We are flying in from the east coast, departing the afternoon of Christmas day.
SNA will get us in at 7:57pm and includes a 1:35 layover in Houston.
LAX will get us in at 6:49pm and is a non-stop.
The LAX flight is $10 less.
Ds dislikes flying…specifically, he doesn’t like how take offs make him feel and this causes some anxiety. The mom in me says the LAX flight is the no brainer since it has one less take off, but the planner in me likes the advantage of SNA being closer.
We flew in and out of LAX for our last visit. If you have used both airports, can you share the advantages/disadvantages of each? I would probably use Super Shuttle again to travel from LAX, I’m not sure of the transportation options for SNA.
I haven’t flown into SNA myself. For some reason flying there from SLC costs significantly more than it does to go to LAX or LGB.
That being said, as much as I don’t like LAX, I would probably choose LAX with your circumstances. Like you said, it’s one less take-off for your DS and it is $10 cheaper.
The transportation from LAX takes about 50 minutes, and from SNA it is about 20-25 minutes. So you should get to your hotel sooner using LAX as well. One more hour to relax and be ready for DLR the following day.
Of course, if you use SuperShuttle, the arrival time could vary depending on how many people they need to drop off before getting to you. We always use the Disneyland Express when we fly into LAX, and they also serve SNA. It costs more than SuperShuttle, but they go to DLR directly.
We had a bad experience with SuperShuttle once. The driver had to drop of others that were nowhere near DLR. Then he got low on gas – natural gas – and had trouble finding a station that sold it. Then his credit card didn’t work at that station, so we needed to use ours for him; he reimbursed us in cash right then. So we ended up getting to our hotel significantly later than we had expected. Granted, this was an extreme case, but it scared us off from using them.
The Disneyland Express doesn’t serve LGB, which is where we flew into when we visited a couple weeks ago. Our TA recommended Karmell Shuttle instead, and we were pretty happy with them. It too is more expensive than SuperShuttle, but it guarantees that you are the only ones in the vehicle, so you can get to DLR as soon as possible.
When we took Super Shuttle last summer we opted for the “ExecuCar” Shuttle which was only slightly more than their basic service w/ a discount code. ExecuCar drives you directly to your destination w/o sharing.
I will keep the Karmell Shuttle info on hand and compare as we get closer!
I should add that we didn’t use the Disneyland Express during our last visit because we needed to leave for our return flight earlier than the buses started running!
Is LGB even an option? Otherwise, as much as I try to avoid lax, not just for DL, probably best given your scenario. We just went to wdw from Seattle. Had a layover on the way there, a 2.5hr flight, and a 3.5hr flight. Had a nonstop on the way back. As much as ahead of time the nonstop seemed like our preference, we actually ended up preferring the connection. Broke up a really long flight into 2 manageable flights. Not saying this is best for your concerns, just throwing it out there since it was different than what I expected.
While in general I greatly prefer SNA to LAX under your specific circumstances I would probably just go with LAX… Personally though for transportation I’d just Uber or Lyft. It’ll probably be similar in price to the shuttles but take you directly to your hotel.
It sounds like LAX makes the most sense for you - particularly on Xmas day as traffic will be less of an issue.
We flew out of SNA and used Uber to get there. Nice small airport that was easy to access on a Sunday. In general I’d recommend SNA if it is an even up choice as we have tended to go out of our way to avoid LAX, but in your case it seems like the direct flight and timing really favor LAX…
