Pre-Bachelor Party Adventure: AA/JL/SQ First, JL J, VA Y, Park Hyatt Seoul

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Apr 15, 2015, 10:40 am

#16

Madone59

Join Date: Nov 2009

Location: 6km East of EPAYE

Programs: UA Silver, AA Platinum, AS & DL GM Marriott TE, Hilton Gold

Posts: 9,582

Great TR, thank you for sharing. I am looking forward to the rest....especially SQ16!!

Apr 15, 2015, 10:42 am

#17

MarylandFlyer244

Original Poster

Join Date: Nov 2012

Location: Washington, D.C.

Programs: AA Platinum, DL Silver, Marriott Lifetime Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 174

Quote:

Originally Posted by Madone59

Great TR, thank you for sharing. I am looking forward to the rest....especially SQ16!!

Thanks! It was an awesome trip. We should get to that point of the trip by Monday night I hope!

Apr 15, 2015, 10:43 am

#18

MarylandFlyer244

Original Poster

Join Date: Nov 2012

Location: Washington, D.C.

Programs: AA Platinum, DL Silver, Marriott Lifetime Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 174

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bretteee

I flew on JAL in 1976 in F from Tokyo to LA and the food was awful.

I stupidly chose the Japanese meal. And I was too shy to change to the Western meal.

The desert was basically a sugar cube.

There were no beds in those days. And all they gave was a JAL jacket.

The croissants had no taste and I was not impressed.

Nothing in comparison with First Class today.

And there were no F lounges either.

I think I can confidently say that you and I had a very, very different experience! This JAL flight completely exceeded expectations and was the best flight I've ever had (at least as of now).

Apr 15, 2015, 12:51 pm

#19

arlflyer

Join Date: Feb 2013

Location: DCA

Posts: 7,769

Wow, thought I was the only one who really loved the JAL mugs! Regretting not giving the crew a compliment on them now, after seeing your outcome...

Apr 15, 2015, 1:02 pm

#20

MarylandFlyer244

Original Poster

Join Date: Nov 2012

Location: Washington, D.C.

Programs: AA Platinum, DL Silver, Marriott Lifetime Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 174

Quote:

Originally Posted by arlflyer

Wow, thought I was the only one who really loved the JAL mugs! Regretting not giving the crew a compliment on them now, after seeing your outcome...

We were very lucky to get some! My roommates don't seem to appreciate how cool they are when they use them for their morning coffee...

Apr 15, 2015, 2:31 pm

#21

farbster

Join Date: Sep 2008

Location: BWI

Posts: 1,782

I have no comment yet, except to say "Go O's"

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarylandFlyer244

This is my first attempt at a Trip Report on FT, so please bear with me. I've been a reader on the site for years, but rarely comment. I hope I've learned a thing or two from the TR experts on here, but I guess we'll see!

My brother and I have a travel site (pointsmd.com) that we started a few months ago and just took our first trip together last month since starting the blog.
My oldest brother Kevin is getting married next month and the bachelor party was in Las Vegas over the NCAA tournament opening weekend (hell yeah!). Since he and I are avid travel enthusiasts, we decided to take a little pre-bachelor party trip and head to....Asia? Both having jobs that we couldn't take a ton of days off from (he's a Doctor, I'm a Marine) we decided to galavant around the world for 5 days and roll right into the party where we'd meet about a dozen of our friends. While he started from SPI, I started our report out from my hometown in N.C. We met each other in DFW and continued the trip together from there!

My trip looked like this (with my brother's just a small bit different):

Originally, the reason we were going to Seoul was to fly the KE A380 FC flight back to the US (to LAX, specifically). We got the seats on the flight held and started planning everything. Then, as we all know, KE stopped showing up as a transfer partner of Chase for some time. While we thought it would come back, at some point we couldn't take the risk anymore, and instead decided to fly SQ home. I'm not upset at all by the decision.

Our trip report looks like this:

Flight Review: AA First Class ATL-DFW
Lounge Review: JAL Business and First Class Lounge SFO
Flight Review: JAL First Class SFO-HND
1 Day in Tokyo! What we saw!
Lounge Review: JAL First Class Lounge NRT
Flight Review: JAL Business Class NRT-ICN
Seoul, South Korea: March 2015 (Part 1)
Seoul, South Korea: March 2015 (Part 2)
Hotel Review: Park Hyatt Seoul
Lounge Review: Asiana First Class Lounge(s) ICN
Flight Review: Singapore Airlines First Class ICN-SFO
Lounge Review: American Airlines Admirals Club SFO
Flight Review: Virgin America Economy Class SFO-LAS
Some Vegas Stuff!
Lounge Review: American Express Centurion Lounge LAS
The story of the lost luggage!

As we go along, I'll be adding the hyperlinks to our blog. The posts on here are a little bit behind, so feel free to head over to the site to cheat and read ahead.

We appreciate any feedback y'all have for not only the TR but the site as well.

Thanks in advance for following along!

Apr 15, 2015, 4:05 pm

#22

MarylandFlyer244

Original Poster

Join Date: Nov 2012

Location: Washington, D.C.

Programs: AA Platinum, DL Silver, Marriott Lifetime Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 174

Quote:

Originally Posted by farbster

I have no comment yet, except to say "Go O's"

Go O's, Hon!

Apr 18, 2015, 5:31 am

#23

stargold

Join Date: Jul 2000

Location: AUH

Posts: 8,265

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bretteee

Apr 18, 2015, 9:21 am

#24

arlflyer

Join Date: Feb 2013

Location: DCA

Posts: 7,769

Quote:

Originally Posted by stargold

Lol, I had noticed this as well when reading through the various reports.

I think that we need to pool miles and sponsor Bretteee on a long-haul JL F flight, with the promise of a "compare/contrast to 1976" trip report after!

Apr 18, 2015, 9:26 am

#25

Andriyko

Join Date: May 2005

Location: Kyiv, Ukraine

Programs: Mucci, BA Gold, TK Elite, HHonors Lifetime Diamond

Posts: 7,691

Excellent report! Thank you for sharing^

Apr 18, 2015, 9:44 am

#26

MarylandFlyer244

Original Poster

Join Date: Nov 2012

Location: Washington, D.C.

Programs: AA Platinum, DL Silver, Marriott Lifetime Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 174

1 Day in Tokyo - What we saw!

*As you can probably tell, these post vary between my brother and me. We each write about half of 'em. This one, along with the last one, are both written by my brother Kevin. Enjoy!*

Our awesome flight on JAL First Class landed at HND in Tokyo around 5am. After going through customs it was time to collect our bags and, as we expected, Joe's was not coming out. The excellent service from JAL continued as they proactively found Joe and I and addressed Joe by name telling him that his bag had been lost. After all of his flight changes this didn't come as a shock to us. After talking to them for 45 min and giving them all the info about the flights they said that they would contact the Park Hyatt Seoul where we would be staying if it was found. Now it was time to leave the airport and explore Tokyo!

Haneda Airport

One of the first signs I ever saw in Asia....This should be good!

We had a rough plan of seeing the fish market when we first arrived but the bag problems took so long we would have missed the auction so we decided to skip it and throw the plan out the window. First we needed to get into the city from the airport. Luckily HND is fairly close to downtown Tokyo unlike NRT which takes FOREVER. So our plan was monorail to Tokyo Station and explore from there.

Luckily we do not speak Japanese...

These seats are for old people, injured people, parents with kids and pregnant women with WiFi?

Although we don't speak the local language we found that getting from HND to Tokyo station wasn't that bad and the trains were very clean. Once we arrived at the station (which is one of the biggest in the city) we stored our (and by our I mean, just mine and Joe's carry-on backpack) luggage in one of the lockers. There are lockers of all sizes all over the place at this and most of the stations. The one we used was big enough for my suitcase as well as both our carry-ons and we could have put another large bag in there if we needed. It was around $5 to store it there all day. These were all empty when we arrived around 7am but, as we saw later in the day, all of these fill up. So, if you get here in the afternoon it might be more difficult to find a large locker for all your stuff.

Tokyo Station

Outside Tokyo Station

So, the reason we had a day in Tokyo on this trip is because our flight to Seoul (our final destination) was out of the Narita (NRT) and wasn't until 6:45pm so we had almost 12 hours until our final flight. We knew the Imperial Palace was within walking distance of the station so that would be our first stop! As we soon found out, there was a problem with this plan. The palace is closed to the public on Monday, which, of course, was the day we were there. So we decided to walk around the very cool walls of the palace as we figured out our next stop.

CLOSED the day we were there

Around the outside of the Palace

Interesting trees

Contrast of old and new

Wish we could have gone in...

One of many gates on the running path around the palace

So one thing we realized after walking around for awhile was that almost NOTHING was open before 11am. Places to eat, stores, etc. Now it could have just been the area we were in but since most of our walking around would be from 7am-1pm that means that not a lot was open during our time there. We also heard a lot of SILENCE (does that make sense?). No one would talk. It was kind of strange. And although Joe and I are a bit loud anyway, we really felt loud when no one else would speak. It got better later in the day when there were some bigger crowds but still, much much quieter than other cities I have been to.

After our Imperial Palace fail we decided to head towards Shibuya to checkout the Tokyo version of Time Square and hopefully find some sushi. As we were checking out the subway map we met an American ex-pat who suggested we take the stop before Shibuya at Omotesando and go to his favorite sushi spot! He said to get off the subway and walk about 5 min down a road lined with tall trees and upscale shops and it would be on our left. And sure enough there it was! And it was of course closed until 11am and it was 10! $%^@#! Ok, well lets just walk down this little road next to it...

Cool little pedestrian road near the sushi place

Little pedestrian road from the other end

We wondered down a cool little pedestrian road that was actually lined with all kind of local and big company shops. At the end of the road I had a feeling we were getting close to Shibuya from the maps I had looked at earlier, and sure enough, there is was in all it's over-the-topness. Giant screens, loud music, billboards, huge shopping places and of course people everywhere.

Main Square in Shibuya, this does not capture the crazy number of people

Peace signs!

Shibuya

After this little trek, it was time to head back to finally have some sushi!! It was delicious and just what we needed!

Sushi!

Grab your sushi off the rotating belt!

Yum!

Triple yum!

After our sushi and beer there was not a lot of time left before we needed to head back to the station to try to find our bag (the station is huge, it was harder than we thought) and get our ticket to Narita. Luckily the Meiji Shrine was a 5 minute walk from where we just ate and I thought it was the best thing was saw in Tokyo. It is named for the main shrine but it is actually a giant, beautiful park just north of Shibuya and east of the upscale shopping area of Omotesando where we ate.

Meiji Shrine Park

Meiji Shrine

Mandatory peace sign selfie!

Meiji Shrine Park

After our time at the park it was time to head back to Tokyo Station to find our bags and get a ticket for the Narita Express to the airport. It runs about $24 and seems to be the easiest and most comfortable way to get to the airport. There are cheaper options but they take much longer and don't save you all that much. The airport is so far out of the city that even though this was a train with no stops and no traffic, it STILL took an hour to get to the airport!