Happy Wednesday to all of our travel friends, both near and far! Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.
- Hyatt has been expanding and the number of hotels you’re able to book with World of Hyatt points is greater than ever. However, when there are more hotels in the program, there will be more hotels that try to manipulate the rules of the program to their advantage. A World of Hyatt representative was previously able to act as a mediator in these instances and call a hotel to resolve a problem when trying to book an award reservation. Sebastian from Loyalty Lobby writes about a conversation where he was told by a Hyatt rep that they are no longer supposed to call hotels to resolve booking problems for guests.
- If you’ve ever seen pictures of a plane in the sky and wondered “How’d they do that?” or just thought “That’s not real,” Matthew from Live and Let’s Fly shares a video showing exactly how they take those pictures. Hint: it involves formation flying, like the Blue Angels, but with a passenger jet. I thought it was cool.
- I’ve tried to book a points and miles “unicorn” trip a few times so I was really interested in this post by Greg on Frequent Miler with the process of piecing together an impossible award ticket. For him, it was booking four people from the US to New Zealand in business class over winter break. I’ve bookmarked this post for when I need to book my next impossible award trip.
- Jason on MilesQuest wrote about the sudden closure of almost all of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants in the UK. Back in 2013, we dined at one of his Union Jack’s locations and thought it was fine, but the restaurant business is fickle and during our recent trip, every restaurant in London seemed to be serving pizza, hamburgers or sushi.
- Gary from View from the Wing wrote about the elephant in the room when it comes to dealing with Marriott Bonvoy over problems and the simple way to solve it.
- Ed from Pizza in Motion talks Tokyo DisneySea with Joe from As the Joe Flies on this week’s Miles To Go podcast. Since Ed’s never been to the Tokyo Disney Resort, Joe tries to explain what makes the Japan Disney parks, and DisneySea in particular, different (and better) than the other Disney locations. For us, Tokyo Disneyland is the only park where Brer Fox photobombed our Splash Mountain selfie.
- On One Mile at a Time, Tiffany writes a thoughtful post about how to be socially responsible when vacationing after her recent visit to Laos. I had similar questions for my dad and his wife after their visit to Luang Prabang and it looks like things have gotten even worse since then. Let’s just say if you’re going to visit a local religious ritual and your tour guide sets up lighting to improve your selfies, you’re doing it wrong.
- Finally, I wanted to share an article by identity theft experts My ID Care about online quizzes. It’s not directly travel related but if you have online accounts with banks, hotels and airlines, you have plenty of passwords. I understand that by writing a blog, I’m putting myself out there on the internet. However, I try to set strong passwords for my accounts and change them regularly (which drives Sharon crazy). One way to let thieves into your accounts is to give them the answers to your security questions, like the questions to all those online Facebook quizzes. Just in case you’re wondering, I’m a Ravenclaw, Sharon’s a Hufflepuff and we didn’t need to answer any online quiz questions to find that out.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary