we just turned in AA miles for a trip to australia last month! just a few pointers: the sooner you book the better! i know AA is raising their rewards redemption amounts in the upcoming months. you can actually call and put a reward on hold for 1 week without booking it (i would suggest doing that). we were booking a trip for December and the only available fly out date was 12/24 and the first return date was 1/21. there were no other options, so we took what we could get and that's basically how it works. also you don't really get to choose where you are leaving from (your r/t flight from your home city to wherever the plane departs from is included) but i got the impression they are really just flying out of LAX to australia (we actually have a 1 day layover before our flight). finally fiji seems like a great stopover, but it doubles the taxes/tariffs that you pay so unless you are going to spend a lot of time there, it's better to use the flight to go to NZ or somewhere else in AUS which is basically like flying cross country here (we are doing brisbane, then sydney to auckland, then auckland home). good luck!