Are all idine places in Western Canada shown on the site, or are there more i am not seeing. I only see 6 in my local Calgary, 3 in Edmonton, 1 in Canmore, and a handful in Vancouver. Is that all?

I believe that's it. Up until very recently, there were none at all.

Can you recommend one to try in the Calgary area? Have you been to any? Are there any secret ones once you reach Elite?

For which airline? Don't forget there are differences.

It depends on the airline, but some more may be available to elites (in idine/RN).

In my area, a certain restaruant was listed for UA (where I was elite), but not for US (where I was not elite). As soon as I made my 12th dine with the US program (and became elite) - that restaurant was listed!

I'm under AA....Do you know of any other airlines where more would be available? The six in Calgary are not very appealing...

Well, UA shows 6 also:

Cannery Row
Cannery Row - Sunridge Mall
Clay Oven Restaurant
Ginza Asian Cuisine
Kinjo Sushi
Sumo Lounge

I wonder why they are so few (and so unknown). Cannery Row is popular, but expensive as heck. I sure wish there were more...I wonder how to convince idine to add them? In a city of over a million people this is pretty lame.

It doesn't depend on the size of the area. (I wish it did!)

In my area (a few miles from my house - population less than 10,000), a couple of years ago there were 3 locations in the same strip mall! I'm not sure how many there are in the near 20 mile area, but I do know there are more than in the entire Seattle area!

Now, about 35 miles away, there are 4 locations on the same street! (3 of them are in the same parking lot, the other 1 is all the way across the street!) And that area is only 5,000 to 10,000 also!

That is very strange. From what I see, I think idine leaves it up to the restaurant to join the program. It doesn't seem to recruit restaurants?

At this time I don't have any inexpensive IDine places in my area, but sometimes I stop at one to order something inexpensive as take away to get my 12 IDines a year (so to keep getting 10 miles per $). At one place I found I could buy a souvenir coffee cup at a reasonable price, put it on my charge card and get IDine credit for 1 visit.

Sometimes you have to be creative.

I do the same thing. If I don't yet have my 12 dines (and get only 3/$), I go to an inexpensive place (if I can) and order something.

A few of the places in my area are sub shops or have a take out window. When I go to these, I buy a soda (for something like $1.30), and get 3/$ and earn credit for 1 dine! Sometimes, if there are 2 of us, I buy 2 sodas (a small and a large ) that are different prices, run them seprately (1 as $1.30 and the other as $1.80), earn 3/$ for each but get credit for 2 dines!

When I get to the 13th dine, and earn 10/$, only then (if I have a choice) will I go to the expensive locations and spend $100 or so! (I'd rather earn 1,000 miles instead of 300!)

Obviously the thing to do is to keep the 10 for a $ status on IDine. Wish I had some sandwich shops in my area.

Don't you encounter either a refusual or a surcharge on those transactions? Seems to be getting more and more common here these days, and others have said so about other parts of the country.

Penny: Don't feel too bad - we don't have such coffee/sandwich options here either. Cheapest I can manage is a happy hour beer, which didn't help much with the previous AA promo and its one-transaction-per-restaurant-per-day restriction, even though the bartender was more than willing to ring up each beer separately.

Roadtripman: You shouldn't feel too bad either. The Traveler's reference to Seattle was a good one; the situation here is pretty dire compared with other parts of N. America of similar size. Restaurants come and go - things were so bad here last summer that when Alaska Airlines Rewards Network had a "triple miles on your first three dines" promo, I only used two of them: one I knew would be overpriced (expense account crowd downtown with not-up-to-tariff fare), but I was in the area and hungry and it was 3x miles. The other was a joint I'd never been to, had been curious about, and decided to try during the promo period. I gave up after that as the rest of the then-AS participants (my regular three were blacked out for AS credit [all other partners okay], SEA being a hub and all) were either inconveniently located, or I'd tried them before and firmly decided once was enough.

Things are somewhat better now - I could fulfill such an AS promo these days with the addition of a couple of new joints, and the subsequent acceptance of AS credit again by one of the blacked-out three above.

Luckily, so far I haven't. Besides, it is against the T&C of the cards with the merchant.

Last year, my 12th dine of 2005 was upgraded from 3/$ to 10/$ in 2006 (for some reason - but I'm not complaining ).

Unfortunently, the charge for that 12th dine was big - $2.58! Had I known that 9 or 10 months later, it would be worth 10/$, I wouldn't have done a $2.58 charge!