In 2001, just after our 5th anniversary, my wife and I took an amazing trip to New Zealand and Australia. Even back then, I booked most of it using points and miles. I think I’ll actually do another post about that trip and how I booked it back then as it may be interesting to those of you who are wondering how the points and miles world has changed in the last 25 years.

In 2026, it’s our 30th anniversary. We didn’t really get to do anything that exotic on our 25th due to Covid. We did take a short trip to Costa Rica and a longer trip to Hawaii that summer so don’t feel bad for us. When we went to New Zealand in 2001, it was during their winter (August) so we ended up just visiting the North Island as we also only had a limited time before we headed to Australia. We have mulled over the idea of going to the South Island for a long time, but just haven’t been able to make it work.

On Halloween, I received an alert from Straight to the Points that there were two American Airlines business class seats between Dallas and Auckland available for 83k miles per person on several days in February and March. I knew we had to be in Las Vegas for a wedding in late March and I also knew we couldn’t take too much time off work considering we have a 2-week trip to Japan in August as well. I ended up booking DFW-AKL and figured since it was AA miles, it was cancelable without a penalty. I realized that this flight is on the brand-new 787-9 with Flagship Suites. I was even able to grab the Flagship Preferred Suites at the front of the cabin which come with extra legroom and amenities for no extra charge. I know I’ll need to book a positioning flight to Dallas from Atlanta, but that shouldn’t be too difficult between American and Delta having many flights throughout the day.

I left the booking alone for a few days and talked it over with my wife. She had ankle surgery in early October, but by late March she should be OK to do some hiking and walking. In fact, we’re hoping she’ll be better able to do so without pain or swelling. She gave me the tentative go ahead to look into flights back to the west coast where we could connect on to Las Vegas for the wedding.

I started looking for return business class flights to California so we could connect to Las Vegas. The American awards didn’t work for our return date (and frankly got snapped up very quickly anyway). There are two non-stop flights from Auckland to LAX on Air New Zealand and one on Delta. There is also a non-stop flight on United to San Francisco. None of them had anything close to reasonable business class awards. There are flights on Qantas via Sydney or Melbourne, but I was concerned about multiple connections and needing to get to Vegas in time for the wedding that same night (the beauty of time zone travel).

In the end, I found a bit of a unicorn in terms of a cash flight. AKL-LAX on Delta for around $2400 per person in Delta One. It’s a newer Delta A350 with the Delta One Suites. We both had some Delta eCredits that brought down the price a bit and we’ll earn about 24,000 Amex Membership Rewards points for booking the flight on our Amex Platinum card. Those are worth close to $500 as well according to my valuation. The day after I booked it, the flight went up to $5000 per person. We’ll also earn about 37,000 SkyMiles between us for these flights.

So, we had flights booked to and from Auckland. We still needed positioning flights on each end and to figure out an itinerary. I decided we would fly into Christchurch from Auckland. I haven’t booked that flight yet as the Air New Zealand flight at my preferred time is a bit pricy. I will wait to see if it goes down and if not, book a slightly later flight on JetStar. I managed to book our flight back from Queenstown to Auckland at the end of the week through Air New Zealand for about $100 per person.

In Christchurch, I currently have two different hotels booked for our one night: The George, a Small Luxury Hotels of the World property, on a cash rate (around $300 all in) booked through the Rove portal to earn a ton of miles and the Crowne Plaza using a 40k IHG free night certificate plus 16,000 points. I will make a final decision closer to the trip, but I’m leaning toward The George. We will rent a car at Christchurch Airport and return it at Queenstown Airport at the end of the trip.

Our road trip will take us through Lake Tekapo, Mount Cook, Wanaka, Te Anau, Milford Sound and finally to Queenstown. On the way, I’ve got some smaller boutique hotels booked through the Rove portal to earn some extra points in Wanaka and Te Anau. I also booked a hotel in Lake Tekapo using a Capital One Venture X travel credit.

In Queenstown, I’ve booked a bucket-list property, Eichardt’s Private Hotel. It’s another Small Luxury Hotels property bookable with Hilton points. It goes for around $2,000 per night so even at 200k Hilton points per night, it’s still a good deal to use points. I have it booked for our last three nights with a couple of short half-day trips from Queenstown planned including a wine tour.

Our last day will be a crazy 44-hour day as there will be a 20 hour time difference between New Zealand and the US west coast at the time. We will leave Queenstown for Auckland at 8:40am, take a 1:35pm flight from Auckland to LAX on Delta and land in Los Angeles before 6am the same day. We then have a 7:35am Delta flight to Las Vegas to arrive before 9am and hopefully catch a nice nap before the wedding that evening. I’m going to keep our hotel reservation for the night before in Vegas so that we can be sure to get in our room right away. We have a flight booked back to Atlanta the following day on a Delta A330. I’m hopeful my Regional Upgrade Certificates will clear us into First Class and the Delta One seats, but if not, my Platinum Medallion Comfort Plus upgrade has us in Premium Select seats already on that flight.

One logistical issue is what to do with our wedding clothes and shoes for the week we’re in New Zealand. I think we will check an extra bag on the way and store it at Auckland airport for the week, grabbing it on our way back. There must be a lot of backpackers who do this as there are luggage storage facilities in both the domestic and international terminals at Auckland.

In all, we’ll have seven days and seven nights on the South Island. Of course, we would love a longer trip, but being able to squeeze this in for our anniversary should be really special. We tend to move pretty fast on vacation so I’m hopeful we can see most of what we want to see in that week. I guess if we don’t, we can always go back again.

I’ll have more information about the trip as it approaches and of course will post full reviews of all the flights, hotels and tours we take on the trip. I haven’t really even started planning our Japan itinerary yet, but that will have to go on the backburner as we look forward to New Zealand in about four months from now.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links. I also recommend using CardPointers to track your credit card spending discount offers.