I came across this review of the Four Seasons Napa, and I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to punch an author more. LOL paying $1,800 per night for a freaking hotel room. I would rather stay in any random Airbnb. These techbro assholes are destroying the world to do THIS?
I know the answer to that one with 100% certainty.
Except he didn’t pay to stay there. He got it through some credit card point system. Hence the name of the site.
Nicest/most expensive place I’ve ever stayed is the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, CA. It was cheaper back then (our last stay was over 10 years ago), but is super-expensive now. Everybody’s definition of “worth it” will obviously be different, but it’s a pretty damn great place. It’s also where I proposed to my wife, so is extra special to us.
Yeah we definitely didn’t pay that. I’m pretty sure the last time we went it was $795/night for a Treehouse room. IIRC that was in 2011. It’s an incredibly beautiful setting, the architecture is amazing. Most of the rooms are standalone, not attached to any other rooms. The restaurant is spectacular. For the purposes of proposing to my wife, I would say definitely worth it. Hopefully we’ll go again someday once the kids are out of here.
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What’s folks thoughts on TSA pre-check? (USA program where you pay the government to not hassle you at the airport, essentially). … I’ve resisted it for years but on that trip to Rincon with my girlfriend, navigating airports was so much easier for her. My logic has always been that I didn’t want to basically submit to what I thought was more, invasive security, basically paying to alleviate a hassle the government created. It’s been about a decade and I guess the program isn’t going anywhere, so …
Also, interest in a Rincon, PR, trip report?
Pre-Check is the greatest $100 purchase I’ve ever made. Even if you just fly like twice.
Keeping all of my electronics in a bag, shoes on, and dealing with lines that have frequent travelers only is extremely +ev from a mental perspective. 10/10 would recommend.
+1 on TR.
Absolutely mandatory, and consider getting Global Entry if you’re doing any international travel at all. The small increase in cost is totally worth it, but the real downside is needing to go in for an interview. If you can swing that, do it.
I only travel to America once a year.
I also think that it’s a government shakedown and paying for something like that encourages similar behavior in other areas. Soon, they’ll make TSA clearance even more torturous to incentivize people to pay the membership fee.
WRT Global Entry, any US citizen/permanent resident entering the US from an international flight at JFK uses those machines anyway (they were all closed off this year though). I’d be paying for a service I already use for free.
If you ever happen to fly through Atlanta from Europe, you’re easily looking at a 1 hour time savings from global entry. You use the machines whether you have global entry or not, but you skip a gargantuan line with global entry.
I don’t use other American airports’ international arrivals enough to comment on whether this is typical, though.
I applied for Global Entry 6 months ago and am still stuck in the initial processing stage - can’t even schedule the interview. So frustrating.
Can someone give me cliffs on global entry benefits? When my kids were younger my chance of traveling outside of the US was basically zero, so I never bothered to get it. But now international travel is on the table. I figure my international travel is going to be 2x/year max with an average of about 1.
So how much time and annoyance will getting Global Entry spare me?
I’ve got TSA precheck, so I assume I will still get that advantage even when departing on an international flight even if I don’t get global entry. Is that right?
Global Entry includes precheck. Once you get approved you get a new Known Traveler Number, just use that one only from then on and forget your old precheck KTN. If you book a domestic ticket, your global entry KTN will give you precheck benefits.
Precheck only works with some airlines. So if you book with Elbonia Air, you won’t get precheck on your outbound. There is probably a list somewhere of airlines that it works with.
I’m not sure if this is still the case, but before covid, once you Got the initial approval, you would go to schedule the interview and the first available slot would always be at least 3 months out, but they would let you do a walk-in interview as long as you had an interview scheduled on the books. I did mine this way and it took like 10 minutes.
But how much time does Global Entry save me when coming in? I assume that is the major value add over Precheck.
Yeah. It can be a lot or very little. It just depends. If there are a lot of planes landing around the same time, the lines can be crazy.
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It can be a lot of time saved. It takes about 30 seconds to go through passport control via GE.
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Thanks. How does it work with kids. Right now they just go through precheck with my wife and me for domestic flights, but they don’t have it themselves. Do I need to get them their own global entry?
GE is only for international arrival back in the US. Yes, kids would need it too.