I will be visiting the LA area for 3 days in April. We have considered the Warner Brother's Tour, a mini-van tour of the star's homes, a trolley ride of the downtown area, the Jay Leno Show and a day at the beach (any ideas which beach area?) We are staying at the Best Western Sunrise At Redondo Beach. Any ideas for good restaurants? How can we best avoid traffic?
Thanks for the info.

"How can we best avoid traffic?"

The answer is NOT to stay in Redondo Beach, where you will have to go through momentous traffic every time you go into the city. The big traffic jams are on the many freeways in and out of the city. If you stayed on the west side or in Hollywood, you'd have a whole lot less traffic getting to those things you want to do.

StubKC - Do you already have Leno tickets or are you planning on waiting in line for them day of show? Just wanted to make sure you realize the taping will take up most of the day (plus all morning if you have to line up for them.) With only 3 days in LA (and one already allocated to the beach), that won't leave you much extra time...

Forgot to add -- if it's an option, I'd suggest taking Patrick's advice about changing hotels. Nearly every activity you mentioned is outside of the South Bay, so Redondo is not the most practical location for you. All you'll be doing is adding extra freeway time to your daily drive and it's not worth the hassle if you can avoid it.

First, make sure you mail ahead a request for tickets if you haven't already done so. We requested 3 days and got two in the mail. We missed the first day but went to the second and on the 3rd day we got tickets at the ticket booth in the morning. We waited in line (but were very close the the front of the line) for about 3 hours before the show taped.

I would reserve one day for the beach, one day for leno and afterwards you can drive around Hollywood and downtown area, eat dinner.

For your other day I would encourage you to do the Warener Brothers tour, which is worth it. I think it is a couple of hours for the tour so it will also leave you some time to do some of the other activities. I would personally skip paying for a tour of the stars homes. If you really want to see them, you can buy a map for $7 (more or less) and easily find them yourselves. You can hardly see anything except gates and privacy walls so nothing too exciting. I would stay near Hollywood or Santa Monica for all the things you want to do, the traffic is crazy.

StubKC: BTW, instead of double posting messages when you get no results, you can just type "TTT" on your message and post it "to the top" of the list so that people will see it and realize no one has yet replied. It helps peole realize you still have no response and I've foudn that they are more inclined to take time to reply.

Unless that downtown trolley was taking me to Dodger Stadium for a baseball game I think I would skip it.

Er, not to belabor any points already raised, but have you done ANY planning and consulted a map? Or thought about a "trolley" ride in downtown LA without finding out that in downtown IT'S A SUBWAY?!? A little bit of research would have pointed you to look for lodging in Beverly Hills or Hollywood or West Hollywood. It also would have made it clear that April is NOT beach weather in southern CA (still a bit too cool on the shore).

If you MUST stay in Redondo Beach, you will need to do a lot of research in the area of freeways, alternate surface roads, etc. Warner Brothers is in Burbank. Driving around to see the stars' homes (which may underwhelm you, as many are heavily renovated or demolished) is a Beverly Hills tour. The Tonight Show is filmed in Burbank as well, isn't it? None of these places is convenient to Redondo-- although you can get to BH fairly directly by running up Sepulveda past the airport, then cutting over to La Cienega and then heading west on Wilshire....

As you may gather, the LA metro area isn't laid out like Disneyland. I cannot stress enough that you should move to a hotel closer to the action.

I agree w/ all the other responses. It is not just that Redondo Beach is inconvenient for all of the activities/sites you listed - it will be difficult to even do all of them from a R.B. base.

Why did you select R .B.? Are you getting free rooms or VERY discounted ones? Otherwise you would do much better staying somewhere else.

I will echo the other replies. Don't stay in Redondo Beach. It's not easy to get in and out to anywhere, since it is not freeway convenient. I don't know where you are from, but if you've never experienced LA traffic you don't know how frustrating it can be. I think you should stay in Hollywood, given the things you want to do. The new Renaissance Hotel, or the renovated Roosevelt hotel, both have excellent locations at Hollywood Blvd. and Highland Ave. They are near Graumann's Chinese Theatre and the new shopping complex at the Kodak theatre Ohome of the Oscars). There is a Red Line (subway) stop right in front, which will take you either downtown or to Universal City. If you drive around LA like the rest of us, allow plenty of time. The rush hour starts at about 3:30 p.m. and lasts until 7. In the morning you can forget about traveling anytime past 6:30 a.m. until 9 a.m.

You may get lucky and have good weather for a day at the beach, but be aware that the Pacific Ocean will only be about 62 degrees -- not exactly swimming temp.

All that said, LA is a terrific place; just allow enough time in your days.

One more thing. AAA has terrific maps of the LA area. You can get street maps of each area of the city (Central, West, North Valley), etc. and they have an indispensible freeway map. The fwy map lists every entrance and exit and interchange and tells you which directions you can get on and off. When I first moved here I was totally lost on the fwys. This is the only city where you can be driving down the street and the street turns into a fwy on-ramp!

Thanks to all for the input, it was invaluable. We changed the hotel to the Crown Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Your input was great. We are from NY and don't know anything about the LA area. I sent for the Leno tickets in Jan. but still haven't heard. The Warner Brothers Tour is set and we know some of the sights we want to hit. Thanks again!!!!!

There actually is a "trolley" ride around downtown and L.A., but it is a mini bus made up to look like a trolley.

To avoid traffic, it's best that you start your day's journey after 9 a.m. and before 4 p.m. With the new hotel, centrally located, you don't really even need to take the freeways. You can head east on Olympic Blvd., which will take you all the way downtown in 25 minutes. You can also get to Warnter Bros. by taking Olympic east to Highland, stay on Highland as it merges for about five seconds with Franklin, continue up Highland past the Hollywood Bowl (where it turns into Cahuenga), and turn right from Cahuenga on Barham, and you'll be right there.

If you're going to Universal Studios drop me an email at my hotmail address (tracyishome@) and I will send you a 2 for 1 coupon. I have a few of these if anyone else is interested. I'll have to check the expiration dates.

P.S. 84 degrees today in California! So much for April not being beach weather! You never know!

I took the Warner Bros. VIP tour last Christmas and found it quite interesting and entertaining. It is very different from the backlot tour at Universal (which is great too).

I have been to the Jay Leno taping once and it does take most of the day. I got there early enough and got into the NBC Studios tour before the taping. You should get your tickets, if I remember correctly, about a month before you go.

As an old Brooklyn Dodger fan, I saw the LA Dogers play about a year ago in connection with a home exchange in Long Beach. I found the parking to be very easy--yes, even coming from Long Beach. The Dodgers lost and Duke Snider wasn't playing centerfield but otherwise the game was OK.

Where would I go (on the web) to resere a Warner Bros VIP tour? Thanks!

Hi,

I am staying at the BW Sunrise also and would like to see some of the touristy things in LA. I am thinking I should change hotel locations after reading this post. BUT, since I leave in 2 days, this may not be possible.

So, my question is -- is traffic ANY better on the weekends? Was thinking we could stay in the Redondo Beach area on Thurs and Friday and then go to some of our other interests on Saturday and Sunday.

Thanks.

beach traffic is unfortunately probably worse on the weekends. But if you are just going to stay at the beach on those weekend days (vs. sightseeing), then of course that wouldn't be a problem really.

For Dreamer2:

www.wbtours.com