Background: For Christmas I’ll be flying to my parent’s place in LaCrosse, WI. Currently the only airline that serves LaCrosse is American, and quite frankly their schedule sucks (Please, Delta, bring back flights from MSP). It appears the only possible way to get there from here is to take a redeye flight to O’Hare and have a super long stopover before the flight to LaCrosse.
So, given that schedule I’d really like to be able to take a nap during that long stopover. I know some airports have sleeping pods you can rent for a few hours. Does O’Hare have anything like that? It looks like they used to have something called Minute Suites, but it seems like they’re not there anymore.
There is also an Admiral’s Club in Concourse H/K open from 7a-10p that advertises day passes for $79. Includes free beer/wine/soda and some pretty good meals. Amenities include a quiet zone with comfortable lounge type chairs.
As far as I know (and @Czarcasm’s link seems to concur) there aren’t any sleep pods or the like at ORD. If your “super long layover” is long enough, and you really want to be able to get a few hours of sleep in a bed, rather than in an airport lounge chair, you could look into trying to get a room at the airport Hilton, which is no more than a 10 minute walk, through the pedway system, from American’s Terminal 3.
Happens every single night. Shit always goes wrong at a big airport and 500 people sleeping in the terminal somewhere is a daily nightly occurrence at every airline hub across the land. All 20+ of them. During a weather disaster the number can top 10,000.
This.
Sleeping in the terminal on some chairs or the floor is for weather failures or random cancellations. If you know you’re arriving at time X and leaving 18 hours later, plan to get a hotel. Either the on-airport Hilton or any of a dozen nearby cheaper places that take 20 extra minutes each way.
You’re not age twenty and you’re probably not broke. The romance of sleeping on the floor isn’t as fun when you’re 60-something,
I did think of that; I actually just stayed there a little over a week ago when I was in Chicago (I really need to post a trip report in that other thread). It would be from 6:30 am to 1:15 pm if everything is on schedule, so just under 7 hours. Well, I guess more like 5.5-6 hours since I need to be at the gate in time for boarding. I suppose that would be enough time, although I was hoping to avoid having to go back through security if possible.
I might go with the Admiral’s Club day pass. It’s not ideal, but it may be the least bad option within the secure area.
Some sites mention that one of United’s clubs has sleep pods, except you can’t buy a day pass for them; rather, they’re only available to United Business Class passengers booked on international flights. Bah.
… and it wasn’t fun when I was a 20-something, just to be clear.
I’ve slept on chairs/benches at both O’Hare and Midway airports. If you can call that “sleep” because it was not at all restful. If you can afford a hotel room get one. Or a day-pass to a lounge with at least some quiet.
That’d put you at going back through security sometime between 11 and noon, depending on how conservative you feel you need to be. Generally, the TSA lines are longer in the morning, and evening; unless it’s a holiday weekend, midday is typically not as bad.
I’d suggest calling the Hilton, and seeing if that kind of stay can be done – it’s not the traditional overnight stay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are accustomed to off-schedule stays. If it’s not substantially more expensive than the day pass at the Admiral’s Club, it may be worth it (especially as you can catch a shower, too).
Just looking online (I haven’t contacted anyone at the hotel yet) it appears that while they do offer “day rooms”, you have to book it for a 9am-6pm window. 1) I don’t need the room that long, and b) If I can’t check in until 9:00 that only gives me 2 hours in the room, which isn’t really worth it.
Plus, if I go with the Admiral’s Club day pass I can pay for it with miles, making it effectively “free”.
Another option would be to just rent a car in Chicago. It would take a little over 4 hours to drive and you would be in LaCrosse before the plane to LaCrosse leaves Chicago. It would also give you a way to get around in LaCrosse.
Given your timing, they might be able to offer you an overnight room, with a late check-in, and a late check-out. Though, the effectively-free lounge is a better deal.
I’ve never had trouble sleeping at O’Hare or any other airport. Sleeping anywhere is one my few natural gifts - though feeling like sleeping isn’t. These days I’d have to be in chair, way back when I could lie down anywhere. I remember O’Hare specifically for being a very clean airport.
Here was my experience. I have repressed the name of the airline. We were flying Seattle to Chicago to Montreal. When we landed in Chicago, around 10 PM, it turned out that the airline’s computer system had shut down and all flights canceled. They were able to book by hand us on a flight leaving Chicago around 6 AM. They gave us a voucher for a hotel and told us to go to some area where a shuttle would take us to the hotel. So we trundeled there with carry on, only to find that the hotel was 35 miles away and didn’t send shuttles to ORD. So I would have to find a taxi, pay a fare for 35 miles and get maybe three hours sleep to get a taxi back in time for our 6 AM flight. It didn’t seem worth it, so we headed back to the airport where we discovered that TSA had closed for the night so were stuck outside of the security area and there no refreshments to be had. So we found a couple of chairs and dozed until 5 when security opened and we went through and found something to eat. Got back home and slept all day.
I travel a lot and see lots of people sleeping in various areas and positions. Travel is rough.
My partner and I at the time were flying to Greece not too long after 9/11. We had an excessively long layover at JFK and brought a couple of those blow up swimming floats and tried to sleep on the floor in one of the terminals. They were soon trashed.
At some point we were able to access the Olympic Airline Lounge (or a lounge that permitted Olympic passengers - we were in business class).
I was able to have a shower and sleep in a small room. Lots of free food and drinks.
That was awesome.
Except for the fact that I forgot to pack a hair brush and one was not supplied in the lounge area. So I brushed my hair with an extra toothbrush I found.
