Long Beach Airport-Terranea Resort

[Blueliner]

Hi guys. I know this is not strictly Disneyland-related (although I think we may swing by the Disneyland Resort for an afternoon), but I thought I would invite your opinions.

I have a conference at the Terranea Resort December 1-3, and I was thinking of flying into Long Beach Airport instead of LAX. Truthfully, I have become pretty fond of smaller airports, and Long Beach appears to require about the same travel time to Terranea as LAX.

Does anybody have experience with this airport? Is there any reason to avoid it?

Thanks in advance for any advice/opinions you can share.

 

[Phroobar]

Long Beach is a great airport. I fly out of there all the time. It was also in a James Bond movie.

 

[flynnibus]

Long Beach is the preferred actually if you can make it work without more connection hassles

 

[Blueliner]

Long Beach is a great airport. I fly out of there all the time. It was also in a James Bond movie.

Thanks. It looks like it has some interesting architectural elements to it. I didn't know about the Bond movie. That's cool.

 

[Blueliner]

Long Beach is the preferred actually if you can make it work without more connection hassles

Thanks. From BHM, we are looking at about the same type of connecting flights into LAX or LGB, so I am leaning toward LGB. I like the idea of walking across the street from the terminal to the rental cars, too!

 

[NobodyElse]

LGB is your best bet for so many reasons.

For bonus trivia, I believe you'll be staying on the former site of Marineland of the Pacific.

 

[Blueliner]

LGB is your best bet for so many reasons.

For bonus trivia, I believe you'll be staying on the former site of Marineland of the Pacific.

Thanks! Of course I had to google Marineland of the Pacific. Very interesting!

 

[SSG]

It's got a cool little bar we always hang at while waiting for our flight home.

 

[BubbaQuest]

Long Beach airport is great and I would use it over LAX anytime. TSA at Long Beach will be at most 10 minutes vs an hour at LAX. There are 2 great bars, power outlets everywhere, and even free iPads to use. The only downside is Uber still can't pick up there, but there are plenty of taxis and a small rental car area right outside the terminal.

Southwest recently started flying to Long Beach and just added some temporary flights to Las Vegas (Sept through December, i think). So there is a bit of a bidding war with Jet Blue -- I was able to get extremely cheap tickets last week.

Hope this helps and have a great trip.

 

[TP2000]

Like everyone else has said, LGB is dramatically superior to LAX. Don't think twice about it, just fly into Long Beach and enjoy life.

The front part of LGB is its original late 1940's era terminal, like the small town post-war airport terminal that it is...

But then the backside and functional part of Long Beach Airport is this funky yet slick 21st century mod hipster airport terminal with wine bars and artisanal cheeseburgers and fire pits in an indoor/outdoor lounge space. But just to confuse things, there are no jetways and you board and disembark your plane outdoors like The Beatles landing at JFK in 1964.

 

[NobodyElse]

More relevant trivia for the OP:

• (As of my last visit) upstairs in the original terminal building, they have a nice collection of Long Beach aviation photos. Kind of cool.
• At Terranea, there is a restaurant called "Nelson's". Tangentially relevant because as mentioned, this was the former site of Marineland. Marineland was a location site for several films and TV shows. One of those shows was Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges. His character's name was Mike Nelson. It's a nice nod.

 

[Blueliner]

Like everyone else has said, LGB is dramatically superior to LAX. Don't think twice about it, just fly into Long Beach and enjoy life.

The front part of LGB is its original late 1940's era terminal, like the small town post-war airport terminal that it is...

But then the backside and functional part of Long Beach Airport is this funky yet slick 21st century mod hipster airport terminal with wine bars and artisanal cheeseburgers and fire pits in an indoor/outdoor lounge space. But just to confuse things, there are no jetways and you board and disembark your plane outdoors like The Beatles landing at JFK in 1964.

Thanks to all of you for the great insights. I fly Southwest pretty frequently because they offer direct flights from BHM to many of the places I frequently travel for work, so I was excited to see LGB as an option for this trip. I booked the flights at the end of last week and look forward to seeing this airport and Terranea in early December. We'll have to see about whether we want to hit the Disneyland Resort for the afternoon once my conference sessions end.

Any opinions on the Sunday brunch on the Queen Mary? I was thinking that might be something fun for my wife and I to do before heading up to LGB for our flight.

 

[NobodyElse]

Any opinions on the Sunday brunch on the Queen Mary?

I've not had brunch, but meals (and drinks) I've had have been good. Here's their webpage, with a link to a Travel Channel segment.
I'm sure it would be a fun thing to do, and exploring the ship (if you haven't already) is interesting.

Finally, in my opinion, rather than going to the Disneyland Resort for an afternoon, you might be better off just exploring Long Beach, but you have to decide what's right for you.

 

[Blueliner]

I've not had brunch, but meals (and drinks) I've had have been good. Here's their webpage, with a link to a Travel Channel segment.
I'm sure it would be a fun thing to do, and exploring the ship (if you haven't already) is interesting.

Finally, in my opinion, rather than going to the Disneyland Resort for an afternoon, you might be better off just exploring Long Beach, but you have to decide what's right for you.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm ambivalent about Disneyland for this particular trip, although I love going there. This particular conference rotates between the Phoenix area, the La Quinta Resort & Club (which is awesome), and Terranea. On a previous La Quinta trip two years ago, we extended our stay a couple days. We drove from La Quinta down to Laguna Beach, watched part of the SEC Championship game at Big Fish Tavern, then strolled around that area for awhile before heading to Anaheim. We had a great time at the Disneyland Resort for a day and a half and then flew home.

This time, we really can't extend our stay. We're leaning toward just hiking some of the trails around Terranea and maybe head to Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, or Manhattan Beach in the afternoon/evening, and then hit the Queen Mary the next morning before flying out.

 

[BubbaQuest]

The Queen Mary brunch is a little pricey, but a great experience. If you have any interest in Art Deco design, I definitely think it is worth the trip. Keep in mind the brunch is held in an old ballroom, not one of the permanent restaurants, so the decor there is mainly just modern stackable conference tables and chairs. However, the service, variety of food, and beautiful ballroom all make up for it.

After brunch, be sure to walk through the shops and the observation bar to check out the amazing architecture.

P.S. Reservations are recommended.

 

[Blueliner]

The Queen Mary brunch is a little pricey, but a great experience. If you have any interest in Art Deco design, I definitely think it is worth the trip. Keep in mind the brunch is held in an old ballroom, not one of the permanent restaurants, so the decor there is mainly just modern stackable conference tables and chairs. However, the service, variety of food, and beautiful ballroom all make up for it.

After brunch, be sure to walk through the shops and the observation bar to check out the amazing architecture.

P.S. Reservations are recommended.

Thanks for the tips!

 

[Darkbeer1]

I've not had brunch, but meals (and drinks) I've had have been good. Here's their webpage, with a link to a Travel Channel segment.
I'm sure it would be a fun thing to do, and exploring the ship (if you haven't already) is interesting.

Finally, in my opinion, rather than going to the Disneyland Resort for an afternoon, you might be better off just exploring Long Beach, but you have to decide what's right for you.

Oh my gosh, some of my work is featured on the QM website... WOW! (Video from the Travel Channel)

For those who don't know the history, the QM went through a lot of owners, and was once the PSA QM Hotel. Pacific Southwest Airlines was also a Disneyland sponsor, and offered frequent flyer miles if you knew where to go on Main Street.

http://www.psa-history.org/about_psa/hotels_valcar

Gosh, I miss PSA, I used to fly from San Diego to Burbank as a kid too many times to count, and in fact, one of the stewardess lived right across the street from me... And they had the most "interesting" uniforms..

http://www.psa-history.org/sights_and_sounds/stewardesses

Then Jack Wrather bought the rights from the city, which is the same Jack Wrather that was good friends with Walt Disney and built the Disneyland Hotel in 1955, in exchange for the rights to the "Disneyland" name for Hotels in California.

Well, when the Disney Corporation wanted to expand in the 1990's, they had to buy the entire Wrather company, just to get the name rights back. It was also used as leverage as part of the WestCot/DisneySea battle where Disney used both cities to bid against each other to get the best deal. Once Anaheim won the battle, Disney sold off the rights to the QM, and kept the Disneyland Hotel as part of the new DLR...

Sigh, I still miss good old Sgt. Preston's of the Yukon Bar at the DLH (Jack Wrather made the infamous radio/TV series, and also created Lassie and the Lone Ranger). And his wife is still celebrated at the DLH, since she was Bonita Granville

And happy to say, the Queen Mary just got a new management team (still owned by the city), and will be getting some great upgrades.

So a bit of interesting history, eh?

On, King! On, you huskies!

 

[Blueliner]

Oh my gosh, some of my work is featured on the QM website... WOW! (Video from the Travel Channel)

For those who don't know the history, the QM went through a lot of owners, and was once the PSA QM Hotel. Pacific Southwest Airlines was also a Disneyland sponsor, and offered frequent flyer miles if you knew where to go on Main Street.

http://www.psa-history.org/about_psa/hotels_valcar

Gosh, I miss PSA, I used to fly from San Diego to Burbank as a kid too many times to count, and in fact, one of the stewardess lived right across the street from me... And they had the most "interesting" uniforms..

http://www.psa-history.org/sights_and_sounds/stewardesses

Then Jack Wrather bought the rights from the city, which is the same Jack Wrather that was good friends with Walt Disney and built the Disneyland Hotel in 1955, in exchange for the rights to the "Disneyland" name for Hotels in California.

Well, when the Disney Corporation wanted to expand in the 1990's, they had to buy the entire Wrather company, just to get the name rights back. It was also used as leverage as part of the WestCot/DisneySea battle where Disney used both cities to bid against each other to get the best deal. Once Anaheim won the battle, Disney sold off the rights to the QM, and kept the Disneyland Hotel as part of the new DLR...

Sigh, I still miss good old Sgt. Preston's of the Yukon Bar at the DLH (Jack Wrather made the infamous radio/TV series, and also created Lassie and the Lone Ranger). And his wife is still celebrated at the DLH, since she was Bonita Granville

And happy to say, the Queen Mary just got a new management team (still owned by the city), and will be getting some great upgrades.

So a bit of interesting history, eh?

On, King! On, you huskies!

Fantastic! Thanks for passing all of this cool history along!

 

[Phroobar]

Jim Hill's recent podcast was talking about the Queen Mary and its history. Interesting that before Disney's involvement there was going to be a theme park next to the Queen Mary called Irwin Allen's Pleasure Island that was suppose to rival Disneyland in size and scope. Imagine rides based on the Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. The Towering Inferno ride would have been hot. This was going to be back in the early '70s.

 

[Blueliner]

Jim Hill's recent podcast was talking about the Queen Mary and its history. Interesting that before Disney's involvement there was going to be a theme park next to the Queen Mary called Irwin Allen's Pleasure Island that was suppose to rival Disneyland in size and scope. Imagine rides based on the Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. The Towering Inferno ride would have been hot. This was going to be back in the early '70s.

Very cool. Thanks.