Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - How expensive is ignorance?

Eager to plan my next great vacation, I spent hours searching and booking seperate flights as follows:

Michigan to L.A.
L.A. to Honolulu
Honolulu to Wellington, NZ
Wellington to Sydney
Sydney by train to Darwin
Darwin to Bangkok
Bangkok to Beijing
Beijing to L.A.
L.A. back to Michigan

Total transportation including train - about $4,000

Then I found out about "Circle the Pacific" options and I'm thinking, "what an idiot I was!" Please somebody tell me I didn't pay twice as much as I should have :(

That is about 25K miles so fits easily into 29K circle pacific fare. However getting to Beijing is hard on OW (until CX starts flights there, think it is still only Dragonair which can't be used on the Oneworld fares). Your routing is a classic example of what the circle pacific fare is intended to accomplish, and it does tend to be about half the price. However the Oneworld Explorer fares are generally much better value (do require going around the world though). You could have done dtw-ord-lax-akl-wlg-syd-per-drw-hkg-bkk-hkg-pek-hkg-lhr-dxb-lhr-ord-lax-ord-anc-ord for less money, for example (this would give you 2 extra trips to LA and Anchorage after you return, as well as Europe and Dubai; lots of other variations possible but you get the idea).

However getting to Beijing is hard on OW (until CX starts flights there, think it is still only Dragonair which can't be used on the Oneworld fares).

CX is now flying from HKG to PEK ... has been for a little while now.

Rgds