On our trip last month, instead of doing a rental the whole week, we used Karmel to take us from the airport and back, then rented a car in the middle of the week when we weren't going to Disney.
However, instead of going straight to hotel, we booked a 4 hour tour. I unfortunately didn't plan it right, so was kind of a waste for how we did it. I wanted to go to Santa Monica pier, Hollywood boulevard and up to see the Hollywood sign. The main issue was we spent too much time at the pier, eating lunch and walked to the beach. I also must not have had traffic on when I was planning the route. With all the stop and go traffic, even on the interstate, it takes twice as long to get somewhere than what you'd think.
We were right at 2 hours into the trip when we got back to the vehicle and it would have taken a little over an hour to get to Hollywood area, then another hour plus down to
Disneyland, so we ended up just having him run us by CVS by Disneyland to grab some supplies. We then used the rental later in the week to do Hollywood.
Part of the reason we went this route was it was actually cheaper to do the tour plus airport return plus 3 day car rental than a week long car rental. Also, we got into LAX 5 hours before hotel check-in. Having woken up at 4am, we knew we weren't going to want to do that much driving in LA on our own. It all worked out and was a lot of fun, but I would add 2 more hours with Karmel if I were to do it again.
We were going to try to do a limo, but that was 200/hour. I was prepared for 100/hour, but didn't feel our budget could handle 200, lol. Maybe had we went straight from airport to hotel, the limo would have been worth it
