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Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Let us pull back the curtain and show you how you can maximize money you're already spending to earn enough credit card points and miles to travel with your family for nearly free.
We've used credit card points and miles to take our family of 5 on trips to places like Costa Rica, San Diego, Disneyland, Oceanside, NYC, Washington DC, Hawaii, and next year we have already booked Paris, Spain and Japan!
Using credit card points and miles (often called travel hacking) doesn't have to be overwhelming or take a ton of time, and we can show you how.
Can you earn a lot of points and miles without opening up multiple credit cards? Only if you have a really high amount of spend each month. For people with larger families, opening new cards is the easiest and fastest way to earn enough points and miles to take a couple of really low cost (but not low budget) family vacations every year!
If you want to learn ways to help you and your family travel more affordably using credit card points, this show is for you.
Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Grand Hyatt Indian Wells: A Family-Friendly Resort in the Palm Springs Area
The Grand Hyatt Indian Wells Resort offers a family-friendly getaway with luxurious accommodations and impressive water features including a lazy river and water slides. We share our experience staying in a penthouse suite and how we maximized our travel points to make this vacation more affordable.
• Recently renovated property rebranded from Hyatt Regency to Grand Hyatt
• Located 30 minutes from downtown Palm Springs in a quieter resort area
• Upgraded to 875-square-foot penthouse suite with king bed, separate living area, and balcony
• Multiple pool areas including family pool, splash pad, water slides, and a popular lazy river
• Food options include casual Carmocha restaurant, upscale Tia Carmen, and a lobby Starbucks
• Budget tip: bring your own alcohol and mixers for poolside drinks
• Summer visits mean extreme heat (110°F+) but lower rates as it's considered off-peak season
• Now a Category 6 Hyatt property requiring 21,000-29,000 points per night (previously Category 5)
• Reserve pool chairs early in the morning and get a second set when the lazy river opens at 10am
• Restaurant recommendation: Mi Cultura, a delicious Peruvian restaurant nearby
If you ever get any value out of our podcast, please leave us a rating or review wherever you listen. Next week we'll be sharing our experience at the hotel in Oceanside where we had our first real "pinch me" moment in points and miles travel.
If you're looking for a family-friendly getaway in the Palm Springs area, we are sharing a resort today that did not disappoint, so listen in for our recap of our stay at the Grand Hyatt Indian Wells. Hi, I'm Raya.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm Dwayne, and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.
Speaker 2:We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.
Speaker 1:So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.
Speaker 2:So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip.
Speaker 1:Hello friends.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, hi. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1:We are fresh off of a full week in California and, in full transparency, we returned home approximately three, four hours ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is 9pm.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's been a long day Six hour drive for Dune, not for me. I was co-piloting and doing all the things placing the grocery order, like planning the meals, you know.
Speaker 2:Posting on.
Speaker 1:Posting on Instagram all the things Dealing with the kids Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. But we stayed in two amazing hotels over the last week, and one we've stayed in before, but the one we're going to talk about today was brand new to us, and so that is the grand hyatt indian wells. So we're going to share kind of all the details and all the all the fun stuff. So, if this hotel has been on your radar, we very, very much recommend it. Yes, we had a really good time.
Speaker 2:And if you're not familiar with Indian Wells, it's basically Palm Springs, well, kind of.
Speaker 1:It's like 30 minutes from downtown Palm Springs.
Speaker 2:It's right next door.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, like if you want to be like in the mix in downtown Palm Springs, this is not the property for you, but I think there is a Thompson. Let me check. Hold on, yes, it is a Thompson, and the Thompson is smack dab downtown, according to the map. So I think if you're going for that kind of vibe, then stay at the Thompson.
Speaker 2:But if you have a family and If you want to stay in the heart of Greater Palm Springs, then you choose Indian Wells.
Speaker 1:It is. Indian Wells is literally a separate town than Palm.
Speaker 2:Springs Reading.
Speaker 1:And there's also Palm Desert, which is right there it says nestled in the heart of Greater Palm Springs.
Speaker 1:That's from the hotel website and that's probably to make it appear as if it's closer to Palm Springs than it is. It's 30 minutes, guys, 30 minutes. Okay, that's what I need you to know. Anyways, okay, this trip we planned almost a year ago, so I think like in the fall of last year, and then a couple of months ago my sister had texted and was like, what are you guys doing for the fourth of July? And I'm like, well, we're going to Palm Springs and then Oceanside, california. And she was like, well, can I tag along? And I'm like sure so. And my parents were also supposed to come and they have a little RV that not RV, but like a camper van that my dad has fully renovated and put in like a bed and a shower and a kitchen and all that. What is? What kind of van is it?
Speaker 2:he didn't renovate it. He built it from the ground well, yeah, okay, yeah, they bought a van, an empty van, and your dad.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's true yes, he did, and it's nice, af, it is nice. Yes, it's perfect for the two of them. They tool around the country in it. They are currently in new york. They have driven that thing to to new york and back the country and they're currently in New York. They have driven that thing to New York and back multiple times and they were supposed to come and camp kind of both in Palm Springs and in Oceanside, but that part didn't end up happening.
Speaker 1:But my sister did come and so when I knew that she was coming she was like I'll, you know, get another room or whatever. But I was like that's going to be really expensive because she doesn't have the points that we have, she's 31. She doesn't have a ton of spend and so she does have a Chase Sapphire preferred card, but that's her only credit card because she can't meet the minimum spend for most cards. So I knew we needed more room without getting another room, because I wasn't going to give more points, because we also don't have very many points, but for a different reason. And so I kind of gambled a little bit with the Palm Springs and kind of hoped for an upgrade, and I used a suite upgrade award for our stay in Oceanside and we'll talk about that next week because we won't have time to do both today. But we ended up getting a suite at the Grand Hyatt, which was fan. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:Amazing, it was the penthouse suite.
Speaker 1:Well, it was a penthouse suite, a penthouse suite, but still penthouse suite Top flow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I get the feeling they have quite a few of these suites because they definitely did that whole floor, I think yeah, when we were on our very large balcony, there were quite a few other very large balconies, so I had been checking in the app, like leading up to the day we checked in, and they have both what's called a penthouse suite and a champions suite and both of those were showing availability and so what's a champion suite look like okay, let's talk about that one first.
Speaker 1:So the champion suite is actually bigger than the penthouse suite, so it's 1100 square feet. Bed, separate living space with a sleeper sofa, two full bathrooms and dual private balconies.
Speaker 2:A full-size refrigerator.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it does say that Full-size fridge and microwave. Yeah, this is definitely a little bigger than what we had. Oh yeah, look, there's like a seating area. So that was one of the suites available. And then they also had a penthouse suite, so the penthouse suite is 875 square feet. Again, king bed, separate living and dining rooms. They had a half bath plus a full bath, so that's one of the big differences. And, again, a huge balcony, and so that's the one that we got. It was plenty of space for six of us.
Speaker 2:It was a beautiful, beautiful room.
Speaker 1:We had a pool view so we could see, like the whole resort pool, the mountains. It was stunning. I was super impressed.
Speaker 2:Was highly impressed.
Speaker 1:We did request a rollaway for my sister and she slept on that and the kids slept on the pull-out sofa bed and we obviously slept in the king bed. Yeah, it was. Yes, it was incredible. I um have a video of it on instagram. I have a highlight that says palm springs, indian. Well, so if you want to see what the room looked like, you can go and check that out.
Speaker 2:Yes, so this is top three rooms we've stayed in.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:One being the Oceanside, which we'll get into next week. Yes, this is number two on my list, and number three would be the room in.
Speaker 1:Barcelona, the Grand High of Barcelona. Yeah, because this one was really nice and had the view and Grand High of Barcelona. We didn't have like. I mean, we had a view but it was like not a yeah, it wasn't a very good view and Grand High at Barcelona.
Speaker 2:we didn't have like, I mean we had a view, but it was like not a yeah, it wasn't a very good view. I mean the room itself was, I mean the bathroom was. It was incredible, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, plenty of room. The room that I had booked was just a regular king bed plus sofa bed room, and we were upgraded. Because of my globalist status, I did email the hotel beforehand and let them know we were celebrating Dwayne's birthday, um, and so they did also have a little um amenity kit in the room a little chocolate cake, some champagne and a little card, which was very nice, very nice.
Speaker 1:And they, they did upgrade us, obviously, so that was also fantastic. Um, so that was also fantastic. Let's talk about you. Want to talk about the food first? Sure, so we ate on property a few times, yes, we ate at the restaurant.
Speaker 2:Well, what was the restaurant called Carmoca?
Speaker 1:Carmoca. Yeah, we had dinner there twice, yes, I thought the food was great. It was pretty good. Yes, the appetizers were excellent and I thought the main well, some of the main entrees were okay and some were really good.
Speaker 2:Yes, entrees I mean appetizers were definitely yes.
Speaker 1:The ceviche, which I did not expect in the desert. The ceviche was very good.
Speaker 2:Very good.
Speaker 1:You are going to pay regular resort pricing full disclosure. Yes, it was expensive. Exp going to pay regular resort pricing full disclosure. Yes, it was expensive, expensive, um, but again the food was good. The other restaurant they have for dinner is called tia carmen. That's like a fancy. So car mocha is more like a bar kind of casual vibe and tia carmen is more upscale, kind of fancy. We did not go there for dinner, uh, number one we didn't want to spend the money and number two, we didn't have nice clothes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we weren't really there for like a fancy vacation, so but for breakfast we did eat at Tia Carmen. So the breakfast is also served at Tia Carmen. They have a buffet. They really don't have a menu you can order off of, it's just the buffet Buffet.
Speaker 2:They really don't have a menu you can order off of, it's just the buffet. Well, I think, because they were offering the buffet, they didn't offer the, the menu. The menu, oh well, because when we checked in, the guy was like um no, I don't think they have a buffet, it's, you know, a la carte, you know.
Speaker 1:You don't remember that? I guess kind of I do.
Speaker 2:Which I thought was weird, Like them not having a regular menu even though they had the buffet. It was kind of weird.
Speaker 1:It was kind of weird and the buffet was expensive, so it was $39 for adults. I don't remember the kid price, but they, so some hotels. Obviously we have six people, so like I wasn't expecting them to cover all of it, but I was maybe hoping they were sticklers for the two adults, two kids being covered with my status and not a penny more, which is fine, like those are the rules and I get it. There was one day where they did not charge us for our five year olds buffet and there was, but the other two days they did.
Speaker 2:So whatever they said, I think the first day we had that really cool older gentleman's server. Yeah, that's why he was probably like you know.
Speaker 1:Or he was like I don't know how old that kid is, I think it was, but it was under four, so four and above you paid, and under four, so three and below was free. She could pass for four, but she definitely can't pass for three, so we just paid it and whatever. Um, and yeah, we paid for my sisters too, because the buffet was okay it was okay. It was not my favorite.
Speaker 2:They didn't change it up. We ate it. What?
Speaker 1:three times yes, it was the same exact thing every day every time they have tres leches french toast, which sounds good but was not that good. They had silver dollar pancakes bacon sausage watery scrambled eggs green chili pork they did, yes, that was very good yes and then they also had burrito yeah but the green chili pork. It was very good, but it's not something I want to eat for breakfast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very, very heavy it was really good and you know they have the cereal bagels, yogurt.
Speaker 1:They do. Yeah, they do have a little like. They have a Starbucks basically in the lobby as well that has grab-and-go items. So if you wanted to do more of like a grab-and-go option versus the full buffet, that would be an option for you. We got Starbucks there every day.
Speaker 2:I mean, was it really Starbucks? I mean it was.
Speaker 1:They had all the Starbucks breakfast sandwiches. The sizes were venti grande ball ball.
Speaker 2:My mocha wasn't very good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will say, my cold brew lacked the deliciousness of our usual Starbucks, and our usual Starbucks isn't even that good. So, but anyways, that's an option if you. If you just want like grab and go. And then the other place we ate was the pool bar, so they have like, obviously, regular pool bar serves drinks, snacks, whatever. We had Uncrustables for the kids for two of our three lunches, but we did get them lunch from the pool one day to kind of break it up a little bit. It was fine, your basic pool food, nothing fancy, expensive.
Speaker 2:Drinks are ridiculously expensive.
Speaker 1:So we overspent on our trip to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. We went over our budget, so we were really trying to come in below budget this time, and so we brought our own tequila and like mixers. Why don't you tell them about the drink that we've been making? Because it's really quite good, and so I don't like drinks that taste too alcoholy. I don't like them very strong. This is very good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's just coconut tequila um grapefruit fresca and a little splash of lime, and it's refreshing and tasty it's the perfect pool drink perfect summer pool drink saves you a bunch of money. I mean drinks. You're paying 18 dollars a drink, you know?
Speaker 1:I mean like we paid 19 for the whole bottle of tequila yeah, you know, I mean like 1800 coconut tequila and we made probably 10 drinks maybe I think more than 10 oh
Speaker 1:maybe definitely more than 10, because I had like two or three. Most days I had one to two. There was one day I had three and you had at least three. Yes, so we probably made a good 15 to 20 drinks, I would say but totally worth it to bring your own, just don't get caught yeah, we had a little cooler backpack that we brought in.
Speaker 1:No one said a word and we just made sure to order, like, first of all, we use the same cups that they have there, and then we made sure to order some food from the server throughout the day. You know to, yeah, avoid suspicion. You know, sometimes the servers.
Speaker 2:They get it, they. They understand the drinks are expensive, but they're also trying to make money. So yes, if you order some food for them and one guy asked you if you needed ice.
Speaker 1:He was like do you need anything else? Do you need some ice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, sometimes people are cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, okay, a few things to note. So it is middle of summer and this property is in the desert. So, before we get into the rest of the amenities and stuff, this is very similar weather to what we experience in phoenix during the summer so 110, sometimes more super dry, very, very hot days. So the hotel is like this is off peak for this hotel and when we talked to one of the restaurant servers she mentioned that they were pretty busy this weekend or that week that we were there and and they were at about 50 occupancy and you know, for being summer and off season, that was fairly busy, I guess I mean it was.
Speaker 2:I mean everyone goes there for the pool.
Speaker 1:The pool there is, it's fantastic yeah, I just so before we talk about the like, if you're planning a trip here, a better time might be like March, april or May or maybe like October Starting like December. January are going to be the coldest months. I think people think that you can. Oh, it's warm and I can go there, you know, in December and it'll be sunny and I can go there, you know, in December and it'll be sunny. The highs during the day might be like 70 in December, january, but the overnight temps are going to be in the 30s or 40s. It's a big difference and that's going to be. The temperature of the pool is whatever the low is for the most part. I don't know if the pools are heated, so just keep that in mind if you're planning a trip and if you are going to go in the summer, just electrolytes for sure for you and your kids. Drink a lot of water and I would plan to spend most of your time at the pool. That's the only thing that makes the temperature bearable, I think.
Speaker 2:Again, I mean we talked about this earlier. I disagree. I would think that summertime is a great time for this hotel, because I mean, we talked about this earlier. I disagree. I would think that summertime is a great time for this hotel because I mean, like I said, the amenities are great.
Speaker 1:They are great, but I just want people to be aware that if you're planning to go in the summer, I wouldn't go hiking. There are some things to do in Palm Springs. There's like the Living Desert and there's some kind of tram you can take. We didn't do any of that because it's hot AF.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we spent all day, every day, at the pool, at the pool, yeah, and I had not one problem.
Speaker 1:No, not at all. But I'm just like, if you're planning a trip there and you want to do other things, summer is probably not the time. No, and I mean like we only left the hotel once to go to dinner because it was so hot. So like we ate at the hotel because we didn't want to leave, because it was so hot, so anyways. Okay, let's talk about the pools. So there is like a main pool. It's actually two pools that are.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's sections. There's like the first sections for families. It consists of like four, three pools, a splash pad, a little water slide for toddlers Well, not toddlers, but little kids Plenty of seats, yep. They also have a lazy river with two pretty good water slides.
Speaker 1:The water slides don't go into the lazy river, but they're right above it. No, yes.
Speaker 2:And you can swim in the pool where the slides take you.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the lazy river was the hit. Take you, yeah, yes, and the Lazy River was the hit.
Speaker 2:The Lazy River was money.
Speaker 1:We spent so much time just floating around in that.
Speaker 2:Floating around, I had my speaker.
Speaker 1:Dwayne. Dwayne is one of those people that brings his own music wherever he goes.
Speaker 2:I am no shame, no shame.
Speaker 1:And my sister is all about it. Yep Good music.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. And they also have an adult poll 18 and over. Oh my God, did you not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's 18 and over what was that On the other side of the. Oh well, sorry, we couldn't go there, so I guess I blocked that out. They have an 18 and over.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, there's one review right there that says the Oasis adult pool had servers that kept the drinks coming.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it does say that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if you don't come here with kids, there's a pool for you where you don't have to listen to all the racket from all the freaking kids running around and the splashing, oh the splashing.
Speaker 1:We're constantly trying to get our kids to be aware of who they're splashing, Other people not so much. Yeah, other people don't do that, but we try. The Lazy River was my favorite part of the pool. It's pretty fast moving and, yeah, it was just like in the morning I was literally on a tube with my coffee, like my iced coffee, and then later in the day a little coconut tequila drink. It was great, super relaxing. It was a super, super fun time.
Speaker 2:Again, we didn't leave the pool. First of all, I would go down at like 7.30, reserve some seats, yes, and then we'd go to breakfast, then we'd go to the pool, and then we were there until at least 3, 4 pm. Yeah, every day.
Speaker 1:And I mean. Something to note about our kids is they can go pretty hard Like. Other people will be like, oh, like, little Johnny swam for two hours and he's going to sleep so good. Not our kids, no, no, they can go for eight hours, sometimes more, and they will still be up until 9 or 10 pm if we let them. Yeah, so like. And our kids are used to this heat also. So I think, something to note if you're not used to the heat, you'd probably want to take a break in the middle of the day. Um, also, one of our kids was not feeling super. Actually, she was feeling fine, but she had a little fever, and so I was giving her medicine and trying to let her not steal a trooper and oh yeah, I was like do you?
Speaker 1:want to go back to the room and lay down nope, nope, nope, nope. So I just gave her some ibuprofen and made sure she wasn't, didn't have a fever and she was literally fine by the next day. So it's just a weird little bug, I guess.
Speaker 2:So a tip from me. So the lazy river in the slide zone opened up until 10. The regular pool opens up at 7. So again, what we did was reserved some seats by the main pool at like 7.30., went and got breakfast, got back to the pool around you know 930, and then waited in line for them to open up the lazy river and the water slides and then reserve some seats in that little area. So we basically had two sections of seats reserved, which was key.
Speaker 1:It was really helpful because our kids kept bouncing back and forth between all the different areas and our two boys I don't worry so much about if I don't see them every second, as long as I can lay eyes on them, like every 1520 minutes, like they're pretty strong swimmers and I feel okay about it. But our daughter is this is her first summer where she's like fully swimming and so it was like wherever she wanted to be, we one of us had to be, so it was nice to be able to have a spot kind of in both areas to go back and forth between and like the. The hotel wasn't, there was a good amount of people there, but it wasn't so busy that there were no chairs, so that worked out really well well, there's a couple of days there were there were no chairs in the lazy river area.
Speaker 2:Oh really, because I mean people, that's spot to be yeah I guess.
Speaker 1:well, I mean also we, we only had a couple chairs and there's six of us, so I feel I think in total we had six chairs saved, just in two different areas. Yes, so, but yes, that is, I think, a good tip if you're going to go, because you can't see the lazy river from the other pool and vice versa.
Speaker 2:No, you cannot, and wear shoes because it's hot.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, and wear shoes because it's hot. Oh my God, the floor, the floor was hot, Like why they put this floor, whatever tile or whatever it is in the desert Like I will never understand. It is 2025, and I feel like we have the technology where it cannot be so hot, but like you had to wear your shoes because you couldn't walk on it, it was not good. I will say the water slides here were really fun yeah, they, they were legit we all went down them multiple times.
Speaker 1:They were not too crazy to where you don't want to go down it again, but they were fun enough to where it was like whoa. Even I went down it like five times and normally like I'll try it, but then I'm usually like nah.
Speaker 2:Did you go down the slide at the Grand?
Speaker 1:Absolutely not. No, those were like, no, like I probably would have died. I would have had like some kind of water burn. Those were way too crazy for me. Anywho, these were fun, fun, yeah. Um, okay, let's see, we ventured out of the hotel one night for dinner. The concierge recommended this shopping area called el paseo. Right, yeah, and he was like, yeah, they have all kinds of food there, like italian, mexican, like whatever you want. So we go there and we're driving around and it's the kind of place where you gotta park and get out and kind of walk through it all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like a outside mall yeah, but again it's 110 degrees.
Speaker 1:So we were like we were looking stuff up on our phones and all the restaurants were like three to four dollar signs on google and yelp so expensive. And again we were trying to leave the hotel to save money, not to spend as much money as we could have spent at the hotel. So we eventually decided on this Peruvian restaurant. What was the name of it?
Speaker 2:Mi Cotora.
Speaker 1:It was really really good, Super low key, but they had like four and a half plus stars on Google and Yelp and it was delicious and driving there it was like a ghost town. There was not a single person inside.
Speaker 2:We didn't see a single person driving Like we were, literally like what is happening, but when we get to this restaurant, there was, you know, not a lot of people, but there was like eight people in this restaurant which you know, a lot of people, but there was like eight people in this restaurant which you know, that's eight more people than we we saw on the whole drive and I thought, well, this is the place. To be sure enough, we sat down and more people started showing up. So it was very good. We knew we picked the right spot, yeah, and the food was really good would absolutely recommend yes empanadas were great.
Speaker 2:I had had the pork belly, which was fire, or, as the kids would say, slaps.
Speaker 1:Gas Gas. I had the lomo saltado, which is like steak basically, and fries and rice, and our kids all had that too and it was very good.
Speaker 2:Oh, and the plantains were good.
Speaker 1:Oh, sweet plantainsains. No, can't go wrong with those yeah, definitely recommend that spot yeah, it was really good. Um what else gosh?
Speaker 1:oh really, we just stay at the hotel the whole time which I feel like very well, that qualifies us to give this review right like we fully enjoyed all the activities the hotel had available. Oh, they also had, like they had a little calendar of events of what was going on, and one of the things that they have on there is they do water slide races and it's at different times throughout the day, but basically you, whatever the time is, you go up and you race someone down because there's two slides so I thought it was going to be like racing.
Speaker 2:Racing where like, okay, you won this one, you're going to go up against you know, this guy next. But no, it's just, you just won, race against whoever you want, which in my case was my kid and I won, thinking that I was gonna you know, move on, move on up. But no, they're like, oh, you want, okay, here's, take this to the.
Speaker 1:You know the little they give you a little paper and you take it to the towel bar and you get your little prize. And the kids were like these prizes are cheap. And I'm like, what did you expect? Of course they're cheap, yes, so uh, but they had other like fun little things too, like I think there was a kid's craft and it was different every day yeah, there was a movie night.
Speaker 2:We didn't make, yes, movie night, yeah so. And then, for some reason, the pool was open till 10 on thursday. So every night the lazy river and the water slides, that little section of the pool closed at seven every day, except for thursday it was open till 10. Maybe that was a moving night. That was the glow party. Well it, it said every thursday, oh everything, I mean, it just said thursday.
Speaker 1:oh well, they must have do some kind of event there every every time then. Um, okay, let's talk about quickly how we booked this. So this is a currently a category six hotel. When I booked it it was a category five, so in March, every March, hyatt does award category changes for some of their properties, and this went from a five to a six. Not really a surprise, because this used to be the Hyatt Regency Indian Wells and they recently underwent a pretty big remodel and now it has rebranded as the Grand Hyatt Indian Wells.
Speaker 2:And I mean the hotel was beautiful.
Speaker 1:It was beautiful.
Speaker 2:The grounds, the actual, you know, the lobby. Yeah everything was really really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so now it's a category six. So we paid 17,000 points a night when we booked it and we stayed three nights, but again, it is now a category six. So that puts it at what is that? 21 to 25, 21 to 29,000 points a night. Now if, again, if you, if you want to go in the summer, that's definitely going to be off peak, so you could stay two or three nights for around 63,000 points and I think that is worth it. So again, we got upgraded to a suite because of my globalist status.
Speaker 1:If you don't have globalist status and you want to try to get an upgrade, you basically have two options. The way that I see it. Number one is you can. There are Facebook groups where people gift Hyatt awards and you can go in there and maybe try to trade something you have, like a club access award or something for a sweet upgrade award. Just depends what other people are looking for award. Just depends what other people are looking for as to kind of what kind of trade they'll take. Or they also sell like guest of honor and suite upgrade awards on ebay. I've never bought one personally, um, and I I think there's maybe a little bit of risk involved in it, but I would buy one I had no idea that.
Speaker 2:Who sells them on ebay? Just people.
Speaker 1:Like other globalists who aren't going to be able to use it, so they'll just try to get some money out of it, yeah. So again, I've never done that and proceed with caution, but I am not opposed to doing that if it made sense.
Speaker 2:I mean, how many points was the suite we had?
Speaker 1:I think you can book a suite for 40,000 points a night currently. Let me see, I'll tell you right now, which is a lot more than it is a lot more. Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, so I guess really, you have three options if you want the suite. One, book it with points. Two, try to trade for a suite upgrade award and apply it.
Speaker 2:Or three, buy one on ebay oh 36 000 uh, oh, yeah, well, okay, yes, off peak, so 36 to 40 000 ish points yeah so I mean if you have some points you're trying to blow off yeah, if you were gonna fly in, you would fly into Palm Springs.
Speaker 1:My sister actually flew from Florida into the Palm Springs airport and we picked her up in downtown Palm Springs Um, so that's like the closest airport Um Palm Springs is. It was about a four hour drive from Phoenix. So if you are planning to do the drive, just keep in mind it's about four hours from Phoenix and it was about two ish hours from, like, san Diego Oceanside area. Carl's bad, um, what else? Anything else about the property?
Speaker 2:I think we covered pretty much everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, um, if you want to kind of see any of the stuff that we're talking about, I have a whole highlight on Instagram. You can go and check it out at travel party of five. If you have questions, send me a DM. I answer every single one. Um, and if you ever get any value out of our podcast, please leave us a rating or review wherever you listen, cause we would greatly appreciate it, as we record this at 9 30 pm now.
Speaker 1:Yes, we appreciate you thank you thank you for listening so much and we will catch you next week. Where? Next week? I just am so excited to tell you that I had like my first real pinch me moment in points and miles because we got this incredible, sweet upgrade at the hotel in Oceanside that I like was in. I'm still in awe thinking about it. It was incredible and I cannot wait to tell you about it next week. So make sure you listen into that one.
Speaker 2:Yes, have a good one.
Speaker 1:Okay.