I just returned from the Middle East and a roundtrip on Emirates First Class. It was great, but I made a major error listening to all the gurus who said “Don’t use Alaska at 150K miles JFK-DXB! Use Korean at 105K!”
The problem is two-fold and I should easily have worked it out. If all I wanted was to go to Dubai and back, the advice is sound(mostly) but Alaska’s fees are negligible and Korea’s ar $1500USD. Also I wanted other places like Morocco and perhaps more Middle East.
Korean Air makes you book roundtrip while Alaska allows one way. I wound up using 36K Avianca Miles to go from DXB-CMN and then back to IST for transfer to Israel which is a whole other story.
So I should have used something to go JFK-CMN and then progressed in the right direction without backtracking. I would have spent some miles to Morocco and 150K Alaska miles DXB-JFK instead of 210K Korean miles for the roundtrip but then had to return to Dubai and spent 72K to go to Morocco and back.
Regardless, it was a good trip, though the weather was unseasonably cold.
The Emirates First/Business lounge at JFK is nothing special but it kept us off the street. The suites are nice and you get personal attention. I have trouble navigating the entertainment system but it has a lot of good stuff: many films, some TV and enough music to cover me.
Wines on board are not terrible and the Dom flows once you board. I loved the shower and 5 minutes of water is actually quite a bit. Amenities kits are to take, though I just put them out in the guest bathroom at home.
The Emirates First lounge in Dubai is amazing! Free small spa treatments, a luxury wine and spirits shop and a nice buffet. Somehow they didn’t really tell us about how to order food so we didn’t get a main course, but I’ve had T-bones already so what’s the diff? You soon fill up on 2004 Cos d’Estournel and then it’s time to board!
Our steward gave us way too much Dom Perignon and refilled us just before takeoff and we didn’t want to waste any. I then had Forts de Latour 2004 to excess so while I wasn’t ill, I wasn’t hungry either. I watched “The Girl on the Train,” a rather contrived film, then took a 3 hour nap before ordering short ribs, which were tender but not so flavorful, with one more glass of wine and then date pudding which was really nice!
I watched a French film about an unemployed factory worker forced to become a hit man, then dozed off listening to Placido Domingo.
They were supposed to wake me up two hours before landing but woke my wife instead. When I did wake up, they still let me have a shower and then it was time to belt in for landing. Never in a million years would I pay anything close to the price for this but it was still worth the points/miles.
I do enjoy the priority security checks and baggage handling. For the thirteenth straight time, neither my fingerprints, nor my wife’s worked but Global Entry still saved us time.

Perhaps shouldn't be following the advice of the so-called gurus.

The things you went through in terms of routing/use of points seem to be the real issue, EK delivers a quality F product on its long haul routes.

Well, that's what the post was about! I should have gone in the natural order using my SQ or(more likely) my Lifemiles to book US-CMN-TLV-BEI via IST-DXB, then just used 150K alaska miles for the one way back.

It wasn't horrible but I could have saved some miles overall and avoided two of my layovers in IST though TK's lounge is great, and also the 230 am flight out of DXB.

I didn 't really need to be in Dubai twice although we love our hotel as the GM is our friend and we got great upgrades fo cheap price.

I took my eye off the ball. Next time I will check out several alternatives before clicking.

Yes the product was fine and better than our other two F experiences on ANA and SQ. Hoping to have other such trips in the future.