Details are out - booking has begun!

Starting the roll call:

Ngaire & Ken
Leslie & Brad
Nikki & Scott
Ron & Sally Harris
Mike & Val Jackson
Kim & Alice
David
Wendy & Don Warner
Helen & Jerry
Victor & Rosanne
Sue & Ron
Barbara & Alex
Kathy & Al

Ron and Sally Harris
Mike and Val Jackson

We are booked.

Kim and Alice!

Yippee!!

ahhh..... the Pooch crowd is forming!

I just sold out of Deck 4 and we are now down to four cabins left on deck 3.

If you want the link again here are all the details.
http://www.bkafrica.com/2012_Escorted_Egypt_NILE2.htm

Everyone will have a fantastic trip with superior guides!!!

Did someone say pooch? Deal me in!
There will be a few Auburn Tigers on the Nile.

Please add Wendy & Don Warner to the Nile2 Roll Call.

We are already counting the days!

Yeah Wendy and Don's first post welcome to LCT.

David you must know that Ron and Sally are big Auburn fans. While we are drifting down the Nile you three can talk football, the other guys can talk cameras and computers, and we girls will talk Egyptian jewlery.

Sound great.

My husband Jerry and I (Helen) are in!
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Helen

We're booked too. My husband Ron and I will also be on this incredible trip.

victor and rosanne are going as well

my xmas gift!!

My sister Barbara and her husband Alex are going! We are still in. Anyone cancelling? Flights should be available soon.
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Helen

We're still in!

Ngaire - With flights being available soon, do we need to know anything more than this in order to book flights?

Arrive Cairo anytime on 3/9/2012?
Depart Amman anytime on 3/24/2012?

Yay, Kim and Alice! The itinerary says "Private Sound & Light Show" in Cairo on March 9th. My preliminary search is giving me flights that dont arrive until 7pm , so I am thinking we may have to come in on the 8th unless the show is really late?
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Helen

In most cases people coming direct from the USA do have to come in a day early. We arrive at midnight on March 8 have our air tickets already.

So many come in two or three days early or do some other travel in Europe and can get in earlier in the day. SO officially we are starting on March 9 but if your flight is too late then come in on March 8.

SUNSET private sound and light show before the regular shows begin.

I will shoot out an email to people and let them know this as FF miles with BA are out now but they come out earlier than most other carriers.

oh boy! ok.. I gotta get busy on this... I've been swamped with work and have dropped the ball, I guess, I didn't realize BA had FF tickets available already. This will be my job tomorrow! woo hoo!! I am supposed to have Fri-Sun off, but haven't had full weekend off since we returned from FUN2! This will be the first weekend off.
Thanks for the heads-up Helen and Ngaire.

Agent at BA is telling me that our dates are not yet open for FF tickets? I know Ngaire got her tickets so either agent is wrong or possibly FF tix are already gone? I have lots of DL miles so I can wait for them to open dates and go on the Air France flight I suppose. Or use Amex points for Emirates flight, changing planes in Dubai has some appeal. Anybody have any opinions?
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Helen

Great excuse to run through Dubai if they allow stopovers! But I would stay there a couple of nights and take in the sights, as well as a dune buggy ride. Fun! Then you'll be over the jet lag, and as I remember you are going to need lots of energy for touring!

Hi Helen

Tomorrow I will send out a letter on Nile 2. BA are DEFIINTELY OUT for the outbound and coach is open for the inbound with we hope buisness opening tomorrow. You can even go the BA FF mile website and see that these dates are in the system. Call another agent. That said the taxes on BA are SO HIGH that other airlines may make more sense.

We are only using BA as we have a FREE COMPANION FF ticket or we would be doing American that has better flights and time with their partners.

I have not TICKETED my BA flight we talked a nice man into holding it for us. We are going to use British Air on the way over but do not get to Cairo until midnight on March 8. Just waiting until just before these expire to see if First Class opens up with a companion ticket we can justify the mileage.

BA does ONE WAY flights for 50% mileage award level that really helps in getting seats instead of waiting for the return date to be in the system.

Taxes for DFW - LHR - Cairo were about $596 each whether you are business or first SAME TAXES. Still a good deal with a free companion ticket.
80,000 miles and $1192 for two people DFW to Cairo business class with miles from a credit card - great deal.

We are going BA over and hope to get AA coming back Amman - Chicago - DFW. We will probably be on game drive when these open --- Oh LINDA a favor please. Asking someone to do your FF tickets is a BIG favor it is never easy.

Whew! $596 in taxes!?! yikes... we'll be using AA miles, but not going to Heathrow!. Can't book the outbound until Monday or Tuesday. But,I'm thinking Iberia to Madrid. Or EgyptAir from JFK. I'm liking the Royal Jordanian Amman to JFK return. Whatever we can get using miles ... we'll see.

I devoted my day to researching and booking for NILE2 and wanted to share some of my finds.

I was able to book a one way United/Lufthansa award through Dulles and Munich to Cairo this morning. We did not have enough UA miles in our accounts, but I was able to transfer our Continental miles instantaneously to United, and also get the remaining miles that we needed by transferring AMEX membership reward points to Continental, and then transfer those over to United.

Later I researched the return since we would really like to take the Royal Jordanian flight from Amman to Chicago and then onwards on AA to New Mexico. I found out that you can book One World partners online with BA (thanks to Peter to pointing out the link for the Points Guy blog who is posting in detail about BA awards.)

Royal Jordanian award seats are available now for booking for the return on 3/24/12. Just like BA opens their award booking earlier than most other airlines, so too apparently does Royal Jordanian. A few weeks from now I will add on the AA flight from Chicago to Albuquerque when that becomes available - there is a charge of $70 for changing the ticket, but I felt that it was worthwhile to lock the flight from Amman in now.

So, those of you who have BA miles can jump on this now - Royal Jordanian also flies to JFK and London. If you don't have enough BA miles, but do have AMEX membership points, those can be transferred instantaneously over to BA.

I must say I feel a bit like I am kiting checks by doing all this transferring, but it worked and we are virtually all set for next year.

Leslie, you are surely a "master" at "kiting" the legal way! Glad you worked it all out!

I am in awe of what you did Leslie....I am so bad at this stuff and get frustrated etc - GOOD JOB!!!!!

Congratulations Leslie.......that is one of the most stressful things there is! But when it's done, it's time to celebrate! Good job....

Sounds wonderful Leslie.

Good job, Leslie!

I don't have enough miles to get us RT in business class. So, for the outbound, we're going coach through Madrid (not a bad flight from Boston) and I think it's a shorter flight to Cairo from Madrid than from London.

I'm hoping to get business class on the Royal Jordanian flight from Amman to JFK when that's loaded. [Edit] I'm using AA miles and they say that 3/24/2012 isn't loaded yet. I guess it is available now only if going through BA.

Got mine!! Gary Leff was not available so he referred me to the Points Pros (Ben) who got us 4 biz class seats Air France via CDG and KLM home via AMS. 120k miles per. Pretty good I think. These guys sure know their stuff, when I tried to get these myself I had way worse flights and it was 240k miles per.
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Helen

Helen do you have email for Ben???

Joanna, his email is request@pointspros.com. His name is Ben Schlappig and with the fees and taxes and his fee ($150 for first pax and $100 for each additional)I got 4 biz class tickets for $900. Amazing.
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Helen

Thanks so much Helen

Put the AMM-JFK-BOS on hold 5 days ago, but it's for 3/25. There weren't any business class seats available on 3/24 for award travel. I called back every day to check if 3/24 opened up. No luck. So, I ticketed 3/25 just a few minutes ago since the "hold" expires tonight and the agent couldn't extend it. She said it's the last 2 business class seats. Since it's award travel, I can change the date if 3/24 ever opens up. Otherwise, we'll be hanging around Amman for a whole day after everyone else has gone home. :(

BTW, I tried to get the AMM-ORD flight on the 24th, but no biz class available for that route either. Made me wonder if Linda was able to book that for Ngaire.

Well at least you are ticketed, Kim. Always feels more committed once I have a plane ticket.
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Helen

Leslie, I'm so excited to be able to ask you to add Al and Kathy to the roll call! :D

:woh: :woh: :woh: :woh: :woh: :woh:

Yeah! Adding you!

Thanks, Leslie!

Kim and Alice, we feel exactly the same way! We can't wait to see you again!!!!!

Just spent ninety minutes on the phone with United this afternoon. Lufthansa canceled our Munich to Cairo flight - it took A LOT of persistence to get them rebook us from Dulles to Frankfurt in First and then on to Cairo rather than their proposed routing from Munich to Frankfurt to Cairo with a 35 minute layover in Munich.

Major victory! First on Lufthansa to Frankfurt! :banana:

GOOD job!!!!!!!!!! It is PITA for sure