05/17/2010Wow, what a nightmare. Will NEVER park here again. Why? First of all, the parking is in a garage where the first three floors are reserved for regular parking renters. So you have to drive to the fourth floor before you can even begin to look for parking. And the fourth floor is marked "Valet Only - Will Tow Other Cars" or something like that. Coming in on a Friday evening, ALL of the rest of the parking floors, all the way to the uncovered rooftop, was completely FULL. So I ended up circling all the way to the rooftop (some 7 floors or so), and on back down to the fourth floor, looking for parking and not finding any. I was about to miss my flight. So I parked in one of the "Valet Only" slots on the fourth floor. Fortunately, the lot decided not to enforce the sign and my car didn't get towed. The next big nasty was to find that the elevator only went to the SECOND FLOOR. That's right, you have to WALK DOWN (and even worse, on your return, WALK UP) one floor to the cashier and the shuttle. Now, the worst experience was the return shuttle trip. It was a Sunday evening. Yes, LAX was maddeningly crowded and the traffic horrible. I waited for over 45 minutes for a shuttle. Our shuttle was packed and the poor driver (who really did seem to be trying hard, I felt sorry for the guy) had to leave four other customers at Terminal 7 by the curb. In all, it took me about an hour from the time I got my baggage at the airport before I got my car back. And oh, the cashier tried to rip me off. I had a reservation for this parking through this website, for price of about $19 or so which I gave to her. She handed me a credit card charge slip of over $45. I grabbed the reservation back from her and told her, no, this says I only owe you about $9+. So she handed me a refund slip for the remainder. This story is not over yet, as you might expect. Suspicious person that I am, I fully intend to check my Visa statement to make sure that they put the refund through. So, to summarize, if you are not physically fit enough to carry ALL OF YOUR LUGGAGE UP ONE FULL FLIGHT OF STAIRS (for the return home), DO NOT USE THIS PARKING LOT. If you do not want to hassle with an overbooked parking lot that runs short of parking spaces and pickup shuttle vans during the peak times, do not use this parking lot. If you do not want to hassle with making sure that you actually get what should be a guaranteed reservation low price, DO NOT NOT USE THIS PARKING LOT. That doesn't leave too many people, I don't think, so I think it would be safe to simply say DO NOT USE THIS PARKING LOT. I surely will never use it again.
GP - Oak Park, CA
