Hi all,

I am 80,000 miles from AA. I am planning to use this miles and money out of pocket to have memorable vacation.

I am planning to travel from ROC -> LAX stay there for 3 nights.
LAX -> LAS stay there for 3 nights.

My plan is to travel on early or late Sep. (I am willing to change the dates to get best offers)

I would appreciate if anyone could please provide the best way I could utilize my miles and also to sign up for any cards to reduce the impact on my pocket

Thanks.

You need to provide more details. Are you traveling alone? Have you signed up for any credit cards yet? Are you OK with traveling in economy?

Right now, you have enough miles for the 3 one-way flights that comprise your planned route (3x12500 per leg in coach = 37,500 or 3x25000 per leg in first = 75,000).

1) Since you will probably want to rent a car in LA anyway, consider driving to Vegas. It's only 4 1/2 hours and it can be an interesting ride through the desert. You can probably get a good deal too on renting in LA and dropping off in Vegas.
2) Use Priceline for your hotels. PM me if you want tips on getting the best price on Name Your Own Price. This is almost always better than trying to use miles for hotels.

As far as the car rental goes, Priceline is also good for that but you can't rent in one place and drop off in another. If you can't find a rental agency with no drop charge, consider renting for 3 days in LA (possibly from Priceline), then rerenting and driving to Vegas. Many car companies now have no explicit drop charge but jack up the daily rate on one-way, so that you might pay $30 a day for "local" but $100 a day for one-way. If you can make it look like you are only doing one day on the one-way, you'll save a lot.

Depending what you plan to do in Vegas, you might or might not want a car there. A lot of what used to be free in Vegas now costs, but at least the parking is still free. I always like to have a car in case I want to go downtown, or go far off the strip. Traffic is MUCH better in Vegas since they built the pedestrian overpasses over Las Vegas Blvd. - now it's the pedestrians who pay the price. Last time I was there I wanted to just cross the street from Aira to the discount tickets booth, and I had to walk like two blocks in each direction just to get over the strip.

you should be able to get 25k/pp awards to lax on aa if you book early and/or have date flexibility.....renting a car is a good idea....

you could go into lax or las and out of the other for the same mi.....of course, you need to check the car rental costs....but it could save some gas & time...

Las Vegas:

Take a look at my writeup on this city. It's intro:

You can find this writeup by clicking on my website below, then on Places Gary has Visited, then on Las Vegas near the bottom of the page.