Originally Posted by AintSpike
I have considered this, but the logistics are tough. My hands are tied by work right now; I have my boss's blessing to take a 5-week sabbatical this spring, but I have to make it fit in a window of opportunity on my current project which has an as-yet-undefined start date. Once I get the green light, I might have as little as a week to finalize plans, book this ticket, find hotel rooms, tie up loose ends at the office, etc., before I have to start. In my mind, it's worth the extra cash just to take one less scheduling headache off the table up-front.
This is quite understandable, however I'd point out that given your itinerary, if you could get to Hong Kong on your own, (a) it'd save around $1000 in RTW fare, (b) you'd still have all the layovers and segments in Asia that you'd need, (c) you wouldn't need to book 7 days ahead since you wouldn't be ticketing in Area 1, and (d) if you dropped one or two short intra-Europe legs (to make room within the 20-flight limit) you'd be able to use the rest of your North America segments with additional stopovers when you get back to the US (i.e., only two stopovers allowed in continent of origin.) Just a thought.