ajGoes

It should take around forty minutes to get to the rental car returns by surface roads at that hour if you follow this route rather than Lincoln. I think you'll have plenty of time to spare - but I have no experience with international departures from LAX, so I can't be sure about that bit.

infy9001

Awesome..thanks for the route! Okay.. 6-6:45pm..return car.. check in 7:30pm .. i think should be good. I'd rather be there earlier than last minute, so sounds like i have that part settled. Thanks!

ajGoes

You're welcome. My family has been following a variation of that route for almost fifty years now. You get to drive through the Marina, and you miss a lot of slow traffic on Lincoln. I'd encourage you to load it into your GPS beforehand, as it's easy to miss a couple of the turns.

OskiBear

Downtown Long Beach and the Pike area is perfectly safe. I live right there. If you're looking for a shower, you can try the 24 Hour Fitness downtown (Ocean & Magnolia) - don't know if you have a membership or if they sell day passes.

If interested, you can visit the Queen Mary before it completely crumbles under its own rusted steel weight - news story just came out last week that it's in imminent danger and requires $280 million in repairs.

Depending on when you're here, we are currently set up for the Long Beach Grand Prix so some streets appear blocked off, but access to all businesses is open - will be through 4/9/2017.

bzcat

Give yourself 1 hour both ways just to get and return rental car at LAX.

So if you are normally comfortable with being at the gate 60 minutes before departure, you need to arrive at the rental car lot 2 hours before departure.

That means leaving Santa Monica pier no later than 3 hours before departure time: 1 hour to drive to LAX rental car lot, 1 hour to return rental car and ride the shuttle bus to terminal 6, 1 hour to get thru security and just make last boarding call.

infy9001

Thanks BZCAT for the breakdown. So looks like indeed leaving the SM Pier latest at 6pm to catch the 10pm flight.

Thanks OskiBear for the info on the Queen Mary, sounds like a good piece of history to see before it's gone. I like ships!

Nazdoom

Hey all!

I have a 13 hour layover (by design) from 11AM-midnight in LAX (on a Sunday). Hoping to do as much touring as possible within $100-150 for the day -- and no hotel. Not interested in driving. Traveling alone and won't have any luggage or bags to carry around. Mostly interested in seeing landmarks and snapping some photos, don't need to shop or even go into most places. Does anyone have any scheduled tour they'd recommend?

Based on the LA 101 I believe I'll take the $8 bus to/from the airport and then do the hop on/off. Viator has a few group tours but most of them are pretty short.

Appreciate any suggestions! (Flying lie-flat on a quiet A380 so I don't mind tiring myself out during the layover!)

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

I used to think 40 minutes was sufficient, coming from Santa Monica, but I've since revised my estimate. In late February and early March, I've made two trips to LAX from SM and it took more than 40 minutes each time, leaving around 6 PM on a weekday. I left really early, so I wasn't in danger of being late, but the traffic has gotten quite a bit worse. One time, it was because someone double parked on the street and ended up holding back cars from 83rd all the way to Jefferson!

Coming from the pier would be even longer with the increase in traffic around downtown. SM is just way too congested nowadays. I would put in at least 1 hour to get to LAX from SM, but perhaps 1:15 just to be on the safe side. And 6 PM is busy time around here.

And I like that route! Been doing that for a decade and it's still the fastest coming from west Santa Monica, even though it too has gotten slower.

bzcat

Pick your Hop-on/Hop-off tour carefully... you won't have time to do them all.

https://www.starlinetours.com/hop-on-hop-off/

https://fh-sites.imgix.net/sites/355...HOP317_MAP.png

Note: the photo size is too big so I'm not going to embedded in the post.

The 4 tours are:

Purple - Downtown LA area
Red - Hollywood area
Yellow - West LA area
Green - Santa Monica/Venice

The one you want to do is probably Red or Yellow. Neither of which starts or end in Downtown LA. If you are taking the FlyAway express bus to Union Station, you can do the Purple tour, and then change bus in Hollywood to the Red tour.

In theory, you can bus hop from Purple to Red to Yellow to Green, and then the Orange connector back to LAX area but that's a really long day of bus riding in LA traffic.

respawn

Hi. My (future) wife and I have an upcoming 4.5 hour layover in LAX on our way to our honeymoon in Maui. This was unplanned, courtesy of AA rearranging flight schedules so that we would no longer make our originally planned connection. We will be flying after the terminal shuffle and have no real desire to leave security since we will have some bags to keep up with.

I sadly no longer have status with any airline, and was considering purchasing a day pass to the AC. That is, until I read on AA that day passes aren't valid for the AC in T4 due to construction. Additionally, with the terminal shuffle I'm unsure of what lounges may or may not be available for day pass purchase during our layover.

Does anybody have any insights on what lounges may or may not be available during this time? For that matter are there any suggestions for any other air side activities for 4.5 hours that don't include becoming "lounge lizards"?

Thanks for any suggestions.

TWA884

OskiBear

Keep in mind that the entire south side of LAX is now interconnected behind security so you can freely wander between those terminals - from Bradley to T7. If not the Admiral's Club, there's also the United Club in T7. Or, wandering over to the Bradley terminal, which is huge now that it's been redone.

bzcat

AA will have Admiral Lounges in T4 and T5 by the time you visit. But I can't speak to the day pass policy.

There is also priority pass lounges in TBIT and T6 which you can use if you purchase a membership ahead of time.

TWA884

Please discuss @respawn's lounge question in the Lounges at LAX - Access, Showers, Questions, Which One? [Consolidated thread]

Thank you,

TWA884
Los Angeles moderator

respawn

My apologies TWA884. I didn't mean for my question to be specifically tailored to the lounges. I am, in fact, open to any activities in LAX that would help us pass 4.5 hours worth of time. I just couldn't think of anything to do for that long other than hang in a lounge.

I'll ask my lounge specific questions in the consolidated Lounge thread. ^