Originally Posted by
Chandler69
As for the "vai NRT" piece, that is one of the routings available on "saver awards" which I thought was extremely odd, but figured it was because of the "saver" price. Total travel time was an additional 13 hours or so, so figured it would be cool to see Japan for a couple of days if they would allow the stopover. Sounds like it has to be continuous though for it to count as 1 award.
All United roundtrip awards allow a single stopover enroute. As long as there's availability on the day that you want to travel, you'll have no problems booking an award from the US to Tokyo to NZ and then back to the US, for the same number of miles that you would need for a simple US/New Zealand roundtrip.
In general, it is often easier to get the lower mileage awards on Star Alliance partner airlines, as there is only one type of Star Alliance award. However, to book a Saver award that includes United flights, there must be (the highly limited) Saver inventory on each United leg. If you have the option to begin your trip in a gateway city (e.g., Los Angeles), you may be able to avoid United flights entirely and therefore not have to worry about the different mileage levels.
Enjoy your trip!