Questions and answers
What a Package is, what a held date does and does not mean, and what this site will not do. Where nobody has stated something, the answer says Not Published rather than guessing at one.
What is a Package, and why does it involve two organizations?
A Package is one school day at the LA Waterfront with two organizations, made of Legs — one Leg per organization. A Leg is not separately bookable, and every Package fits inside a single school day.
Packages come in two shapes. AltaSea + Battleship IOWA is one stop: your class spends the whole day at one site, the host, and the other organization brings a small team and materials to it. Each organization hosts on its own lead day, and you choose the host when you request a date. Cabrillo + LAMI is a two-venue day: the bus visits both, in order, and the catalog publishes the whole route.
Partner feedback relayed on 18 September 2026 by the Battleship IOWA and AltaSea teams. The network has already run a combined AltaSea and Los Angeles Maritime Institute day by hand.
How does booking work for a one-stop Package, step by step?
Each organization hosts on its own lead day. Pick the host, pick one of its lead days outside the booking cutoff, and send the request form. The request is saved with a Booking Reference. No date is held yet.
The host organization is notified of your request and its lead reaches out about fees, whether the date can go ahead, permission slips and arrival details. Any fees are the host organization’s to arrange.
The host lead lets the partner organization know about the visit so it can plan a small team and educational materials for the day.
On the day, your class stays at the host site. The visiting organization runs its program there, so there is one bus stop and no travel between venues.
Partner feedback relayed on 18 September 2026, for AltaSea + Battleship IOWA. Notification to the host organization is not yet live; requests are saved for the host to review.
How much should we budget for the bus?
LAUSD planning example: about $325 per bus for five hours, 9:00–2:00, on an August–March weekday, with principal approval provided at least 15 school days before the trip. Calculated from LAUSD’s published $65/hour rate. This is an estimate, not a quote or a guarantee of bus availability. Rates vary by season, day and approval lead time. Program fees are separate.
LAUSD round-trip billing runs from requested pickup to requested return. A one-stop Package adds no travel between venues; a two-venue day may add travel or waiting time. Ask the district or carrier to price your complete route before assuming a cost.
For qualifying School Boat Tour Program visits, the Port of Los Angeles offers assistance of up to $300. Use its applicable transportation form (Form 78.20R for LAUSD transportation); a waterfront Package alone does not establish eligibility.
Title I schools: do not assume bus costs or admission are automatically covered. Check funding and approval requirements before budgeting — see Funding your bus.
| If your school is… | Rate | A 9:00–2:00 day |
|---|---|---|
| LAUSD, using a district bus | $65/hour under the conditions above | About $325 · estimate |
| Any school using a charter | Request a route-specific quote | Confirm minimum hours, travel and waiting time, mileage, parking and tolls |
LAUSD field-trip rates and billing rules, checked 14 September 2026.
Does Title I status mean our visit or bus will be free?
Not automatically. Confirm eligible expenses, funds and approvals with your principal or district Title I contact. LAUSD requires FSEP approval and a connection to the school’s SPSA. Scholarships and transport subsidies have separate provider requirements; this site does not award funding.
How far in advance do I have to book?
A Package Date stops accepting bookings 30 days before the trip. That is the floor this site enforces, and it is LAUSD’s own filing deadline for an in-state field trip.
Plan on about 6 weeks. Once nurse conferral, cafeteria lead times and the bus rate ladder are counted, that is what the paperwork actually takes — but the site will not refuse a booking at 30 days, because LAUSD would not.
LAUSD field-trip policy sets the floor this site enforces. The district paperwork chain is where the longer number in the copy comes from; enforcing the longer one would refuse bookings LAUSD itself would accept.
What happens after I send a request?
Straight away: a Booking Reference on screen. That is the thing you can quote to the host organization and put on a purchase order once the host has come back to you. No date is held by sending the form.
Then the host organization is notified of your request. When notification is live, this site records a Delivery Receipt — proof that the message was transmitted, nothing more. No venue has agreed to anything at that point. A Venue Acknowledgement is the venue’s own decision about your group, and this site never receives one.
The host lead contacts you directly about fees, the date and permission slips, and tells the other organization. If a week goes by with no word, contact the host organization yourself and quote your Booking Reference.
MISSION invariant 6. A Delivery Receipt is proof of transmission and a Venue Acknowledgement is a decision; collapsing the two is what puts a school on a bus to a venue that never agreed to host it.
Why does a Package say “Not Published” where a price should be?
Because nobody stated one. Not Published is a fact about what has been said: it does not mean free, it does not mean zero, and it does not mean the price went missing from our records.
Only one of the five venues publishes a field-trip price at all. Where a venue has stated a fee, the Package page shows it and says who invoices for it. Where a venue has not, the page says Not Published and you will learn the fee from that venue directly.
A survey of all five venues’ published materials found a field-trip price at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and nowhere else. A site that filled that gap with a zero would be telling schools a fee-bearing day is free.
Who invoices, and how does the school pay?
The venue invoices the school directly, on its own terms, for its own Leg. This site takes no money and moves none: there is no payment page in it, no card field, and no charge column in its database.
That is a design decision, not a missing feature. Keeping money out of the portal is most of what keeps it small enough to check, and it leaves each venue’s own finance office in charge of its own billing.
MISSION invariant 2 and PRD N1 — no payment path, ever. The build fails on a payment dependency, so this is enforced rather than promised.
What do you store about my students?
Nothing. There is no field on this site capable of holding a student’s name, a roster, an age, a medical note or a dietary note — and no free-text box that could be used as one. The booking form asks for the school, a contact for the day, and how many people are coming.
A venue’s own intake may well ask for more, on its own form. That is between the school and that venue: this site does not pre-fill it, does not send it, and never sees what you put in it.
MISSION invariant 1 and PRD N2–N4. Every change is checked for a column, form field or API parameter capable of holding student data, and one fails the build.
Can I cancel?
Yes, up to the booking cutoff — 30 days before the trip — using the cancellation link that comes with your Booking Reference. It is a one-off link and not an account: this site holds no password, because a stored credential is a thing it deliberately does not have.
Every Leg returns together. There is no way to cancel one venue and keep the other — the Legs of a Package move as one, and a half-cancelled day is a school arriving somewhere with half a programme.
Inside the cutoff, contact the network and a person handles it by hand. By then a bus, a purchase order and permission slips are in flight and somebody should be looking at it. The network has not yet set its own cancellation policy; this is what the site does today.
Q9 is open — nobody at the network has decided this yet. The mechanism above is the proposal recorded in this project’s own decision notes: self-serve to the cutoff by opaque link, by hand inside it, and every Leg returning together. It is safe to build on because every policy the network might choose runs through it.