We're a family of 4 (kids aged 6 and 3), we're not exactly loaded but nor are we poor that live in Liverpool. I travel a fair bit with work so I'm Silver, have 300,000 Avios and a companion voucher to use by the end of September.

My wife is a teacher so it'd have to be in school holiday time. We'd originally booked to go to Japan this August using the points and companion voucher but a slight change in circumstances at the time meant we decided to cancel in January (wish we hadn't now).

So I'm down to fairly slim picking when I look at Seat Spy now, going to Europe feels like a waste of the companion voucher and considering we can get to most places on budget airlines from Liverpool now, seems fairly counter-intuitive (god damn the demise of those City Flyer direct from Manchester). There's some US flights available (though not to the Disenyland type locations), so the likelihood is there. But I'm just wondering if anyone on here has some pearls of wisdom on using the avios and companion voucher?