I'm trying to decide if we will deviate coming back or not. We live in Toronto, so the flight from L.A. is about 5 hours. At the moment we have 4 hours between flights at L.A., and will arrive home about 9 p.m. local time.

Both times in the past we did a deviation and spent the night in L.A. coming home. First time it worked well, because we were on a day flight from PPT, last time it did not work well. Why? We were on the night flight, and arrived in Los Angeles at 9 a.m. I had asked our hotel if we could get an early check-in, and they said they would try, but could not promise. It turned out they could not, and we had to hang out in the lounge until 3 p.m. check-in.

That was gruesome, especially since David's sister, who lives in L.A., had her phone out of service and didn't know it. So she could not come and rescue us.

I'm wondering if we could find a hotel which could do better for us or not. The alternative would be to book a hotel for two nights I guess. Or stay with my sister-in-law, or maybe get her to rescue us at the airport. Any thoughts?