kenish

Flew a chartered Concorde in 1985 from LHR to the Oshkosh airshow, with a stop at JFK to clear Customs/Immigration and refuel. Great but all-too-brief experience. The pound sterling was at a record low to the dollar, and the trip cost only about $600.

Also check into Uber. There's no issue with them dropping off passengers at LAX. You're guaranteed a personal and nonstop ride to LAX.

Even though Dec 27 is a Sunday, it's the Sunday after Christmas. Traffic can get weekday-bad....people going shopping for bargains and exchanging gifts, combined with travelers driving in and out of town and the airports. The Sunday after last Xmas (2014), it took me almost an hour to get from Sepulveda to T4 to pick someone up...that's about 1 mile! Traffic on the terminal loop was gridlocked on both levels.

Many of the hotels close to D'land have a rather steep "resort fee". Just be aware of it. If you go 2 miles south into Garden Grove you will avoid the fee. Anything on Harbor Blvd. will be DL-oriented and probably provide free shuttles.

Great Wolf Lodge is opening up soon in Garden Grove....if you have kids the waterpark may be ideal. Hope this helps!

Do taxi's and shuttle need kids buckled? I know its the the best to have them strapped and letting them get by with it once might set a precedence

It depends. The laws that cover this are different depending on the state. Since you don't say where you're going, I recommend looking online at the vehicle codes for the state of interest.

On Uber's fare estimator, SFO-Fisherman's Wharf shows $32-$41 for UberX and $51-$66 for UberXL. As Philob commented, there's no "Uber Cab"...perhaps you're thinking of Uber Taxi which is a special service and not available in SFO.

Have a family member or friend who already uses Uber show you how it works. They can send you a promo code that will be good for about $15 or $20 off your first Uber ride. When you set up your account you provide a credit card to charge rides to. If it's a Capital One card you get a 20% discount. Cap1 owns an interest in Uber, the promo goes at least thru the end of this year.

I'm not familiar with SFO but they may have a curbside area for shared ride services. In any case you don't "hail" a car until you're curbside. Plug in your destination, the app will show fares for X, XL, etc. Select the service you want...the car that you hailed will pop up on a map, so you can see their progress towards you. It will also provide a vehicle description, plate #, and name/photo of the driver. The driver will almost always phone you to confirm all the details.

we are going one way from Calif to Fort Lauderdale to start our cruise and coming home one way from Amsterdam at the end of the cruise. i spent hours on different travel sites checking prices for one way tickets and finally went through choice air. The cost from Calif to Fort Lauderdale was about the same that I could have booked myself, but the one way home from Amsterdam was a bargain. I also got refundable tickets.

Do you have your 13-digit ticket number? (Not the 6-character confirmation number, or PNR). Just to make sure you're clear, there is a difference between a reservation and a ticket.

Read the sticky at the top of this forum about Cruiseline air. When you make a reservation (with the cruise line's air department, an online travel agency, your own travel agent, or directly though the airline) you get an itinerary and can usually request seats, using the confirmation number. The reservation can be changed, cancelled, etc. up to the point a ticket is purchased. Cruise lines usually issue tickets 1-4 weeks before travel (but sometimes only a few days prior). Until then, the cruise line makes use of any money you've prepaid. When the time comes to issue tickets, it's usually the flights you reserved. Sometimes those flights are no longer in their stock of tickets purchased in bulk, months ago (the "specially negotiated fares"), When that happens they will piece together a new itinerary from their remaining ticket stock and issue tickets. The flight schedules may be similar or better, or could be far worse. Also be aware the bulk-purchased tickets have significant restrictions if something goes amok with your flights and they are low priority for rebooking.

That said, if you do have your 13-digit ticket number, you got a great and very unusual situation if they are indeed fully refundable.

FYI, Uber is still not approved to pick up passengers at LAX (they can drop-off). Surprisingly Uber is dragging their feet providing documents required by local agencies. It's looking like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

LGB allows drop-off but not pickup. SNA is full access. At LAX or LGB, you can take a parking or hotel shuttle and summon Uber or Lyft from there.

Again, we so appreciate this information!! Our friend's son lives in Costa Mesa, so we may be stay somewhere in that area or Long Beach. Still researching hotels. But any restaurant recommendations in that area would be so appreciated!! If we stay in Santa Monica, which I like some of the hotels there.... I'll write again.

Replied to your post on a different thread....a unique suggestion is a beach cottage at Crystal Cove State Park, about 15-20 minutes from Costa Mesa. It definitely requires a car, however.

Occasionally there are 3-5 day Mexico cruises on Holland America or Celebrity. The demographic is more upscale and older, and probably more suited to you and your folks. HAL also has regular 7 and 10 day cruises to PV, Mazatlan, and Cabo.

At the risk of stereotyping (and the shorter cruises tend to be different), HAL tends to be a 60+ crowd, though there's no shortage of "wild and crazy" seniors who refuse to grow old. Celebrity tends to be 40-60 and more "upscale trendy". Carnival is definitely a "booze cruise"....even my teenage son said "Some of the passengers are bad news!"

My personal perspectives, anyway...and the NCL and Princess are probably good picks though I have no experience with either.

There aren't "beach" hotels in LB because there really isn't any beach (hope that makes sense). You might check Huntington Beach, a few miles south (Surf City, USA) if you want a long, sandy beach. Hyatt Regency there is great (beach is across PCH) and there are smaller motels. Even farther south through Newport down to Dana Point are a string of 4* beach resorts if that's what you're looking for.

To the north there's the Terrenea resort in Palos Verdes and nice midrange motels in the Manhattan / Redondo / Hermosa Beach areas.

None of these are right on the sand...for something VERY unique, check into the historic beach cottages at Crystal Cove State Park (where the old movie "Beaches" was filmed): http://www.crystalcovebeachcottages.com/html/

Hope this helps!

Nice hotel! About 2 miles from the airport and 1/2 mile from the cruise docks, Maritime Museum, Seaport Village, USS Midway, Gaslamp Quarter/baseball stadium, and Little Italy.

For reference, Uber is $29-$39 from Catalina Express to LA Union Station. Or for $10-$15 more, you can go to the Amtrak station in Santa Ana; it's about an hour down the line from LA Union Station and you will save about 1 hour total trip time from San Pedro to San Diego. I didn't check Lyft prices, probably very similar.

Also check Uber or Lyft. The fares are similar to a shuttle, but it's door-to-door and if you need to make an intermediate stop for supplies, no problem. For local errands or a ride to the ship I'd definitely use Uber.

Uber shows the fare as $33-$45 (Uber uses demand and congestion pricing, it should be near the lower end of the range on a weekend). SNA allows full Uber access, so no issue there. Lyft is another option.

Here is the story stripped down to its essence: a passenger through no fault of their own missed an international connection. The airline offered the next available flight in the same class of service (PE). Passenger refused for personal reasons. Airline offered a flight the next day. Passenger accepted and wanted a free hotel room. Airline denied. Passenger flew the next day. Airline threw some frequent flyer miles to passenger as a courtesy. Passenger thinks she deserves a free round trip ticket to Australia. Passenger needs to grow up and learn a life lesson.

Thanks, Shorex!! I know that you and a few others have first-person experience, hence why I posted here. Everyone on the other thread pretty much agrees. But it raised a good question on what actually transpires and the information a possibly inexperienced traveler receives about the LAX connection. The passenger was supposedly distraught over her father, urgently needed to get to SYD, a seat was available a few hours later (damn lucky on a longhaul route), and she refused it because it was a middle seat!

Over and above on Qantas' part.

Agree with everyone; but it does raise a question on how much info a passenger receives pre and post purchase. Since several on here travel codeshares to LAX and onward to Oz, I'm hoping one of them has direct experience on what info and instructions are provided upon check in for the first flight.

Currently QF website also has T6 > TBIT airside transfer instructions (airside T6>T4 shuttle, then the Gate 44 shuttle to TBIT). But I'm not sure that was an option in 2013.

I'm involved in a thread on another website about an AS/QF misconnect. Several people on this board have direct experience and may be able answer a question:

The OP bought SEA-LAX-SYD tickets on the Qantas website. SEA-LAX was a QF codeshare on AS metal and scheduled connect time was only 105 minutes. The SEA-LAX flight was 30 minutes late, and by the time she made the landside transfer she arrived at the QF counter past the cutoff. They tried to rebook her to a flight 90 minutes later but she (dumbly) refused and got to SYD a day later.

OP is an inexperienced traveler....the flights were sold by QF with their flight numbers, she would not know the nuances of MCT at LAX, and her luggage was thru-checked to SYD at SEA...so there was a reasonable expectation she was fully checked all the way to SYD unless she was advised otherwise.

Is check in for the QF flight is required at LAX (to confirm passport and ETA), and AS does not do this? What awareness does AS or QF provide during the booking process or during travel?

I checked Uber....the fare from LAX to Avis Long Beach is $30-$39 and is probably quite a bit less than a taxi.

You won't get your boarding pass until you do, but it's no problem to wait to print them until you get to the airport.

Pre-print your BP or get a mobile BP on your smartphone if at all possible. A colleague on AA and houseguests on SWA (separate incidents) both found out there were computer problems when they got to the airport. Long story short, already having a BP got them through security and on their flights...many people who expected to print them at the airport missed their flights. SWA's computer outage last weekend was covered on the news and they interviewed people who missed flights waiting in line for a hand-written BP (not picking SWA; this can and has happened to many airlines and airports)

My first Hawaii trip was around 1980. Bought a LAX-HNL roundtrip (PanAm!) and used a longstanding promo where interisland was $5 per "hop" with the first leg out of HNL free.

(One last curiousity to post -- while playing with the mapper, I noticed that BOS is only 510 miles further from HKG than LAX.)

A retired AA 777 pilot friend said that LHR is 6 miles farther from LAX than NRT....coincidences of geography!

I'm a college parent, and rest-assured your son isn't going to starve to death! Being away from the "home planet" is a good opportunity for him to expand his food horizons, though probably reluctantly. He will probably find new foods he hates, and others he will miss after he returns to the US. :)

Push the 172 off the end of the runway at Catalina Island. There's 500 foot cliffs at both ends. :)

The Indonesian government is very lax with safety. The FAA gives the country a Category 2 and 61% rating...that's lower than many 3rd world, underdeveloped countries. Indonesia meets zero of ICAO's 8 safety criteria. 59 of the 63 Indonesia-based airlines are blacklisted by the EU.

Fortunately Garuda is one of the 4 airlines with EU approval, and the only Indonesian airline passing IOSA standards. (Garuda is banned by the FAA because all Indonesian airlines are, regardless of individual safety records). Be *very* wary of the other airlines, many have truly terrible safety records. Even though the chance of an accident on a single flight is almost nil, don't use airlines that put profits ahead of safety.

@Jade13- Taking off with an engine out is sheer recklessness and negligence. It is the polar opposite of "masterfully". Any pilot doing that in the US would end up with their license revoked, even in a private Cessna.

It usually depends on the room situation that day. It might be possible to guarantee early checkin for extra $$.

Best bet is to call and talk to the manager at the hotel(s) you're interested in. If you belong to a hotel chain's points or preferred program, tell them that...it might be a little bit of leverage.