This is going to be a real quick report of a weekend trip I took to LA that was almost a complete disaster. I probably wouldn't have posted a report, but I wanted to share an incredible story of hashgacha pratis and the amazing chessed of Chabad.
My wife has always wanted to go to LA, but whenever we are in the US she is usually working, and never has time for trips. A few months ago I noticed some AA F space from JFK to LAX on a Thursday night, and I quickly booked two seats. There was nothing available for our return on Sunday night, so I booked two seats in JetBlue Mint. These are two products that I've wanted to try for a while so I was pretty happy. We were arriving at midnight on Thursday, so I booked the
Marriott Renaissance LAX Airport since it was close, cheap, and I had some expiring Orbux I needed to use. For Friday and Saturday night, I booked the Intercontinental Century City with cash. It was about $350 a night for a basic suite I think. However, within 24 hours of booking I got an email from Hilton with weekend anniversary nights. I had totally forgotten about them, so I was pretty excited and decided to use them at the new
Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. When I called up to book, I was told they had no standard rooms available, which I knew wasn't true. After some pushing I found out that their definition of a standard room is a handicap room, which conveniently wasn't available. After a bit of pushing, they agreed to speak to the hotel manager, who would call me back. Within 10 minutes I had an email from the manager saying they'd be glad to process my booking. I emailed my certificate information, and they processed it all for me.
We arrived at JFK about an hour before our 8:30 flight. Flagship First checkin is available on the right side of the terminal, and within minutes we were directed to an escort who was meant to take us through security. It took a few minutes of explaining that we were in first class to convince her to take both of us through, as she kept insisting that only I was priority. Eventually, she put down the show she was watching on her phone and took us to the front of the line. It seemed like she was going to take us all the way through, but after scanning her ID and starting to come to the actual screening, she changed her mind and left. Oh well. It didn't take long until we were at the lounge. I've been to the AA lounge several times before, and although it's comfortable it's nothing special. Obviously the main attraction for most would be the Flagship Dining which we obviously were not able to take advantage of. After a brief wait in the lounge, we headed to our gate. We were the last two passengers on board a fully booked flight.
My initial reaction to the A321-T First Class product was that it's a very impressive seat to see on a narrow body plane. It was also very strange to look to the end of the plane and see just how small it was. It definitely feels out of place on an aircraft of that size. Unfortunately that's where the impressiveness ended. I wasn't expecting outstanding service, but I still felt like it was extremely disinterested. The first clue is that infamous line in the safety announcement, "Flight attendants are here primarily for your safety, but if you need anything else...". The plane had an air conditioning issue where it was blowing out tons of mist, and we had about an hour delay until it was fixed. During this time, our drink orders were taken, but nothing was actually brought until well after take off. Additionally, hardly any announcements were made to let us know what was going on or how long we would be waiting. It was especially noticeable to me since I had recently taken several Qantas domestic flights in Australia. It's really sad to think how far behind most of the world American carriers are.
Anyway, the coldness continued throughout the service. When the meal was served, the flight attendant walked down the aisle simply barking "Tray tables out" without even looking at any of us. The seat itself was also disappointing. When I boarded, there were crumbs everywhere from the previous flight. The furnishings seemed old and worn, and the TV screen and remote were unresponsive. Additionally, the TV screen swings out, but you can't tilt it at all. This means that if you want to watch while laying flat or even semi reclined, the viewing angle was terrible.
With all the negatives in mind, it's still a perfectly acceptable way to travel for six hours, and it's definitely far better than economy.
We landed in LA on time even with the delay, and managed to just miss the shuttle to the hotel. I didn't feel like waiting, so we just took an Uber. The Marriott is an older hotel that definitely shows its age. There was no minibar, and the water bottles in the room were $7. It was past 3am NY time at that point for us, so it didn't really matter. We went straight to sleep, and left right after we woke up the next morning.
The plan was to drop off our bags at the Waldorf, and go spend the day seeing various sites that my wife wanted to visit. It was about 30 minutes to the Waldorf from the airport, and we arrived slightly before 10am. There is a circular driveway that leads up to the hotel, which is your first impression of the building. Throughout our stay there was a constant stream of Rolls Royces, Maseratis, Bentlys, etc going in and out. To our delight, the hotel clerk was able to get us in a room right away. We ended up getting Uber Eats from Bibi's Bakery instead of going out right away.
I'm not going to go through where we went, as it was all pretty standard stuff such as The Grove, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, etc.
For food, I had placed an order with Lieders through their app. The Waldorf has two house cars, which you can use within 3 miles of the hotel. I requested one to take us to pick up the food. Unfortunately we only got the Maybach, and not the Rolls Royce. We got back to the hotel, double wrapped it all with foil I had brought, and dropped off the food in the hotel fridge, as we had arranged for them to store it and heat it up for us. Before shabbos, we went down to just double check that they would be heating up the right items for each meal, and bring it to us at the correct times. We waited some time while the luggage store room was checked, and then were told that the food had been moved downstairs and it would be a bit longer. Unfortunately it wasn't there either, so we decided to go back up to our room and requested that when located the food be brought up to us. On the way up, we happened to meet three guys on their way to shul. We again waited quite some time yet no food arrived. At this point it was already shabbos. We again went down, where the concierge informed us that our food had unfortunately been misplaced. Someone then checked the security cameras and discovered that it had been mistakenly loaded into another guests car who had left with it. The hotel staff were extremely apologetic, and offered whatever they could do to fix the issue. The concierge told me that the chef would prepare me absolutely anything I wanted. He offered to order food for us from anywhere in the city. He said that there must be some kosher restaurant that's open. I politely explained that if anything was open that would mean I can't eat there, and that there was really nothing he could do for us. My wife was upset, and I was trying to accept the fact that our shabbos food would consist of a few challah rolls I had kept in our room and the chips and snacks we had brought.
Literally right then, in walks a smiling, bearded Jew. He walks right up to us and says "Hi, I'm Rabbi Danny. Do you want to come to my house for dinner?". I couldn't believe it. I explained to him that not five minutes earlier the hotel had told us that they had lost all our food. He told us that the three guys I had seen earlier were coming to him for dinner, but there was another guy still at the hotel. He had told his friends that if he wasn't at shul by a certain time they should go without him, but Rabbi Danny would have none of that and insisted on walking to the Waldorf to get the fourth guy. We enjoyed a beautiful meal with Rabbi Danny and his wife, and the next day we ate lunch at the JEM center which I had no idea was just minutes away from the Waldorf. It's really incredible how Hashem took care of us, and how Rabbi Danny immediately welcomed us to his home even before he found out how much we needed him.
On Shabbos afternoon, the hotel sent up a gift basket with a box of Matzah, a pack of wafers, a bag of pretzels, some macaroons, and a jar of techina. Clearly they sent someone to the Kosher aisle of the closest store and had them dump it all in the cart. It was well intentioned but we didn't eat any of it.
On Saturday night we went to Trattoria Natalie for dinner.
Sunday morning we did a Warner Brother's studio tour, visited Hollywood Blvd, and then went to Bibi's for lunch. It was boiling hot, and we were exhausted, so we ended up going back to The Grove for a movie. Afterwards we went to Rodeo Drive, and then finally had a chance to try
Bird Scooters that are all over LA. Basically they are electric scooters that are just strewn all over the city. It costs $1 to activate, and then $.15 per minute. When you are finished, you just leave it anywhere. We had a lot of fun zipping around as we made our way back to the Waldorf to get our bags. We ordered some food to go from LA Burger Bar, and picked it up on the way to the airport for our 9pm flight. JetBlue doesn't offer any lounge for Mint passengers, and the only lounge in T5 is the Admirals club which I don't have access to, so we had to rough it out in the terminal for about 20 minutes before boarding.
Upon boarding, we were warmly greeted by the Mint flight attendants. It was like night and day compared to the AA crew. I had assigned us the Mint Suites, since it was a redeye and we would both just be sleeping anyway. The seat was nice, but the footwell was extremely tight. The door was cool but it's just a shtick, especially once you've flown Etihad and Emirates. Once again the TV doesn't tilt down, so it's not great when you are reclined. As always the DirecTV and free wifi makes the flight that much more pleasant. The food actually looked decent, but I had already eaten meat and they served a dairy meal. After they cleared it, I went to sleep and woke up 30 minutes before landing. All in all it was a perfectly nice experience. I would definitely choose Mint over AA in the future.
Well that's it, I actually finished a TR! Thanks for reading!
