Asia/Hello Kitty Flight Extravaganza - Booking the Awards

I am extremely inexperienced at booking fabulous awards that other frequent travelers are adept at doing. I used an award booking service in the past and did not have a good experience so I didn't want to use one for this trip. I did the best I could and this is what I came up with:

Criteria:

• Arrive in Hong Kong the same time as my friends
• Spend a chunk of time with my family in Taiwan
• Fly as many unique Hello Kitty planes as possible (There are 6 themes. Each theme has more than 1 routing which gave me lots of options.)

Itinerary 1: JFK-ICN-HKG

After I missed the Island Hopper deal I had been on the fence whether to go to Hong Kong or not. I wanted to book a business award on EVA's JFK-TPE-HKG route but no awards were available so I ended up tentatively booking a biz award for SFO-TPE-HKG. Luckily having Platinum or 1K status with United allows you to redeposit an award with no penalty fees. Then one day something amazing appeared - first class award on Asiana Airlines. Asiana offers the first class suite on their JFK-ICN routes so I booked that ASAP. Yes they're the ones who crashed a plane in SFO due to pilot error but if there's any airline that's not gonna make that mistake again, it's going to be Asiana.

Itinerary 2: HKG-TPE-ICN-KIX-CTS-TPE

This was the in-between stage - between hanging out with friends in Hong Kong and hanging out with family in Taiwan. I wanted to fit in as many intra-Asia Hello Kitty flights as possible. The hard part was figuring out the timing and which cities to go to that would set me up for the next Hello Kitty flight. I started at EVA's Hello Kitty website where I jotted down all the flight numbers of the HK routes. Then I went to United's site and started looking for awards on those flights. Award availability was really good so I jotted down the departure and arrival times. Then came the hard part. Figuring out the cities I wanted to visit and when. I ended up with Hong Kong (HKG) to Seoul (ICN) with an overnight connection in Taipei (TPE). I got pretty lucky with that because it gave me 2 Hello Kitty flights without having to book 2 segments. (Tip: Make sure to display 50 results when searching for awards on United.) My 1.5 day stopover in Seoul allowed me time to visit the DMZ. Then I decided to route to Sapporo (CTS) so I could do another Hello Kitty flight from CTS back to TPE. My 23 hours and 20 min in Sapporo was considered a connection. :) Thankfully I got all segments in business except for the ANA Osaka (KIX) to Sapporo segment which I later learned did not have a business class.

Itinerary 3: TSA-HND-LAX-EWR

Business and first class awards were extremely scarce for my return journey back home. I wanted to do EVA's TPE-LAX Hello Kitty flight but there was no award availability in any class. I was finally able to find a Hello Kitty flight in biz from Taipei's other airport, TSA, to Tokyo's Haneda airport, HND. And from HND, on ANA business across the Pacific to LAX. Unfortunately there was no trans-continental biz award on United so for now I'm stuck in coach. (I know, the nerve! :D)