How to fill in a day around LAX

[zanzibar138]

Why not just rent a car? A locked trunk has to be every bit as secure as a hotel room. I would not go to Hollywood Blvd. or Venice, but should be safe enough in Manhattan Beach or some other less touristy area. You'll even have enough time to head up to Santa Barbara if you want.

I've just done a search and starting cost is AUD $145. It's about the same as a hotel room if I go with one of the USD $99 ones.

Pros: We can go where we want. No additional transport costs.
Cons: Having to battle LA traffic as an Aussie who is used to driving on the left after a 3am wake-up call No opportunity for a shower/nap. Additional costs for fuel and possibly parking.

Still worth considering

 

[sjmac42]

I linked LAX day use rooms in my previous post.
It’s up to you if you want to waste at least 2-3 hrs of your day faffing about with a locker or just jump on a free shuttle and get a day use room. You don’t need to book, just ask the shuttle driver if day use rooms are available, they will know. Use the link I posted as a price guide.
LA isn’t Sydney or Melbourne. It’s a lot harder to navigate luggage storage as it’s not at or even near the airport.
$79, $150, who cares? Depends how much your holiday time, comfort and convenience is worth to you I suppose.

 

[zanzibar138]

Yes it’s different re checking in luggage at LAX and many other US airports.
There is luggage storage but it’s not at LAX, it’s offsite and will take you an hour or 2 mucking around for drop off and pick up and it’s $12 to $15 PER ITEM plus an Uber there and back, twice.
Day use room at LAX is the way to go, Probably be about $100 to $150.
https://www.dayuse.com/s/los-angeles-international-airport-lax?selectedAddress=Los+Angeles+International+Airport+%28LAX%29&sluggableAddress=Los+Angeles+International+Airport+%28LAX%29&placeId=eyJsYXQiOjMzLjk0MjUxLCJsbmciOi0xMTguNDA4OTcsInQiOjEsInAiOiJjdXN0b20ifQ%3D%3D%2Bd6f608d392735f7598cccd053f03e8df&checkinDate=2024-06-11&ne_lng=-118.346307&ne_lat=33.949287&sw_lng=-118.415571&sw_lat=33.914562

I linked LAX day use rooms in my previous post.
It’s up to you if you want to waste at least 2-3 hrs of your day faffing about with a locker or just jump on a free shuttle and get a day use room. You don’t need to book, just ask the shuttle driver if day use rooms are available, they will know. Use the link I posted as a price guide.
LA isn’t Sydney or Melbourne. It’s a lot harder to navigate luggage storage as it’s not at or even near the airport.
$79, $150, who cares? Depends how much your holiday time, comfort and convenience is worth to you I suppose.

Apologies for missing this first post, I didn't mean to cause any frustration and I certainly appreciate all the suggestions coming through on this thread. At this stage I am still comparing and considering the cost, time and convenience of the 3 options to be able to make an informed decision on what is going to be the best option for us. This is a 4 week trip for us, so if we blindly chose the more expensive option every time we were presented with a choice, it would add up.

It was probably premature of me to start commenting about which option I was leaning towards before having done all the research. In my experience, most airports have been able to provide either early check-in or some sort of luggage storage (admittedly things may have changed since I was travelling regularly), so I was initially a little taken aback about the additional complexity and expense required to manage this. I am well aware of how difficult LAX and the surrounding area is to navigate, hence my trepidation about hiring a car!

After having now completed my research, it looks like the 'all in' cost of the storage locker, hire car and day use hotel room will all be quite similar (around AUD $150), assuming we can get a day use room for under USD $100, which looks likely. If we can't get a room for under USD $100, we will have to have a conversation about how much more we are willing to spend for the convenience - we may well decide that an extra $50 is worth it, but it is a significant enough amount for us that we'll want to put some thought into it. I'm sure you can understand that the idea of paying AUD $200 for what is essentially luggage storage for the day is taking a bit of getting used to! At this stage we are even still considering whether it's worth the effort at all or we just hang out at the airport to check in as soon as we are able to and head to the lounge.