I didn’t return straight to New York from Kahului. Instead, I ventured to Chicago via San Francisco and Las Vegas to pick up the start of StarMegaDo3. My upgrades to First Class cleared for OGG-SFO-LAS-ORD, making the redeye from Kahului substantially more bearable.
Since I had the same aircraft and cabin crew for the LAS-ORD segment as I had for SFO-LAS, the flight attendants were understandably confused when they saw me get back onto the A320 to sit in the same seat in first class. The routing ended up being a quirk of pricing: The cost of OGG-SFO-LAS plus LAS-ORD was lower than the comparable OGG-SFO-ORD fare. With a few minutes to kill before boarding commenced, I snapped off a picture of the welcome sign near the United gates:
The first night for StarMegaDo3 was at the Hyatt Regency Chicago O’Hare. Because Hyatt had gifted Diamond status, the top-tier with the Gold Passport rewards program, it was difficult for the hotel to deliver substantial upgrades.
The Hyatt Diamond amenity, normally a choice of either a snack or 1k points, was restricted to just the snack. It was delivered to our rooms while at the StarMegaDo reception at the Park Hyatt downtown.
While the reception at the Park Hyatt was too dark for my camera to capture well, the two Tulip-branded, United wine classes that we were given as swag survived my trip around North America long enough to make it back to New York with me… and to be photographed:
