Star Mega DO 4 Launch Party Announced — Spots Are Limited!

A Mega DO is the ultimate frequent flyer adventure — fly around on a chartered aircraft and party with the heads of your favorite airlines, hotels, and loyalty programs while taking advantage of once in a lifetime behind the scenes opportunities whether it’s a private party in Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt, visiting not open to the public parts of Boeing, or evacuating an aircraft on the slide and into the water.

The last event, the inaugural oneworld Mega DO, was covered in USA Today and also in an Associated Press piece that was picked up in about 70 papers around the country.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal piece on September’s Star Mega DO 3 and the Journal’s coverage of the first Star Mega DO in September 2009 which was also written up in the February 2010 Conde Nast Traveler.

Now details on Star Mega DO 4 are starting to come out. The Launch Party has been announced.

  • Saturday June 2nd at 6:30pm at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City (a free shuttle ride from Washington’s National Airport)
  • The event is limited to the first 80 people who RSVP at the Milepoint.com frequent flyer community, here is the Mega DO forum on Milepoint where you will find the RSVP thread to post in to secure your spot.

Why do you want to attend the launch party?

It’s a ton of fun, the launch for the Oneworld Mega DO was a pajama party (because American Airlines was introducing pajamas in their international first class) at the Andaz West Hollywood. Lots of great times with frequent flyers, lots of airline and hotel executives to hobnob with.

But the key is that the launch party is where the details of the trip are going to be shared first. And launch party attendees are traditionally given about a day’s head start to reserve a spot.

The oneworld Mega DO sold out in about 20 minutes. Launch party attendees all had the opportunity to buy tickets.

Here are some of the basics of a Mega DO:

  • There are 3 classes of service — coach, “Tommy Class” (which will be economy plus seating with a blocked middle), and business class. Coach usually runs less than $1000, which includes flights and most meals and activities.
  • Hotel nights are extra but there will be negotiated discounted rates. You’re not obligated to stay at the group hotel but it’s advisable. Hyatt is the co-sponsor, and there will be bonuses for staying with Hyatt and also there’s usually a status challenge as well.
  • There are bonus miles opportunities, status miles opportunities, and lots of swag given out along the way.
  • There’s plenty of free booze, at the receptions and on the planes, for the oneworld Mega DO I think the booze was quadruple catered.
  • Much of the activities are kept secret until the last minute. There are surprises, and things are almost always far better than expected, although herding around 150+ frequent flyers can be a bit crazy at times

I don’t know of anyone who ever went on one of these that felt they didn’t get more than several orders of magnitude their money’s worth. There’s no profit in the trip, these are always done with any excess funds going to charity, and there are also several opportunities for charitable auctions along the way — in the past we’ve auctioned off time in flight simulators, maintenance suits, points, status, and more. The last trip raised over $80,000 for charity, hopefully this one will raise even more.

I look forward to seeing several of you at the launch party!

Update: to be clear, the Launch party thread on Milepoint is where you sign up.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Is the sign up tread going to be a new thread?

    Since it is not apparent people (me included) are posting in the Star Mega DO IV – Pre event discussion which probalby is not the right location.

  2. @FFC I’ll buy your reservation for the BRT so you’ll be ok to go to the launch party 🙂

  3. Okay, I get the message. Schedule the party for the week I’m in Italy! See if I care!

    Hmm. Could I have a proxy attend the party for me? Or, for that matter, does anyone know what I look like?

  4. Gary, Just went to book it and realized I have a conflict and cannot attend the launch party. 🙁
    Look forward to seeing the details and hopefully I can make the Star Mega Do

  5. HI Just looked for a room at Crystal City and it says Hotel not available. What are we supposed to do?

  6. At some point you should move to a lottery type system. It’s rough on people to miss things like this because of timing.

    Given that the real event sells out in 20 minutes that means there will be 100’s of people who learn that tickets are on sale long after they sell out. Same deal on the pre-party, 100’s of people RSVP’d in the wrong thread (per Gerry’s post) long before the official thread went up and many of them will not get a new RSVP in on time in the official tread… A lotto would give everyone a fair chance and allow broader marketing of the events.

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