Nick is off and runnin’ on Dunkin’: Follow along on Instagram

I left home early this morning to start my Monday journey to Orlando and back all in the name of picking up temporary JetBlue Mosaic status so that we can hopefully have a more comfortable run at JetBlue’s 25 for 25 promotion. And I’m not going to be alone! In his weekly email newsletter yesterday, Greg confirmed that he, too, will be taking the Dunkin’ flight today.

My day really started at 12:05am

My first alarm this morning went off at 12:05am so that I could do a same-day change.

As a reminder, in my previous post about this status run, I noted that I will:

• Travel to New York City this morning
• Fly the JetBlue Dunkin’ plane from New York-LaGuardia (LGA) to Orlando, FL (MCO), arriving at 1:40pm.
• Fly home from Orlando either on Southwest or American Airlines

In the previous post, I noted that the Southwest itinerary I wanted would depart at 3:55pm and cost 15,000 Rapid Rewards points. However, there was a cheap early morning departure from Orlando going to Albany that only cost 11,500 points for a Wanna Get Away Plus fare.

Since Wanna Get Away Plus fares include a free same-day change, I booked that flight home from Orlando. Then, at 12:05am, my first alarm of the day went off and I pulled up the Southwest app and did a same-day change to the flight I really wanted at 3:55pm. Easy as pie!

That saved me 3,500 points over having booked that flight from the get-go. The bummer is that, because I was switching to the flight many hours after check-in had begun, I will be in the C boarding group for both legs of that trip. I’m traveling by myself on the way home, so that’s no big deal.

Amtrak over The ‘Hound

In my post last week about this mileage run, I mentioned that I was torn between taking Greyhound from Albany to New York City, which would leave at 4:20am or an Amtrak train at 5:25am.

I’ve had bad luck with Amtrak trains being delayed in many of my past experiences, which leaned me toward Greyhound. But the difficulty with Greyhound is that I would park my car at the airport and take a Lyft to the bus station, which would mean needing to leave my house around 2:30am — meaning a likely 2am wake-up call.

A reader commented on that post pointing me to a website showing the on time performance of specific Amtrak trains. They noted this the particular train I was considering is rarely delayed by more than a few minutes, particularly on Mondays. The worst delay over the past few months has been about 30 minutes, which should theoretically still put me in New York in plenty of time to get to LaGuardia in time for my flight. That was pretty encouraging.

Another benefit behind taking Amtrak was that I could more easily park my car at the Amtrak station. I’d then have to take a Lyft from the airport to the Amtrak station at the end of the night, but it might be a little cheaper than parking at the airport and it would mean only needing to leave home around 3:50am. I could probably get up at 3:30am and make it out of the house on time, giving me an extra hour and a half of sleep. That would be clutch.

I finally decided on Saturday morning that I should book the Amtrak train. I logged on to buy my ticket…..and the train was sold out! Rats!

Back to Greyhound I went, but much to my dismay the cost of the bus had increased by about $30. Doh!

I decided to wait and see if perhaps any train tickets would come back into inventory. Sure enough, a couple hours later, I saw 2 seats available on the Amtrak train. The cost had gone up by about $40 since I first looked the other day, but having saved at least $50 on my price match claim and knowing that I’d save a few bucks in airport parking, that didn’t seem awful. Still, I hunted for some coupon codes and tried a bunch. No dice. When I finally decided that I’d have to pay full price, I had trouble logging in to my Amtrak account. I had to reset my password. Once that was all done and I attempted to go through with my purchase, I got an error message: the train was sold out again. Bah!

I Googled looking for ways to set up alerts for open seats, but all I found was advice to keep checking back again and again. That’s exactly what I did, reaching for my phone every few minutes for the next couple of hours until I eventually saw a seat come back into inventory. Thankfully, I moved quickly and successfully purchased a ticket for Amtrak.

I’ll note that I paid $4 more than the cheapest price in order to have a fully refundable fare. I did that just in case I got really lucky and the 5:45am Delta flight to LaGuardia opens up seats to partners. I didn’t expect it to happen, but if it does I can cancel my seat on the train and book at flight for 5K Flying Blue miles or 7.5K Virgin Atlantic points. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen.

The good news is that I got up early, made the Amtrak train, and as I finish writing this I am approaching New York (by the time it publishes, I should be well on my way to LaGuardia).

Follow Frequent Miler on Instagram for further updates

For the rest of the day, Greg and I will both be sending regular photo or video updates to Carrie and she’ll be publishing them on the Frequent Miler Instagram account. If you are interested in following along to see whether I make it to the airport, through security, and onto the Dunkin’ flight and whether Greg actually arrives on time while traveling to LGA on American Airlines and how every piece of the journey goes in real-time, you’ll want to be following Frequent Miler on Instagram and viewing the “stories” by clicking on the “FM” icon that is our profile photo. I won’t be publishing updates here on the blog (instead I’ll be posting the usual quick deal posts as I am still working as usual today!) but rather updates on the Dunkin’ run will be found on Instagram.

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