u/Primary-Ad8413

Looking for suggestions with AAdvantage points CLT to JRO

Hi all! Looking for advice in booking a safari trip to Tanzania using all points / as many points as possible. Trying to do it all business / first. We have a lot of American AAdvantage points - not a lot of other points elsewhere.

I’ve seen routes that go through Philly, some people have mentioned Boston and Amsterdam.

With Philly for example, what I am noticing is that there is a direct from Philly to Doha which would make 3 flights for me: CLT-PHL, PHL-DOH, DOH-JRO.

However, you cannot book the PHL-DOH direct with AAdvantage points, only with cash. There are options with DUB and EDI layovers - if absolutely necessary, I guess we can take an extra flight for a total of 4 but I’m trying to avoid it especially because once we get to JRO we still will likely need a small regional flight to get to where we would stay (still undecided).

Targeting September-October of next year so I can’t book this far in advance but I’m starting to try to get smart on the usual routes so I can execute as soon as available - caveating that I recognize the situation may differ in October vs May-July of next year.

I’d welcome any ideas of thoughts. Thanks in advance!

Hi all! Looking for advice in booking a safari trip to Tanzania using all points / as many points as possible. Trying to do it all business / first. We have a lot of American AAdvantage points - not a lot of other points elsewhere.

I’ve seen routes that go through Philly, some people have mentioned Boston and Amsterdam.

With Philly for example, what I am noticing is that there is a direct from Philly to Doha which would make 3 flights for me: CLT-PHL, PHL-DOH, DOH-JRO.

However, you cannot book the PHL-DOH direct with AAdvantage points, only with cash. There are options with DUB and EDI layovers - if absolutely necessary, I guess we can take an extra flight for a total of 4 but I’m trying to avoid it especially because once we get to JRO we still will likely need a small regional flight to get to where we would stay (still undecided).

Targeting September-October of next year so I can’t book this far in advance but I’m starting to try to get smart on the usual routes so I can execute as soon as available - caveating that I recognize the situation may differ in October vs May-July of next year.

I’d welcome any ideas of thoughts. Thanks in advance!

I recognize this is about to come off out of touch but I’d like to ask anyway. Please be nice to me!!

Is the Anse Chastanet actually nice?

My husband and I are scuba divers, we keep getting ads to go there. We normally travel for a few days for Christmas and have been considering going there on a dive package.

I’m normally more of a luxury boutique hotel or 5-star luxury resort person but given the holiday travel, prices are around 40-50% more and it puts Jade Mountain and Sugar Beach out of budget.

The package for 5 nights is ~$8,000 with food and beverage included and 8 dives per person. Overall, expensive but doable.

We like that the hotel is on the beach and has a dive shop. We are in our early 30s and reasonably active. Would like to hike as well.

Where I’m getting stuck is we could stay at the nicer hotels traveling at another time rather than Christmas. I am very afraid I’ll be disappointed by the facilities and lack of luxury feel. I haven’t seen anyone post videos on social media or nice pictures at this hotel in the ways I see at other properties and it’s giving me cold feet.

That said, it is challenging for our work to travel outside of very specific times of year - March spring break, June, September fall break, and Christmas holiday.

This is forcing me to consider whether I just have to deal with it and bite the bullet on staying at the “less nice hotel” since holidays are the best time to dive St Lucia and easiest time for us to take off.

I also looked at Ladera but seems to be hard to get to the beach and since we like to snorkel and scuba, it seems to make less sense.

I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks in advance!

I recognize this is about to come off out of touch but I’d like to ask anyway. Please be nice to me!!

Is the Anse Chastanet actually nice?

My husband and I are scuba divers, we keep getting ads to go there. We normally travel for a few days for Christmas and have been considering going there on a dive package.

I’m normally more of a luxury boutique hotel or 5-star luxury resort person but given the holiday travel, prices are around 40-50% more and it puts Jade Mountain and Sugar Beach out of budget.

The package for 5 nights is ~$8,000 with food and beverage included and 8 dives per person. Overall, expensive but doable.

We like that the hotel is on the beach and has a dive shop. We are in our early 30s and reasonably active. Would like to hike as well.

Where I’m getting stuck is we could stay at the nicer hotels traveling at another time rather than Christmas. I am very afraid I’ll be disappointed by the facilities and lack of luxury feel. I haven’t seen anyone post videos on social media or nice pictures at this hotel in the ways I see at other properties and it’s giving me cold feet.

That said, it is challenging for our work to travel outside of very specific times of year - March spring break, June, September fall break, and Christmas holiday.

This is forcing me to consider whether I just have to deal with it and bite the bullet on staying at the “less nice hotel” since holidays are the best time to dive St Lucia and easiest time for us to take off.

I also looked at Ladera but seems to be hard to get to the beach and since we like to snorkel and scuba, it seems to make less sense.

I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks in advance!

I recognize this is about to come off out of touch but I’d like to ask anyway. Please be nice to me!!

Is the Anse Chastanet actually nice?

My husband and I are scuba divers, we keep getting ads to go there. We normally travel for a few days for Christmas and have been considering going there on a dive package.

I’m normally more of a luxury boutique hotel or 5-star luxury resort person but given the holiday travel, prices are around 40-50% more and it puts Jade Mountain and Sugar Beach out of budget.

The package for 5 nights is ~$8,000 with food and beverage included and 8 dives per person. Overall, expensive but doable.

We like that the hotel is on the beach and has a dive shop. We are in our early 30s and reasonably active. Would like to hike as well.

Where I’m getting stuck is we could stay at the nicer hotels traveling at another time rather than Christmas. I am very afraid I’ll be disappointed by the facilities and lack of luxury feel. I haven’t seen anyone post videos on social media or nice pictures at this hotel in the ways I see at other properties and it’s giving me cold feet.

That said, it is challenging for our work to travel outside of very specific times of year - March spring break, June, September fall break, and Christmas holiday.

This is forcing me to consider whether I just have to deal with it and bite the bullet on staying at the “less nice hotel” since holidays are the best time to dive St Lucia and easiest time for us to take off.

I also looked at Ladera but seems to be hard to get to the beach and since we like to snorkel and scuba, it seems to make less sense.

I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks in advance!

I recognize this is about to come off out of touch but I’d like to ask anyway. Please be nice to me!!

Is the Anse Chastanet actually nice?

My husband and I are scuba divers, we keep getting ads to go there. We normally travel for a few days for Christmas and have been considering going there on a dive package.

I’m normally more of a luxury boutique hotel or 5-star luxury resort person but given the holiday travel, prices are around 40-50% more and it puts Jade Mountain and Sugar Beach out of budget.

The package for 5 nights is ~$8,000 with food and beverage included and 8 dives per person. Overall, expensive but doable.

We like that the hotel is on the beach and has a dive shop. We are in our early 30s and reasonably active. Would like to hike as well.

Where I’m getting stuck is we could stay at the nicer hotels traveling at another time rather than Christmas. I am very afraid I’ll be disappointed by the facilities and lack of luxury feel. I haven’t seen anyone post videos on social media or nice pictures at this hotel in the ways I see at other properties and it’s giving me cold feet.

That said, it is challenging for our work to travel outside of very specific times of year - March spring break, June, September fall break, and Christmas holiday.

This is forcing me to consider whether I just have to deal with it and bite the bullet on staying at the “less nice hotel” since holidays are the best time to dive St Lucia and easiest time for us to take off.

I also looked at Ladera but seems to be hard to get to the beach and since we like to snorkel and scuba, it seems to make less sense.

I would appreciate any opinions. Thanks in advance!

Looking for advice on making a patio fix less miserable + contractor recs (Charlotte, NC)

We had a ~$30K paver patio installed 2 years ago because our yard wouldn’t grow grass and was constantly muddy. The yard slopes, and the contractor suggested a retaining wall. We turned it down because we didn’t like the look, but they told us it would “probably be fine” without it and did not clearly explain the consequences.

Now the patio is basically unusable — mud constantly washes onto it and it’s impossible to keep clean.

We reached back out to the original company. They’re now saying we needed a border to prevent this, which was never clearly communicated at the time. If it had been, we would have just done it all at once.

To their credit, they offered to do the labor at cost, but:
- Communication has been terrible (weeks to respond or no response)
- We’ve spent 5 months trying to get this scheduled with no progress
- The material they proposed doesn’t match the patio at all
- They’re unwilling to work with alternative materials I suggested

At this point I’m likely either:

1. Hiring someone else
2. Doing a big portion of this ourselves (including moving ~200 bags of stone)

Would really appreciate:
- Tips to make a DIY job like this less physically brutal / more efficient
- Recommendations for reasonably priced landscapers in the Charlotte area who are actually responsive and not painful to work with

Just trying to get this fixed without dragging it out another 5 months.

Thanks in advance.