<p>I am the dad of an incoming freshman daughter. The hotels and B&B's near campus have been booked for weeks. I was wondering if any grad students/staff plan to leave for the weekend and would like to lease their apartment or room for Friday and Saturday (Oct 19 & 20)</p>
<p>I plan to be on campus with my daughter or enjoying activities all day and evening or at the game. So just need a place to sleep and park a car. I am a professional person (PhD), very easy going and flexible, used to camping (as in roughing it). My primary criteria is walking distance to campus along a safe daytime route. </p>
<p>Please send me a private message or if anyone has an idea I have not considered, please pass it along.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Well this is a site that you might feel useful. It answers all the faqs of parent weekend.
[USC</a> Office for Parent Programs](<a href=“http://sait.usc.edu/parent/tpwfaq.asp?CategoryID=46]USC”>http://sait.usc.edu/parent/tpwfaq.asp?CategoryID=46)</p>
<p>One of the faqs listed on the site is:
Where can I stay during the weekend?
For assistance with your travel plans and hotel reservations, please contact STA Travel at (213)254-2662. PLEASE BOOK EARLY AS LOCAL HOTELS WILL SELL OUT.</p>
<p>I booked a hotel room back in June, well before orientation info came out for TFW. I figured that there would be a parent weekend and I wanted to make sure I could get a nice room and a flight out to LA. STA Travel already had lots of booked rooms when I called and I didn’t get my first choice. The booking agent told me that you can start booking rooms through them in April and she said that a lot of people do. Unfortunately, most incoming freshman parents wouldn’t know that. I wouldn’t worry, though. There are lots of hotels in LA and surrounding areas. It may be more difficult now to get a room close by but if you have a car, who cares. It might be kinda nice to have some quiet relaxing time away from all the festivities.</p>
<p>Just as we did last year, we booked through AE Hospitality (founded by a Trojan!) to get a great apartment downtown for Family Weekend. Since the Radisson jacks up its price for the weekend, our two-bedroom apartment actually ended up being the cheaper of the two options. Booking is easy-peasy through this link, which I’m hoping that I can just paste here without breaking any rules: [AE</a> Hospitality | Short Term Furnished Rentals in LA and NY](<a href=“http://www.aehospitality.com%5DAE”>http://www.aehospitality.com)</p>
<p>One more tip about AE Hospitality. There’s a glitch in the way their search feature handles dates. Plug in a data range of one week or longer to get the search results, and then go to the availability calendar for the specific property to see if it’s available. You’ll probably have to give them a call (so much for the easy-peasy booking – I’d forgotten about that glitch) but they do have plenty of apartments available downtown.</p>
<p>If you have a car, why don’t you just stay downtown? It’s a ten minute drive and there are tons of options. There’s also light rail from downtown to campus.</p>
<p>So: last year for Parents Weekend we booked rooms at the Vagabond Inn, which is right next to campus and isn’t the most luxurious place but there would be no need for parking. Like the Radisson they also increase their rates for Parents Weekend but–well, it’s close. </p>
<p>What we did not know is that the very nearby Shrine Auditorium would be host to an outdoor “Hard Halloween” music festival that same weekend. There was incredibly loud music, so loud it shook the hotel, both Friday and Saturday nights until 2 a.m. The Vagabond was not willing to refund our money or help us move somewhere else. They did supply earplugs.</p>
<p>I don’t see a date listed online for this year’s Hard Halloween and it may be that it will come after Parents Weekend, which is earlier this year, so maybe it won’t be a problem. Just wanted to issue a warning for those who might be staying near the Shrine.</p>
<p>Downtown or elsewhere with rail is the other option. The TWE page made parking at/near USC sound very difficult this weekend.</p>
<p>I’d advise staying downtown and taking the expo line light rail to campus. There are plenty of hotels downtown (this is where I had my family stay) and they just took the expo to campus. This was perfect as you don’t have to deal with traffic or parking which tends to be a nightmare on the day of the football game.</p>
<p>There are also a bunch of lovely restaurants downtown to check out as well (make sure you do brunch at Botegga but mind the wait to get a table on weekends).</p>
<p>Thanks Kulakai–seems like a plan!</p>
<p>Some people have had excellent luck using priceline and maybe hotwire to book 4star hotels downtown for good prices. You won’t know the exact hotel, but the star-rating can be pretty comforting. There was info on an old thread with details. Perhaps you can run a search.</p>
<p>the Omni in downtown LA , near Disney Hall , has a special USC parents rate. We always stayed there when visiting to DS, but booked it as far in advance as possible. They have a free shuttle service which can take you to the nearest Expo line station.</p>