The million mile trip, a new devaluation, 2 hotel promotions, and more!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the past week of travel information – here’s a recap of what you may have missed from Points With a Crew over the past 7 days

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Featured Stories

• Reader Karen writes in wanting to go to Hawaii, leading to a discussion where we wonder – Is this trip worth 1,000,000 miles?

• We heard last week that Amtrak Guest Rewards was devaluing their program, now we finally have most of the details of the New Amtrak Guest Rewards 2016 program (“devaluation”) 

Family Travel

• I just booked my 2 free IHG hotel stays – find out where I spend them and if I wasted my 2 IHG free night certificates (hint: it was NOT in Bora Bora)
• Have you had a recent Choice Hotel Rewards stay? Better check for a “System Issue Correction” – I found myself down 56,000 points!
• If you’re traveling without both parents across country borders, you might need a Child Travel consent form: What is it and why do you need it?

Miles, Points and Credit cards

• SPG has started a new sweepstakes called SPG open the world – you can enter 2 times per day (per account) and can win up to 25,000 SPG points.  When they ran a similar promotion called “Tap into Luxury”, I didn’t win and didn’t win and didn’t win, and then just when I complained about it… I won 500 points 😀
• In other hotel news, IHG just announced their new fall promotion – Here’s my IHG Accelerate promotion offers – what’s yours?
• How to use the American Express Priority Pass Platinum card benefit – a great benefit which got me into 2 Delta Sky Clubs last weekend!
• Denied for a Bank of America credit card?  Here’s the Bank of America reconsideration phone number and website
• There’s a new 80,000 point offer, but I’m not sure I care

News and notes

• Do all miles go to heaven? Plus wi-fi blocking, lost Amazon shipments, and is Chase worth it?
• The award redemption going away on Tuesday, plus hilarious 1-star National park reviews, undervalued awards and more!

If you’re still up for more travel reading, here’s last week’s recap: “Why you’re foolish to rent a standard car”, My August 2015 credit card churn, “Begin with the end in mind”, Top Cashback limiting Amex gift cards, “Please don’t get an Alaska card with my link!”, A large… wooden… badger, and more!