This morning I got an email from Choice Rewards saying my points were about to expire. My first thought was "How do I have ANY points after burning that card." But then I remembered that the Choice Rewards points are a separate thing from the points I earned on the Choice Rewards credit card from Barclay Bank. Those points are indeed gone, but the ones the email was telling me about were the ones I had for years, even before the credit card, earned while staying at Choice Hotel properties. Then once I remember the rewards properly, I thought back to the last time I used them and I could of sworn I used them all up when I booked that hotel stay in Louisiana the night before leaving on my first Norwegian Breakaway cruise out of New Orleans. But I guess I didn't use 'em all 'cause this email says I have over 15,000 and I better use them soon. So, with that, I booked a little vaca, y'all! First one since, if you want to count it, that horrible weekend with Ric at New Smyrna in February and certainly the first real one since the iDrive stay in October of last year.
Funny, I've been scouting around at vacation options for about a month now and nearly booked an outing very similar to this a couple of times.
First I thought of a location and it was a hard choice since Choice Hotels are all over the continent but I thought it through and settled on Tampa since it's not that long a drive and it really is, despite all my years of living in Central Florida, quite underexplored. I've only been to the beach in the Tampa Bay area once back in 1998, I've never been to any other attractions in Tampa other than Busch Gardens, last visited in 2002 and Seminole Hard Rock Casino one time in the last few years but I can't remember when.
I booked 2 nights at a Quality Inn near the Hard Rock Casino for 6,000 pts + $16 for each nights, taxes and fees included. The place has some iffy reviews but generally folks complaining about the age of the place. It does look like an old school Florida hotel all done up in Old Spanish Colonial decor. The room is a two-level loft and looks very interesting:
How bad could this be? And for a total of $32 for two nights? This place lists standard pricing in the $90+ range per night.
This still left me with over 3,000 points and I didn't want to waste them but all bookings with points were a minimum of 6,000 plus a small amount of cash. The site wouldn't let me book with say the 3,000 I had and pay cash for the remainder, it needed the minimum 6,000. So, for $36, I bought another 3,000 points and with my new total of just over 6,000, I decided to check out what other hotel I could add to my vacation. I wanted to be near the beach but after a bit of searching I realized Choice Hotels are probably too cheap for beachside accommodations, but, after a little more searching, I found a resort hotel with a private beach! Normally it lists for $299 a night! Yikes! But I booked it for one night using 6,000 points + $48. So, when you factor in that I had to buy half those points for $36, the one night will only set me back about $84! And check out the pics of this place:
And yes this vacation will see me returning to Busch Gardens for the first time in almost 20 years since I bought a Fun Pass for about $95. Yes, Daddy needs him a coaster ride or two!
So watch soon for the first TRAVELOGUE in quite some time around July 16th or so.