Transportation Costs: Take 2, Long Beach Airport to Fairfield, See Posts 6 & 7

[onelilspark]

Hi all. Question, anyone have an approximate cost for how much it would cost to get from the Burbank Airport to the Fairfield? Any particular form of transportation that's recommended?

We're toying with the end of April if it makes a difference.

 

[onelilspark]

Bump

 

[Kittyskyfish]

I did a calculation on SuperShuttle's website for three people over age of 3 on a shared ride service from Burbank airport to Fairfield Anaheim. Their round trip cost is $150, not including driver gratuity.

Two people is $132. Four people is $168.

I've used SuperShuttle at other airports in different cities and they've always been reliable. I hear a lot of good about them on this board, which is why we're using them this December!

SuperShuttle Fare Quote Page

 

[Brady's Mom]

We flew into Burbank to get to DLR about a year and a half ago and wouldn't do it again. The stretch of I 5 is AWFUL and traffic was terrible and sometimes the freeway is only 2 lanes. We ended up renting a van and the cost was okay, it was the drive there and back that was bad. And because of traffic and slow downs we ended up missing our return flight.

You might consider LGB, SNA or LAX. We found that we could get a better price from Salt Lake to Long Beach - including car rental and all of that.

For some reason I can never get the Super Shuttle prices to come out for me at a decent price. I always get the quote with $35 for the first person and $10 or more for each additional person - so I have never used them. It usually ends up being cheaper to rent a car for us than to use a shuttle.

 

[FlameGirl]

We flew into Burbank to get to DLR about a year and a half ago and wouldn't do it again. The stretch of I 5 is AWFUL and traffic was terrible and sometimes the freeway is only 2 lanes. We ended up renting a van and the cost was okay, it was the drive there and back that was bad. And because of traffic and slow downs we ended up missing our return flight.

Seconded. I used to fly into Burbank every month for business (oddly, my client was Disney...), and once missed my return flight back to Seattle. My travel partner at the time had never been to LA and he really wanted to get home, so he booked us out of SNA 3 hours after our original flight...and we sat in traffic for 4 hours and missed that flight too.

LA traffic is a nightmare, and totally unpredictable. You could sit in that shuttle for 3 hours like we did. Not fun.

 

[onelilspark]

Hmmm, ok...so help!

Here's what we did, so I have some flexibility with Airports, but not a lot.

JetBlue was running a bit of a special where you could buy TrueBlue points at 50% off. We (my boyfriend and I...so 2 adults) were half way to our "free" ticket, and it cost us less than $150 to buy the rest of our points to reach the "free" ticket. One way to Burbank, LAX, etc at the cheapest is $164 from Rochester. So we bought the points. Looks like our options for airports is either Burbank, Long Beach (haha...I keep wanting to call it Long Island...wrong coast!), or LAX. Burbank and Long Beach have pretty decent options on flight times and are pretty similar (within an hour of each other.) I have 1 choice on the flight out for LAX and 2 choices back, all which stink for LAX, so I'd like to rule that out.

So if you had to pick between Burbank and Long Beach, which airport would you use?
And what I'm gathering is that it might be cheapest just to rent a car? By the time we take our trip, we'll both be 25, so not a problem.
And would you fly back out to the east coast at 9/10pm, basically on the red eye or would you fly out the next morning at 7/9am? Knowing that your next day is shot?

 

[onelilspark]

Wow...you guys are so helpful! (Seriously, not being sarcastic...) Since you posted about avoiding Burbank, I checked Google Maps... I didn't realize that Burbank is north of LA. I was so confused when you all were talking about LA traffic (I'm not going to LAX! ) I get it now!

Sooo, going out on a limb...Long Beach is the better airport to fly into?? What's the best way to get from there to the Disneyland area? Still to rent a car?

 

[3TinksAndAnEeyore]

Sooo, going out on a limb...Long Beach is the better airport to fly into?? What's the best way to get from there to the Disneyland area? Still to rent a car?

Yes, Long Beach would be WAY better to fly into than Burbank when you're heading to Disneyland. You didn't mention John Wayne Airport in Orange County (SNA), but that would be another option if Jet Blue flies there. But John Wayne/Long Beach are both pretty close to Anaheim. The cost for Super Shuttle would be much better for you from that location. It would run about $88 for two adults round trip ($44 one way) on a shared van ride from Long Beach airport to the Fairfield.

 

[Brady's Mom]

Choose Long Beach. It took us 30 minutes on surface streets to get to HoJo which is across the street from Fairfield. We decided to scope out the gas stations and grocery stores on our way - so we could get some snacks or gas when we went back to the airport.

I don't have any luck with Super Shuttle - so I am a bad one for advice on that score. We always rent a car since we don't want to be stuck in one place and can use the car anytime we want. And sometimes when we are in Anaheim, we'll hit the beach, so it works for us to have a car.

I think you can get a taxi from LGB for a flat rate, but would need to negotiate with the cab company to get a flat rate back. I think it's around $40-45. One way.

Good luck.

And I would fly out the next morning, since I hate sleeping on the airplane and would rather be awake and functional when I got home - so I could do laundry and stuff before having to be ready for real life the next day. If I flew red-eye I would be a mess!

 

[onelilspark]

Yes, Long Beach would be WAY better to fly into than Burbank when you're heading to Disneyland. You didn't mention John Wayne Airport in Orange County (SNA), but that would be another option if Jet Blue flies there. But John Wayne/Long Beach are both pretty close to Anaheim. The cost for Super Shuttle would be much better for you from that location. It would run about $88 for two adults round trip ($44 one way) on a shared van ride from Long Beach airport to the Fairfield.

Thanks, yeah JetBlue doesn't fly into SNA. And I just checked a one way rental on Alamo and that's $40 base price. So it's about the same. Maybe I'll watch for a code on either and see what we want to do. I travel a decent bit for work, so I'm pretty comfortable driving in cities I'm not familiar with (as long as I have my TomTom!) Thank you so much for the help!

Edit: on the way back, it's a $98 one way rental! Ouch! Think the Super Shuttle is the way to go!!!

 

[bumbershoot]

With SS you always want to use the name of the hotel (not the zipcode), and yes, with LGB I get $35 first person, $9 each for additional guests. (although, interestingly, I'm getting the same LGB price even using the zipcode, so maybe they fixed that problem? or it might just be a computer cookie problem...oh, no, checked it with LAX and SNA, big differences for those airports!)

While looking at rental cars, be sure to price it out just keeping the car. On the other hand, Fairfield is now charging for parking. So maybe that's a bad idea. But since you might be new to rental cars due to your ages...one way rentals are generally VASTLY more expensive than a round trip. They just hate (or perhaps I should say they *love*, ka-ching!) suddenly getting a car on their lot that they felt they weren't supposed to have.


For going home, since it's just the two of you and you're younger, I'd take the red-eye. I enjoyed red-eyes in my 20s. Not so much anymore! The day's shot anyway; might as well get home early. And it cuts down a night of hotel cost. Then again, you have to be up and ready, leave your bags with the front desk, etc, if you don't have the room that night.

 

[onelilspark]

Choose Long Beach. It took us 30 minutes on surface streets to get to HoJo which is across the street from Fairfield. We decided to scope out the gas stations and grocery stores on our way - so we could get some snacks or gas when we went back to the airport.

I don't have any luck with Super Shuttle - so I am a bad one for advice on that score. We always rent a car since we don't want to be stuck in one place and can use the car anytime we want. And sometimes when we are in Anaheim, we'll hit the beach, so it works for us to have a car.

I think you can get a taxi from LGB for a flat rate, but would need to negotiate with the cab company to get a flat rate back. I think it's around $40-45. One way.

Good luck.

And I would fly out the next morning, since I hate sleeping on the airplane and would rather be awake and functional when I got home - so I could do laundry and stuff before having to be ready for real life the next day. If I flew red-eye I would be a mess!

With SS you always want to use the name of the hotel (not the zipcode), and yes, with LGB I get $35 first person, $9 each for additional guests. (although, interestingly, I'm getting the same LGB price even using the zipcode, so maybe they fixed that problem? or it might just be a computer cookie problem...oh, no, checked it with LAX and SNA, big differences for those airports!)

While looking at rental cars, be sure to price it out just keeping the car. On the other hand, Fairfield is now charging for parking. So maybe that's a bad idea. But since you might be new to rental cars due to your ages...one way rentals are generally VASTLY more expensive than a round trip. They just hate (or perhaps I should say they *love*, ka-ching!) suddenly getting a car on their lot that they felt they weren't supposed to have.


For going home, since it's just the two of you and you're younger, I'd take the red-eye. I enjoyed red-eyes in my 20s. Not so much anymore! The day's shot anyway; might as well get home early. And it cuts down a night of hotel cost. Then again, you have to be up and ready, leave your bags with the front desk, etc, if you don't have the room that night.

Thanks, it was about $250 if we kept the car the entire time, parking at the Fairfield is only $5/night, so it's not killer. I think I'll keep an eye on rental car deals and see if any coupons come out, but looks like the Super Shuttle is a better idea.

The flights aren't great coming home just because we have to stop at JFK. It's either leave at 10pm, get into JFK at 5am and then there's a flight from JFK to Rochester at 9 something, getting us home at 11am. Or we'd leave the next morning on a flight at 7am which wouldn't get us to Rochester until 9pm OR leave at 3pm and get in at midnight. Not really great options because there's no direct flights. No matter what, we'd have to take the last day off from work, so if we took that red eye flight, we'd at least have some time to recover...hmmm, I guess we'll just have to weigh that one out!

Thanks again to everyone! It really helped!!

 

[clb79]

We just booked a car through Enterprise for 17.00 a day out of SNA (I think LGB was showing around 21.00 a day when we booked ours). Not sure how long you are staying, but for us we decided that was worth the cost to not deal with the shuttle service and have the extra flexibility to go places outside of the parks if we want or need to.

 

[LavenderPeach]

Have you looked into the Ontario airport too? I have no idea if they are cheaper than LGB but thought I would throw that out there as another option for you to look at. I know JetBlue flies there (or at least they did 8 years ago when we used them to get to NY).

 

[clb79]

ONT is almost always the most expensive out of the Airports in the area, LGB is usually the cheapest if you can get a flight into there from where you are at. I think ONT charge higher fees to the airlines and that translates all the way down to the ticket cost.

Other than that its not a bad airport, quite a ways out, probably twice as far as LGB, but if for some strange reason they had the cheapest fair and ground transportation costs were comparable I would consider them.

 

[LavenderPeach]

ONT is almost always the most expensive out of the Airports in the area, LGB is usually the cheapest if you can get a flight into there from where you are at. I think ONT charge higher fees to the airlines and that translates all the way down to the ticket cost.

Other than that its not a bad airport, quite a ways out, probably twice as far as LGB, but if for some strange reason they had the cheapest fair and ground transportation costs were comparable I would consider them.

I have no idea about costs of airports but just wanted OP to look at all the options since you never know where you might find a deal. But ONT is the same distance to DLR as LAX which is about 34 miles so it's not that far from DLR.

I was just reading an article the other day that said ONT is trying to figure out how grow and a big part of that is going to be trying to get DLR people to travel through there. Nothing is set up yet but it sounds like they are trying to work out some incentives. Here's a quote from the article:

The key to developing a sustainable market would be to tap into Disneyland's tourists as well as Orange County and Inland Empire residents in a way that hasn't been done before, Ducey said.

That would be by offering financial incentives such a price break in theme park tickets or rebates for hotels or plane tickets, she said.

Other incentives to consider could include offering early admission to the park or preferred seats on a flight, she said.

http://www.sbsun.com/search/ci_13596760?IADID=Search-www.sbsun.com-www.sbsun.com

It will be interesting to see if they can get something figured out and if they will be able to lure people out there.

 

[prncssmel]

Okay, I have been researching possible options for Long Beach to a hotel near Disney. THis is what I have so far. For 2 people:

Supershuttle (shared): $44 each way - $12 in coupons from Anaheim Conv. & Visitors Bureau = $76
Primetime Shuttle (shared): $82 round trip
Karmel Shuttle (shared with only 1 other hotel): $80 r/t

Limo King: $130 r/t
Harold's Limos: $150 r/t - $15 ACVB coupon = $135

Alamo 1-day Car Rental from LGB to DTD and DTD to LGB: $45 each way = $90 w/ Costco discounts
Alamo Car Rental for 1 week: $280 w/ Costco discounts

I have heard Kim Sontha Transportation is $50 each way, but they haven't called me back to confirm that price.

 

[3TinksAndAnEeyore]

Okay, I have been researching possible options for Long Beach to a hotel near Disney. THis is what I have so far. For 2 people:

Supershuttle (shared): $44 each way - $12 in coupons from Anaheim Conv. & Visitors Bureau = $76
Primetime Shuttle (shared): $82 round trip
Karmel Shuttle (shared with only 1 other hotel): $80 r/t

Limo King: $130 r/t
Harold's Limos: $150 r/t - $15 ACVB coupon = $135

Alamo 1-day Car Rental from LGB to DTD and DTD to LGB: $45 each way = $90 w/ Costco discounts
Alamo Car Rental for 1 week: $280 w/ Costco discounts

I have heard Kim Sontha Transportation is $50 each way, but they haven't called me back to confirm that price.

Great info! It inspired me to add Prime Time Shuttle Information to the Transportation thread.