Grand Tour - April 21, 2014 Long Trip from LAX

Cape Cod Traveler

I'm looking for others doing this tour in April. I'll be flying from Boston to LAX to Melbourne. (joining my sister at LAX) Would it be good to fly to LAX the day before our Melbourne flight? I want to be sure I get to LAX on time & rested before Melbourne flight.

VA2Aussie

Cape Cod Traveler wrote:

I'm looking for others doing this tour in April. I'll be flying from Boston to LAX to Melbourne. (joining my sister at LAX) Would it be good to fly to LAX the day before our Melbourne flight? I want to be sure I get to LAX on time & rested before Melbourne flight.

Hi there

Back in the fall I think I saw a couple or two going to Aussie at the same time.
My Aussie only tour starts on April 14th and we are flying from VA.

We opted to do Virgin Business/First Class so we would get the 180 seats. They say Air New Zealand is great but
it appears that adds another 2 hrs to the trip. Trust me I figure 15 1/2 on my flight is enough.

Since we did business class we decided not to go into LAX a day early.
However, we are giving ourselves a LAX 6 hr layover.
The 6 hrs is in case we miss our connection, there are 1 or 2 connections after our original that will get us to LAX on time.
Of course we are hoping there will be available seats on the other connections.

What is more important is the days before the trip.
You should try to have at least 1 day before the Tauck trip starts. Two might be even better.

We leave VA on April 10th and arrive in Melbourne (direct flight) April 12th.
Our tour starts on April 14th, therefore we should be better adjusted to the 14 hr advance time change.

Bam4d

My fellow high school classmate (we celebrate our 60th reunion this year so we are no spring chickens) are making the trip for the April 7th 2014 tour. We will be flying out of LAX late evening on the 4th on Qantas (we planned an extra 36 hours in Melbourne to acclimate prior to the tour) but, due to worries about lost luggage etc, the only direct flight to LAX from our area in Southern Oregon arrives at 8am . We have rented a dayroom at the Travelodge@LAX to relax prior to our late evening departure. Very reasonable, within minutes of the airport with shuttle service to and from. Also a chance to take a nap after what is sure to be some sleepless nights prior to leaving, packing etc. We will be on the trip just prior to yours. We let Tauck handle all the air flight reservations except our connecting flights to and from LAX. This exception was not our choice, rather the reservations (though through a partner airline) could not be made because of booking laws of excess time between arrival-departures. Our layover at LAX will be 13 hours. We hope to be able to check our bags straight through to home on the return trip so they can just be handed back after customs and we won't have to lug them through the airport to our Horizon gate for the flight home.

Hope your trip is exciting, fun and pleasurable. We are certainly looking forward to ours. We have traveled previously with Tauck and look forward to the excellent care and planning for our dream vacation. If anyone else out there is leaving on the April 7th, 2014 tour I would love to hear from you.