No, not that Oktoberfest in Munich- it ended a little over a week back.

Over the past month or so I’ve written some posts about our time at Oktoberfest. This made me really feel Oktoberfest-sick (kinda like homesick but for the festival).

With Kim and I having some time off from work I started to look into various options. We were only considering domestic trips. I also came up with two criterion for picking a place.

1. Go to a state we haven’t yet visited
2. I’d like to check out a festival like a state fair or U.S. Oktoberfest celebration

I narrowed down our list to a few choices and zeroed in on Raleigh, North Carolina for the state fair. The flight with Southwest (at first) seemed reasonable until Wanna Get Away availability started to disappear. I also was losing interest in this plan…

After writing a post about Top 10 Oktoberfest’s Around the World, I really wanted to get to one of these Oktoberfests.

This led me to Linde Oktoberfest Tulsa. The dates were right but the flights were a bit hard to come by. I decided to do a little mixing and matching to make this little trip a reality.

We’ll be heading to Tulsa for 3 nights. During our visit we plan to spend part of the first day and all of our second day at Oktoberfest. I’m planning to even run an Oktoberfest 5K on the opening day! Otherwise, we plan to see some of Tulsa including some Route 66 sites.

In the end the trip priced out very economically for the three of us. (Yes, Lucas will be coming as usual!)

Trip Planning: We used a combination of miles & points + cash for our air, hotel and car rental.

The Flights:

We’ll be flying on American Airlines from LaGuardia Airport to Tulsa. The flight was booked using British Airways Avios. Our flight home is with Southwest. We used up the remainder of Kim’s points and had to transfer some Ultimate Rewards for the remaining balance. (Maybe not the best transfer option but points are meant  to be used and I am happy with what we booked.)

Cost of Flights:

• LGA-TUL: 12,000 Avios per person + $5.60 tax for a total of 36,000 Avios + $16.80
• TUL- LGA: 16,540 Rapid Reward + 1 companion fare. Tax was also $5.60 each for a total of 33,080 Rapid Rewards + $16.80.

Accommodations: Free shuttles are offered to the festival grounds so I’d rather not drive, pay for parking and not be able to have a few drinks. For this reason we’re staying at one of the host hotels for night 1. We’ll move to a Club Carlson property for nights 2 & 3. (You gotta love the stay 2 nights, get the second night free offer!)

Here is where we are staying:

• Night 1: Hyatt Regency Tulsa- I clicked through TopCashBack for 3% back and thanks to a corporate code I’m paying $71 + tax for a total of $80.60 for the night. (Without a code the hotel goes for $139 + tax for a total of $157.79) Talk about a nice savings!
• Nights 2 & 3: Country Inn & Suites Tulsa Central- Price: 9,000 Club Carlson Gold Points. (Had we paid for the stay, rooms went for $89 per night + tax= $202.06.)

Car Rental: We’ll need a car to get to/ from the airport and to check out some sites when we arrive the first day. We also plan to go check out Tulsa on day 3. I decided to book with Alamo since they seemed to have the cheapest prices.

I’ll be earning 4% cashback from TopCashBack and I also used a promo which should earn me 1,500 Club Carlson Gold Points per day. Cost $10.98 per day + tax for a total of $51.47

Adding the numbers up:

Miles/ Points:

• 36,000 BA Avios
• 33,080 Southwest Rapid Rewards
• 9,000 Club Carlson Gold Points

Cash Spent: $165.67 for taxes, one hotel night & car rental

So what do you think of these grand plans? We’re all pretty psyched to be going to what’s supposed to be one of the biggest Oktoberfests outside of Munich!

I hope this post shows how you can use a mix of miles & points with some cash to put together a very affordable trip!

Related Posts:

• Beer Tasting in Bruges, Belgium
• Lufthansa’s Awesome Oktoberfest Inspired Amenity Kit
• What We Did During An 8 Hour Layover In Frankfurt
• Should You Take Your Toddler To Oktoberfest
• Jumping At Munich’s Oktoberfest

*** If you sign up for TopCashBack through my links above, I will earn a tell-a-friend bonus of $10 if you reach the minimum threshold of cashback.