Sadly we are on the last leg of our amazing trip in the US. Today we fly to L.A for our anticipated 3 night stay at Magic Castle Hotel in Hollywood. It’s a long 6 hour flight, excluding the extra airport time but the kids are great, there are no delays or turbulence and the scenery out the window is beautiful! 
We arrive at 2.30pm so plan on doing some shopping on the way the hotel. Well, that was the plan…. until we turn up at the car hire place! OMG, the line is out the door and down the street!? I’m truly baffled how, when everyone needs to book their car online, in advance, as a company, you can’t schedule staff for that. 45 min later, my patience has moved to zero and I head in to complain. There is one, ONE guy at the counter serving. I ask if he can call someone as he has been with the same person the whole time. He replies smugly that he is the only one on and that there is no one else. After a few choice words none of which I can repeat here, I head back in line to inform everyone that we are in for a long wait. We are, believe it or not, the lucky line. There is another one for a different company, and most of the people there have been waiting already 3 hours. Another 1.5 hours later…. people are starting to come back from out the back yelling at all the staff and telling everyone still in line that there are no cars!. Yep, they don’t have any left and people are waiting outside for other customers to bring them back. Another hour later… we finally get to the front counter. We ask if it’s true there are no cars and he scoffs ‘of course there are’. Another 30 min later….. We get outside and low and behold… there are NO cars! We seriously need to wait for someone to drop one back and wait for it to be cleaned. It takes 40 min for this and finally we are out of that place! It’s now approaching 7pm and we are more than tired and hungry. We head straight for the hotel and sanity!
Thank goodness I booked this place. It’s not 5 star in appearance, but it makes up for it in service. I picked it for this exact reason. Unlimited chocolates, treats, soft drink, juice, popcorn, ice cream, dvd’s and the best bit, they have a laundry service! Yep ladies you heard me. They will happily take all those dirty clothes, wash them, fold them perfectly and drop them back to your room. Heaven right there folks! The ladies at the front desk are amazing. The hand over some chips and juice to the kids as soon as we walk in. They then organise for dinner to be delivered to our room for no extra charge. Another hour later, and wine and goodies are also sent in for our Wedding anniversary. The room is one of the biggest we have stayed in, complete with chocolates and fluffy bath towels for us and the kids.
The pool is open 24/7 here so even tho it’s late, the kids want to get in. It’s supposed to be heated so off we go! Unfortunately it isn’t as warm as they would have hoped so it’s a super quick swim and then back to the room with some warm apple cider and ice cream.
