try a lesser denomination first, see if it works, and then buy other ones once they give me the assurance that it would work. So I’m glad I didn’t make that mistake because if I bought, I. Say like $500 in princess gift cards, and what was I going to do with that?
So I didn’t get doubly screwed on that. Yeah. Back to the gift. More T-shirts, more gear. Yeah. That would be an eccentric thing. And you get two pedicures and manicures.
Darren Remsburg: I haven’t done that.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. And I do many eccentric things, but I think I would draw the line at that. That would seem odd. Maybe I’d go into the facials next.
I guess that would be the next step. So that’s a quick thing on the casino. [00:36:00] So unfortunately, like it just got backed off there, I think like a bait and switch there. So that’s not really good for my confidence in Princess in the future, but I don’t see Booking one unless they have another offer match deal, and you never know these things.
Tend to come back, right? Yeah, that’s
Both: exactly right.
Darren Remsburg: As we’ve learned from other casino status matching, you just keep on going sometimes and sounds like do similar things with With cruise offers.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, we had day, yeah, day six was Gibraltar. I thought that was really interesting. In the uk I walked to an area with a cemetery, took some videos of that.
There was a lot of World War II stuff around, so a lot of history there. A big marketplace area and walked to the gardens. Area. That was a pretty far walk, but there were lots of flowers, trees, other foliage, and at the top of the gardens area was a wildlife refuge. So I took a video of the many types of animals [00:37:00] in there.
So it was cool to see lemurs, all these exotic birds, reptiles, bats. And much more really cool area in Gibraltar. Did you see any rocks or a big rock while you were in Gibraltar? Oh yes. There were lots of rocks. R-O-C-K-S, but not to be confused with the Dungeons and Dragons, ROC Rock, bird, I. Did not see any ocs, but I did see the R Ooc s.
Yeah, the classic Rock of Gibraltar. Yes. And the apes were allegedly inside of the rock areas, and there were a lot of signs of Don’t feed the Apes. I don’t want to do that. Big fines for feeding the apes, by the way.
Both: Yeah.
Justin Vacula: Strict diets, I guess maybe there. Yes. Even in the wildlife sanctuary it says animals may bite, stay away.
They had like areas roped off so you could see them, but. You’re supposed to be layers back. It was similar to the Wolf sanctuary that I went to outside of Lancaster. They had all kinds of different levels of separation. For your protection. Just like
Darren Remsburg: your, just like your recent FNBO. Amtrak. [00:38:00]
Justin Vacula: Yes. While I was at CI applied for the Amtrak card with the elevated bonus of 40,000.
Signup bonus, which is allegedly worth around a thousand dollars. I wanted to wait until the end of the month so my credit scores would rebound and be stronger because I had some balances that closed, which negatively impacted my credit scores. But unfortunately, the application went to pending. A few days later it said denied and I got home, got a letter in the mail and it says that you’re denied.
Call in. So I call in and they said, oh, the application was auto denied because it was an application made outside of the country. And I explained, yes, I was traveling, but I still have a US address, so can you please reconsider the application? Oh, no, no, we can’t reconsider it. You’re just gonna have to apply again.
Okay. What about the 40,000 point offer? Oh no, you’d have to reapply under the new offer. Oh, wow. So you got D denied by FNBO. Make your applications while you’re stateside, not overseas, but I figured this was really the only [00:39:00] chance I had at it because my scores were heavily hit after a lot of shenanigans in previous months.
There’s really no other choice than doing it on the cruise. Yeah. Travel hackers dilemma strikes in a different kind of way. D denied. Yes. We had a Lisbon, Portugal, which was day seven and the final day. I thought that was nice. Went up a lot of hills. I saw some castles, saw a lot of market areas, big marina section, marketplace on the ground, celebrating a, what seemed to be a spring or summer festival and a lot of boats at the marina area.
So it was really a lot to see. I thought Lisbon was a really cool stop.
Darren Remsburg: It sounds like it. I’ve heard great things about Portugal. Certainly. Again, one another. It’s one of those things where, what’s on your list? Everything’s on my list, but yeah, with Portugal’s. Fairly close proximity and our good friends att offering, often times pretty good deals on points and miles to get there.
Yeah, I think it’d be a great place
Justin Vacula: to visit coming up here and a big benefit of the cruise, [00:40:00] just getting to see so many different locations rather than just being stuck with one. So for the one big flight overseas, get to see all these different stops on the cruise.
Darren Remsburg: A couple folks say that their Mediterranean cruise was something like that where they got to see a bunch of different places for a short amount of time and it helped them.
Identify where they wanted to go next for longer periods of time. So whether it’s a country or a city or both, where they really enjoyed it, liked the culture, liked the food, like the people, all of those things come back and spend a few more people there.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, some of these Caribbean cruises, you might go two or three stops and it’s a five day cruise or a little bit longer.
So yes, the Mediterranean get a lot more stops in. So after that, there were two C days, so that was when I used most of these credits. Because I didn’t want to book things on the same day of exploring. So the other two days I did the massage. I had the pedicure and manicure, tried some more of the dining locations I hadn’t tried.
It was nice. It was good to close out with the two C [00:41:00] days. It would’ve been nice if there was more space in between the destinations, like four stops at once, I think was a lot, especially all the walking my feet were just hurting after the fact. But I definitely wanted to explore and not just. Miss Missile location, let’s say, because, oh, I was just walking a lot yesterday, so I got to unwind on the last two days and it wasn’t as busy.
Got off the ship at South Hampton outside of London, so it says here, south Hampton and it has parentheses London by the cruise. I posted South Hampton, London in parentheses, and some people were saying, oh, it’s not really London. It is indeed outside of London, but it, it has a similar theme to it. So I got off the cruise ship.
I tried to stay on the ship as long as possible because there was no rush. I had two nights in Southampton, so I waited for the final call. Some security came by and said, oh, everybody has to leave in five, 10 minutes. So I stayed on the cruise ship as long as possible to avoid all the traffic on the way out.
Let other [00:42:00] people figure out their taxis and ride share and. Hopefully it would be easier for me, but unfortunately the Uber took 20, 25 minutes to get to the cruise port even after all that time. So it was still somewhat busy or a low amount of drivers, and I figured the Uber’s cheaper than the taxi, but this time it took quite some time.
So maybe one of these times I’ll pick the taxi rather than the Uber after seeing what the taxi rates are compared to Uber. But usually the taxis are more expensive. So I chatted with some of the people outside. I. Used my phone while I was waiting, so not a big deal. I got to the South Hampton Hilton and I had two separate reservations.
It was originally only going to be one reservation or one night, one reservation, but I booked a second one. So I asked them could I please keep the same room for both of the nights? They said yes. I had to wait until 2:00 PM to check in, so I had to wait a few hours in the lobby. So I worked on some video editing and.
Uploading things to YouTube, some to do items, some powerful [00:43:00] portals, some other shenanigans even overseas, and eventually got in the room. I thought the room was decently spacious. They gave me a drink voucher and I asked them about using Hilton gift cards, so I asked them could I just use a gift card at the restaurant?
Do they accept the Hilton gift cards because I have all these gift cards clinging around from months ago. With American Express credits for Hilton that I purchased gift cards with, which no longer seems to be a thing or the gift cards are outta stock. But I asked about it and they said, yeah, just charge it to the room and then you could use the gift cards when you’re checking out.
I took them at their word. I charge it to the room. The next morning I come by and say, Hey, I’d like to use the Hilton gift card. We talk about this yesterday. And it was the same person at the desk and the manager came and said, yes, we accept these. That’s no problem. I tried to use the Hill gift card and they said, oh, sorry, the Night Shift manager checked you out, so it’s already charged to your credit card on file.
I said, no, I spoke to you yesterday that I didn’t want this to happen, that I had the gift cards, and it was [00:44:00] the whole point of the conversation. And then she starts talking about, oh, did someone tell you yesterday? There’s another thing that. Someone else is going to have your room for the second night of the reservation.
So wait, what? You said that the room was good for the two nights and I received notification in the app and I have the room assignment. And why would you want housekeeping to come in and clear the room for someone else? Surely there’s another room they can have for a rare situation. I said, could you please call the manager?
So the manager came over, said you could keep the room, and then he said, we’ll issue a refund back to your credit card. Then we’ll charge your gift card for the dining amounts. So all was well with the world, but I thought terrible customer service there, that they would just give up my room to someone else, even though it was already promised and it was the same attendant.
And then I’ve never heard this getting checked out overnight. So that was really bizarre.
Darren Remsburg: I think it’s both bad customer service but also bad business decisions as you said. Why would you want housekeeping to come the whole room if they can just keep you in there instead of having to turn it over for another [00:45:00] guest?
Yeah. Not a lot of thought behind that. Apparently. Maybe the night manager is the night manager for a reason.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and I wanted to stay there at the cruise port to not be traveling so much after getting off the ship. ’cause typically it’s the waking up early. I feel pretty tired, so I don’t want to navigate all this transportation.
And get closer to the airport. But on second thoughts, maybe it would’ve been best to just stay in South Hampton for one night and then have transportation from there to get closer to the airport for night two and potentially save some money too, because there was a bus that you could take to the airport, but then it would’ve been like $15 or so with Uber to get to the bus area.
And then the bus would’ve been around 20 or 25. It would take a little bit more time. So it was a little bit closer there versus the uber rate that was around a hundred, unfortunately. Yeah, maybe could have broken it up and gotten closer to the airport for the day two. So I stayed at the hotel for day one.
I was pretty tired and got some extra rest. The food was good, the gift cards worked out, and I asked the manager, could I just go to the front desk after I go to the restaurant and then just resolve the charges [00:46:00] with the gift card? And he said yes. So, okay, he could have told me that to begin with. And.
Saved a little hassle there. You guys issued these gift cards. I have to use them in some way, right? Oh, we already charged your card. I don’t know if they agree
Darren Remsburg: with that statement, Justin. And you not use those gift cards. So
Justin Vacula: yeah, it’s like it’s coming out of that employee’s paycheck or something. Oh, we already, the night manager checked you out.
Yeah, so it’s probably just more incompetence, lack of training. Just like not good customer service. There was never even an apology either about the whole thing. It was just like they just resolved it. So I don’t know whether that’s like more of a UK thing rather than, or more like you ask customer service.
It seems to be. Friendlier on average is my experience, especially at places like Winn Las Vegas. They’re like super accommodating there. It’s like a higher standard of service at Winn compared to just like random hotels. But day two was nice there. I walked outta the hotel and there was lots to see. Lots of memorials, lots of lots more interesting architecture.
There were some nature walks. I went on very large park pond. With lots of [00:47:00] ducks. I got some duck videos. There were some seagulls I got throughout the cruise, so lots of nature and birds. I know there was some rumor that I hated nature, that I’m not a fan of birds, but obviously those things are false and those rumors are very malicious.
To cue that Gilbert got free to roast to Bob Seot. A lot of rumors going on around there. Whatever may have happened in 1990 with Bob Sege. For those in the know. Unfortunately, Godfrey and second are no longer with us, but the comedy remains a little bit of a tangent there, but exploring South Hampton, it was cool to have like the city or town part of it, the nature part of it.
So there was definitely lots to see. And I even went to a Starbucks and they accepted gift card balance in the Starbucks app, so that was really interesting as I’ve had this Starbucks balance clinging around from some past plays. So it was nice to use the gift card balance and not have to use. Like cash, money, actual money.
Yeah.
Darren Remsburg: And no, no. Paneras in London. Huh? So you
Justin Vacula: Oh, unfortunately, yeah. No SIP club for me. [00:48:00] I had my SIP club at sea, but not at the South Hampton and not at the destinations. Yeah, it was nice overall. I had to wake up early, go to the airport and fly back. I flew back to Boston and then took a flight from Boston to Philadelphia.
Hung out in the Sapphire Lounge for a while at Boston. Went pretty well. So overall, happy about the experience, not great service at the Hilton, and we had some free play issues on the cruise, major issues with that. Anyway, uh, the Hilton stuff was resolved, but the princess was not. I was just forced into the onboard credit, although some have encouraged me to file a complaint.
I’m not sure if I would get anything out of that, but it might be worth a shot of five or 10 minutes to fill out a form and maybe get something back. That seems like a low,
Darren Remsburg: low amount of effort there. Express your disappointment. Did you end up playing at all at the casino? You
Justin Vacula: didn’t, right? No, I couldn’t.
Yeah, my, my account was locked. That was it. I didn’t even bring cash with me to play because I don’t want to enter into a game where [00:49:00] I’m just don’t have an edge. That’s been my thing with gambling. I’m only gonna play when I have an edge. I’ve waved that rare social occasions in the past. I remember at a past Zork Fest, someone said, Hey, I would just like you to play blackjack and talk me through some basic strategy.
So I did that for a little bit with some people. So it was like giving up just a little bit there. But yeah, I’m not gonna be playing video poker straight up with my money on a 97% return of player game or playing the table games. But I didn’t even bring the cash anyway. ’cause the idea was to bring very little cash or just sub a hundred dollars to not have so much money going off the cruise and then dealing with customers.
I
Darren Remsburg: mean,
Justin Vacula: he
Darren Remsburg: didn’t, he didn’t.
Justin Vacula: Get money from the ATM and the casino, Justin
Darren Remsburg: that,
Justin Vacula: oh, those fees, I, I imagine those would be pretty higher. A cash advance. You can’t charge to your room, but you can always cash advance card. I think it might be
Darren Remsburg: worthwhile, especially since you status, not, again, not status match, offered match, but based on a casino and you could write ’em and say, Hey, look it, I wanted to give [00:50:00] action that you guys locked my account.
I didn’t have the opportunity and. I think you guys missed out and I did too, and maybe there’s an opportunity for us to make this right in the future. Maybe there’s another cruise that I could do this on if you guys can get my account sorted out.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I’m gonna be restored on the casino side because it’s a different department, but maybe Princess would say, okay, we’ll process a refund of a certain amount, or, yeah, we’ll give you a return offer for a cruise.
Something to that extent might make sense writing them or A-C-F-B-P complaint if they still exist. Maybe the listeners can ask Chat, GPT if Princess is based in the States, if that matters. Or they’re just gonna, oh, it was out of Europe, so we can’t do anything.
Darren Remsburg: So after, after the Southampton stays and finally getting your gift cards to work, how did you get back to the States?
Justin Vacula: I ended up taking Uber from the hotel to the airport, which was a little expensive, but as I mentioned, it was early and the difference would’ve been maybe like 30, 35 versus about a hundred. So I ended up just [00:51:00] paying the toll. In the future, if I were to do it again, I would just have, I would take the bus to closer to the airport, stay a night at that hotel and do it that way.
But this was because the cruise was really changed. I had to add that second night. Yeah, I guess we, we just end up having to pay some incidental expenses. But those are also coming from some cash back on credit cards, some bank account bonuses, statement credits. And much more. Yes. Not completely free, but very low cost overall.
And then blue mint back right from London to Gulf. Yep. JetBlue Mint back, so that was an earlier in the day flight. I believe that was eight 30 in the morning. That was the only option I. I had the breakfast on the plane and then they brought service. They brought food about an hour and a half before the plane landed.
So that was nice to them. And yeah, the mint is really nice. I think the service was good there. They were attentive. They were coming back multiple times during anything we can do for you. The two or three food [00:52:00] services throughout. The drinks included and a life flat seat, so it went down, although I’m big for it, so I had to lay on my side.
Couldn’t really like sleep. Like I, I think it was just too big, but it, it was okay. So I was able to rest on my side and the wifi was very good throughout, yeah, jet Blue Mint. I’m looking forward to doing that again for similar trips. I’ve also done JFK to Vegas. I had some mint upgrade certificates in the past.
I. So I used it for that, but it was really nice going overseas. ’cause personally I don’t wanna fly economy going overseas. I just get really cramped. Six, eight hour flight. I think it’s just too much. Uh, I’ll do economy, domestic or economy premium economy, domestic, but. Overseas flying in business for sure.
Did you have a preference on the day flight versus I think you Oh yes. I’d almost always rather fly in the afternoon ’cause it, it allows me more time to get to the airport. I don’t have to wake up as early. I get to hotel breakfast. I just don’t like to rush. Especially I’m leaving Philadelphia, my home airport, I always try for afternoon flights and even [00:53:00] leaving like three, 4:00 PM departing flights.
That’s fine. It’s usually when I fly, I am tired after the flights, so I’m not gonna be exploring much on that. Arrival day. So it’s okay. Typically when I go to Vegas, I’ll be in Vegas, maybe around like 10 or 11 local time, check in, go to sleep, and then I’ll be good to explore and do things the next day.
So no, no rush for me to take a 6:00 AM flight, for instance, and try to get every minute out of the trip. So I thought the eight 30 was early, especially with the transportation. So that ended up being me, like waking up like 3:00 AM 4:00 AM and then yeah. And then taking the transportation. I always wanna get to the airport early too, to not only use the lounge, but just give time in case things happen.
Some traffic delays, road closures, extra time at security, extra time checking in. All kinds of things can happen. So I like to get in the airport, be there at at least two hours before the flight departs. I know international
Darren Remsburg: folks, the rules of the road are something [00:54:00] like three hours, but I, yeah, I think with, with experience travelers, two hours is still a good bet and gives you some time and maybe some lounges if it depends on what lounge you have access to.
I know a lot of folks would say that they have access to some of the Premier Middle East lounges, for example, spending the whole
Justin Vacula: day there can be enjoyable. I went to the Plaza Premium Lounge with Priority Pass. The one on the departure was nice out of, I believe, terminal two. London Heathrow. It was breakfast time and they had a lot out there.
It was more spacious than the initial lounge. The initial Plaza Premium lounge, that was super crowded. I think that might’ve been in terminal five. I don’t remember right now. But the original one wasn’t so good, but the departing one was much better. Sounds
Darren Remsburg: like an eventful trip, and mostly an enjoyable one.
A few hiccups along the way, but before and during, but. Still a good trip overall and some opportunities, like you said, to see some places you hadn’t seen before and maybe ideas for where to go to next.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and it was really nice to meet Perry in Boston. That’s Perry Kim from Love On the Spectrum. You can follow her on [00:55:00] Instagram.
Purple. Princess Perry is the username and she was on season three of the Netflix show. Love On The Spectrum, and I know many listeners they tuned into the show because she was on here because I mentioned that she’d be coming on. So a lot of fans, a lot of support, for sure.
Both: Very good.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. You liked her YouTube video.
You did an impression of, what was that word? On Amtrak or on Amtrak? That sounds
Darren Remsburg: like
Both: it did. Yeah.
Darren Remsburg: No, it was different, right? It was less points and miles and more just overall enthusiasm for travel and trains. Of course, in particular. It was a nice change of pace and yeah, I really enjoyed that. I liked the FI five FO foam too.
Justin Vacula: Oh yes, I mentioned Giant Pennsylvania and she said Fi five fo foam. That was funny. Definitely on brand for the princess. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100% coincidental that it happened to be a princess Cruise. This princess Cruise was booked well before I knew she existed. Yeah. Oh, but you didn’t do the impression though.
I don’t. Can you do the impression for listeners
Both: we’re [00:56:00] Amtrak? I was like, we’re on Amtrak, or it’s like
Darren Remsburg: we go into Sizzler. I think that’s Whiteman can’t jump reference from way made back in the day. Oh, okay. Oh my. Back from the nineties, right? Yeah. Not that, I don’t wanna think about how long the nineties ago were now, but anyway.
Justin Vacula: All right, closing out. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for future episodes closing announcements. Ticket sales for Zork Fest 2025 a Miles Points and gambling event are live@zorkfest.travel zork.com. I hope to see you at Zork Fest 2025 in Las Vegas from December 5th through the seventh at the M Resort Casino Hotel.
I will also be speaking at Chicago Seminars Hyatt Regency O’Hare, November 7th through the ninth, 2025. Use promo code, Herty Gerdy, one word when buying a ticket to support me. Also, join me October 24th through the 26th [00:57:00] 2025 for Chicago Seminars at holiday in Chicago. Oakbrook new location this year. Use the promo code.
I must have a promo code 20 for $20 off tickets. Visit meetup.com/philly. Miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel credit Miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are May 17th and June 22nd, 2025. And there’s a good chance that Darren will be in attendance.
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