Originally Posted by thepointsguy

Every time I hear about these redemptions, a piece of my soul dies. Yikes! Did you try creative routing and Alaska?

I just can't imagine spending 175k to go to Hawaii when 120k redemptions to Seychelles and Mauritius in business class are readily available. I know not everyone wants to fly around the world to those places, but still.. it just pains me to see such crazy redemption levels for Hawaii (trust me I know how difficult Hawaii tix are to get at even the medium level- I book them all the time).

In fact, I've found the best value to Hawaii is buying a K fare (~$950-$1100 from a lot of cities) and using miles or PMU to upgrade. You earn enough miles to almost cover the cost of the miles used.