We’re off on a whirlwind round-the-world adventure in advance of Ricky’s upcoming nuptials this summer.
Ricky will be surprised with flights, destinations, and experiences, and we’ll be updating this article (with the aspects of the trip that are fit to print) as we trot our way across the globe.
Prologue: Hatching a Plan
Courtenay, British Columbia. February 2023.
Josh
Rewind a few months. I decided to pay my good friend T.J. a visit at his home on Vancouver Island for a couple of days. We had some laughs, busted open his Georgian cookbook, and took a rare opportunity to get some work done in person together. A normal week in the life of our fully remote workplace at Prince of Travel.
One night, after we’d wrapped up the work day, we cracked open a couple of cleansing ales, and the conversation shifted to our personal lives.
T.J.Hey, Ricky’s having a small wedding, and I haven’t caught wind of any bachelor party plans. We should really plan something special for him, something memorable. He only gets to do this once, so we better make it count.
I quickly agreed, and we started scheming.
But what do you do for the guy, the so-called “Prince of Travel”, who can travel anywhere, anytime?
How do you create an outlandish, once-in-a-lifetime experience for the champion of the idea that anyone can elevate their travel to make the unimaginable a reality? What could we possibly do, leveraging the power of Miles & Points, that Ricky hadn’t done before?
We racked our brains, thinking of ways to treat Ricky to an aspirational experience he’d never had before. Weaving in a cheeky boys’ trip, of course – with a destination where we could get up to no good.
And what better way to do it than to make the whole adventure a surprise? We’d whisk him away to a mystery locale, revealing every stop on the itinerary as we go.
And so, T.J.’s wife Ashley rolled her eyes and retired to bed early, as he and I cracked a few more beers, and sat down to start hammering out award searches for the next couple of hours.
Prologue, Part 2: A Turbulent Flight Path
Vancouver, British Columbia. May 6, 2023.
Josh
Fast-forward to the weekend of the Prince of Travel Signature Event in Vancouver.
During a team bonding session in the evening, while Ricky was away with our VIP guests on Bowen Island, we enlisted the help of the Prince of Travel team to keep it under wraps and help us brainstorm ideas.
We also pitched the idea to Leo, our Video Producer. We’d be silly not to book a surprise round-the-world bachelor party on points and not make a video out of it, right? Needless to say, he was in, with no questions asked.
Ricky’s fiancée Jessy was also in on it at this point. She’s grounded him for six weeks in the lead-up to the wedding, and gave us her blessing to snag him for a week within that period.
At this point, we encountered a rather uninspiring roster of award availability. If you’re not booking a year out or a week out, there aren’t many options for multiple passengers, especially if you’re adamant to book an aspirational experience.
Still, we trudged forward, determined that we’d be able to put our expertise to good use and find something juicy.
Our challenge was finding a home-run points redemption, while trying to align it with Ricky’s opaque schedule and the fast-moving needs of the business.
Plus, as a huge Arsenal fan, Ricky was planning on attending the championship parade in London in late May in case they won, which created a lot of uncertainty in the planning stages for a surprise trip.
It would be a lot easier to lock things down in advance, but despite our best efforts, that was proving impossible. The process began to take a toll on T.J. and me, as we devoted large swaths of productive working hours our free time to futile award searches, scouring literally the entire earth.
Eventually, we decided that it may be more reasonable to have a traditional weekend away somewhere nearby. We settled on doing something memorable and new. The annual Iceberg Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland was calling, as a special but much more realistic option.
T.J.
Getting from Vancouver to Newfoundland would require us to make at least one connection.
As it turns out, there was bountiful eUpgrade space on widebody aircraft between Vancouver and Toronto or Montreal with Air Canada, which was great. However, the Premium Rouge cabins on Air Canada Rouge flights to Newfoundland were full, and so we thought it would be funny to stick Ricky in the middle seat in economy.
We booked the flights, made hotel reservations, and started looking fun things to do in and around St. John’s.
Prologue, Part 3: Wheels Up
Vancouver, British Columbia. Late May 2023.
Josh
And then Ricky caught wind that something was up.
We’re not sure what he knew, or how, but he knew the team was planning something. Now the pressure was on for us to do something over-the-top, as originally intended.
As luck would have it, we were now in the timeframe where last-minute award availability had started materializing for our window of opportunity to take Ricky away.
T.J.
When we found out that Ricky knew something was up, Josh and I were mad. We’d put so much time and effort into making a plan and keeping it secret from him, and he still managed to somehow thwart our best efforts.
Thinking that our Newfoundland plans were no longer a secret, we then moved to planning a new trip out of spite.
One thing led to another rather quickly, wheels were put in motion, and, well…
Chapter 1: Montreal, Quebec
Josh
Ricky was on a business trip to Toronto and New York for a week. Jessy had insisted that he return home in time for a couples’ retreat starting Wednesday, June 7th on Galiano Island, which would last through the weekend.
Ricky had booked himself on a flight from Newark to Vancouver, and was set to return the evening of Tuesday, June 6th.
Meanwhile, T.J., Leo, and I planned to rendez-vous à Montréal to catch a flight out the evening of the 6th to our first mystery destination.
We booked Ricky from Newark to Montreal, on a flight departing half an hour before his scheduled trip to Vancouver.
T.J.
On the night before our plans were to take shape, I invited Ricky to a very important meeting about an undisclosed matter. At this point, I’d left my home on Vancouver Island, and was spending the night an airport hotel in Vancouver.
During the call, I suggested that we meet up in Montreal on Tuesday and spend a few days visiting some of our favourite places. A few years ago, we were both living in Montreal at the same time, and I tried to sell it as a nostalgic trip reliving memories from days past.
I then presented him with a booking reference, and said no more.
As part of a welcome gift from his hotel in New York, he was given a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne. To get from Manhattan to Newark, he’d booked himself a BLADE Helicopter that was due to arrive at around 4:35pm.
His flight to Montreal was set to depart at 5:30pm, and at this point, he realized that he’d have to part ways with the bottle of bubbles (he wound up gifting it to a friend), as there wouldn’t be enough time to check a bag.
I met him landside in Montreal, and then made a weak excuse to take a quick detour back up to the departures level.
We passed through security, and then I presented him with a boarding pass for a flight to St. John’s. He didn’t look thrilled at being in a middle seat in economy, but was otherwise up for an adventure.
We made our way towards the gate, only to find…
Ricky
I came through domestic security to find Josh and Leo posing at the CIBC Aventura sign-up desk, with no idea that they’d be coming along for the ride as well. After someone suggested that we pick up some bagels from a nearby shop, we then proceeded through to the international departures area.
At this point, I had a suspicion of what we might be doing. There aren’t that many tantalizing international flights leaving from Montreal late in the evening, and there must be a reason why there were four of us travelling together…
Chapter 2: Qatar Airways Qsuites Quad, Montreal to Doha
Josh
This was it. The biggest piece of the puzzle. The aspirational flight that Ricky had never taken before, and it would be our treat.
Qsuites is famous for the “quad” configuration, where the partitions can be withdrawn between groups of four private seats in adjacent rows of the middle section of the 1-2-1 cabin, creating a four-person pod.
Most of us had flown Qsuites before. Qatar Airways’s bespoke product is notorious for being one of the best business class experiences in aviation, arguably on par with First Class treatment. But none of us had ever flown it with a group of four before.
Booking a Qsuites quad is notoriously difficult, as it’s exceptionally rare to find four award seats in the business class cabin on the same route. Furthermore, not all planes use a Qsuites quad configuration, sometimes varying among the same model of aircraft in their fleet.
Qatar Airways has a penchant for equipment swaps, so you might not always get a quad when you’ve booked into a quad. And that would obviously be unacceptable, so we were adamant to find availability on a route with reliable Qsuites quad planes.
After months of observing seat release patterns, and with a little bit of dumb luck, we noticed that we’d be able to find ample last-minute space on the Montreal–Doha route, when booking via Qatar Airways Avios.
These seats would be in the higher fare bucket, costing twice as much as saver awards which are also bookable by partner programs, but it was the only viable way to reliably secure four seats in a guaranteed quad configuration.
A few hundred thousand points later, we had no choice but to strike when the opportunity presented itself.
T.J.
This was actually my first time experiencing Qsuites, and I was almost as giddy as Ricky appeared to be as we moved the partitions to open up our quad.
The flight attendants came around with our welcome drink, and we all toasted the occasion with a glass of rosé.
When we hit the skies, the bubbles kept flowing, and we did our best to order as much food from the menu as we could possibly handle. Celebrations are best done with ample amounts of food and drink, and Qatar Airways certainly did not disappoint in this regard.
Travelling solo is fun, travelling as a couple is great, but travelling as a group of four is a completely different experience. For the next couple of hours, we laughed, shared stories, and feasted in what turned out to be an epic flight.
Ricky
While I’ve flown through Doha many times before, this was indeed an epic experience, and one that I surely wasn’t expecting.
Needless to say, T.J. and Josh set the bar high for this surprise trip, and I’ll be curious to see what else they have up their sleeves.
To be continued…
