Originally Posted by
SFO777
Totally agree. You are just asking for trouble and misery in the Caribbean in July. If you don't want the long trek to Hawaii, consider Bermuda, which is far enough north for better summer weather.
Good idea. BDA is a quick flight from CLT and WAS. And check out the F&F rates at the Fairmonts there (I think the info is in the hotel deals thread) to save some money in a rather expensive destination.
If you want beach but BDA doesn't appeal, take a look at southern Europe. From your front door in CLT, you can be at a beach in Italy in about the same amount of time as it takes to get to Hawaii. Hawaii takes ~75k miles for a first class award ticket and Europe takes ~100k, but Europe flights might be easier to get (getting an award to Hawaii will likely require a routing like CLT-ORD-SFO-HNL on UA or CLT-DFW-LAX-HNL on AA) whereas you have many options to get to Europe if you can use CLT or IAD.