Originally Posted by armattheus

I didn't think of alliance in putting this together, just what I'd prefer as an airline for direct flights. I am pro CO but can't think of a reason to bash CX. My reasoning of CO over CX is that I hate JFK and prefer EWR *yes I took a softball to the head when I was 3 months old but the doctors said no damage was done :P *, BusinessFirst is the premier class on CO while CX has F so CO has put great efforts into making it better than an average business Class. Some may argue that CX is better but I haven't flown them so I cannot comment. I have flown on CO's 777 and found the seat to be great, the food to be quite nice for airplane "fine dining" and the AVOD to be ideal for passing the hours.
You could book it together yourself using ORBITZ even. You'd have to call in saying you can't book that many segments at once to get the phone fee waved but I'd just pay the booking fee anyways if they give you any flack. Call up with the specific flights you want, the class you want and see what you get. To make sure you're not getting screwed go online and price out 2-3 segments together at time and add up the total. This will help gauge how much it'll be and should be less than the total to book it all as one ticket. Orbitz will then work as your travel contact which can be a pain if changing things as airlines will not touch the ticket until day off but it also makes Orbitz responsible for the tickets.
I did take a look at the star alliance RTW planner and plugged in just the alliance flights and it priced them out to be $12560.00 which you'd then have to add in the EK flight and your EU travel around and to Zurich.