Seattle

We traveled to Seattle over the weekend on July 10 for what ended up being a nice hotel staycation watching Godzilla movies in our room.

This is our second time visiting Seattle. Last time we visited on July 3, three years ago.

Hotel

We managed to squeeze our last stay into the Hyatt Regency Seattle before its new Cat 5 points pricing kicked in on May 21. Using three FNCs, we booked three nights at 18k each for the King Room. The Globalist relationship manager reached out two weeks before the trip. I requested a room with a bathtub, regardless of room type. Our chances of an upgrade were slim, as there was only an Executive Suite available. They changed us to a Corner Two Queen Room the day before, and on the morning of our trip, moved us to a Regency Suite on floor 43. The suite had so much space and sitting area. It was perfect for our TV binging.

Somehow the hotel staff knew from their records that we had visited in 2023. She told us that we had a $15 daily credit from the covered resort benefit, only usable in the market. We had a bottle of sparkling water and chocolate, and had a sandwich each day as a small meal. We weren’t really planning to use it for meals but it just worked out that we were full and a small meal was enough.

Getting around

We visited some of the restaurants we had bookmarked in our Google Maps list three years ago. Marination (Asian fusion) was just about alright, and Tidal Restaurant was a solid seafood restaurant. The Club Lounge didn’t really have food, but they had a ton of nice seating spaces, each nook with its own giant TV, two coffee machines (one broken), milks, soda machine, and goldfish snacks and fruits. It’s the same coffee machines we had seen everywhere, but we discovered some coffee combinations that made it taste really good (mocha with vanilla shot) and we ended up drinking it all day every day. So much sugar.

We visited the Spheres botanical garden, but learned that they only open to the public two weekends a month. Christine was very excited looking at the poisonous frogs and plants on display in the back reception area, although we were bummed out that we missed the visit schedule.

On Sunday we walked around Pike Place Market and the waterfront area.

Godzilla

We finished Monarch Season 1, watched Godzilla (2014), and Monarch Season 2 in our room. Omg, this show is such a trainwreck. It’s like high school beef and high school drama but featuring 25-year-old “teenagers” and 50-year-old adults who also behaved like teenagers with uncontrolled hormones. The crisp 4k TV actually made things worse. The image was too sharp and smooth and it made me feel that the characters did not belong to the set – it looked like a bad green screen or CG and nothing looked very convincing. Monarch episodes 1-5 were so interesting I thought, but it just went from bad to worse afterwards.

We marathoned the TV shows on most nights. On Saturday night, we did some work in the club lounge. I worked on my resume a bit more. A family showed up and put up the England vs Norway game on the screen and started watching it at full volume. We evacuated to a corner of the lounge and put up a shishi-odoshi background sound to muffle out the shouting.

Flights

On our flight from Burbank to Seattle, we got two very noisy and talkative passengers who met on the airplane and talked their hearts out during the entire 3-hour trip. They were bragging to each other about how much of a big shot they were in their industry and talking over each other, culminating in “my husband would love to meet you.”

I originally booked the tickets on my AA frequent flyer number to get us better seats with the OneWorld Sapphire benefit, and later changed the FF. I credited the BUR-SEA flight to Qatar Airways to meet the flight requirements when booking multiple passenger award tickets on Qatar. And I changed SEA-BUR to AS, so that it would count towards the annual mileage requirement for Alaska Gold. It seems that doing this can sometimes break the TSA Precheck record on file. On both flights, our boarding passes were issued with the proper TSA Precheck checkmark but the airport security told us on both occasions that only Christine had TSA Precheck, and I didn’t. Which is confusing because for the BUR-SEA segment, I swapped the FF of both Christine and me, and for SEA-BUR I swapped only myself. In Burbank this wasn’t a problem, but Seattle was super busy at 9 am and we walked all over the terminal trying to walk in without a TSA Precheck. Apparently it sometimes breaks, and sometimes it doesn’t. And there doesn’t seem to be a clear way to ensure TSA Precheck is properly attached. Also, maybe we should get Clear+.

Costs

• 65k MR points, BUR-SEA RT Y Saver/Main, converted two years ago to $830 Alaska flight credits with 35% BizPlat bonus
• 54k UR points, 3 nights at Hyatt Regency Seattle (3 FNCs)
• $70 Burbank Hotel Parking and Taxi
• $300 Food
• $40 Public Transit