Dallas Texas on a budget

Our first successful random airline roulette was in Dallas, Texas! What started out as just something to do during a long holiday ended up being a really fun adventure ahead!

Here’s how we managed to do this trip on a budget:

Flights

Spirit, an ultra low cost carrier flying from MCO, Orlando International, had a sale going on and we got a round-trip ticket with checked bags for $117 per person! Read more about our experience here.

Tip: It’s an okay airline, but you do get what you pay for (Read: don’t expect too much!) 

Hotels

We used AwardMapper to find hotels in the area where we can use points to use. The Hampton Inn Dallas-Addison seemed like a good redemption. A category 2 hotel, it’s only 10,000 HHonors points a night. Retail, the hotel costs around $100+ a night, saving us a nice bit of cash.

Our last night had been a disaster because I booked the wrong dates and didn’t notice it in advance. We lost 10,000 Hilton points because of this and had to pay $80 for a Holiday Inn Express near the airport. Turned out good in the end because we got upgraded to a suite and ended up really enjoying our room. But still, things like these happen especially when you travel. Nothing is ever perfect.

Activities

We were quite busy in Dallas and these activities cost us a bit of money. We visited the following:

Fort Worth Stockyards
Fort Worth Water Gardens
Six Flags Over Texas
Dallas Zoo
Reunion Tower Geo Deck
Perot Museum
Dealey Plaza and the Grassy Knoll
Grapevine Mills

How we saved on attractions:

For Six Flags, we didn’t really save much but got 5% of points back, thanks to using our Discover card. We also bought tickets and the parking pass online and in advance to save $20 from buying at the front entrance.

For Dallas Zoo, Reunion Tower, and Perot Museum, we bought the Dallas Citypass. That saved us a bit of money even though we never made it to Dallas Arboretum.We paid $44 per person for the city pass, which saved us about $30 per person if we had bought tickets for those attractions separately.

Here’s our expenses on a neat little table for your reference:

[table id=8 /]

Was this one of our more frugal trips? Not really. We paid cash for a lot of our expenses and only used points to get free hotel nights. Heck, we lost a few thousand points and paid for an extra night at the Holiday Inn Express. This just goes to show that even as a travel hacker, you make mistakes and things may not always go your way (i.e. our very delayed flight to Dallas, which ended up costing us 2 Uber rides). But you know what, everything that happened to us is part of travel. Fun, stressful, exciting, annoying, exhilarating. Take any of those out, and travel gets just a tiny bit more boring. You sign up for the whole package, not just one part.

Hopefully you enjoyed this little post. Let us know in the comments if you have any other questions, and feel free to share!