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Patience, Plenty Of Time Needed For Start Of Thanksgiving Holiday Getaway

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Planning on flying out of LAX Wednesday? Pack your patience.

Wednesday will be the peak of the Thanksgiving holiday travel crunch at Los Angeles International Airport, with between 228,000 and 239,000 passengers expected to pass through the facility. A similar number of people will flow through the airport on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

A record 2.38 million travelers are expected to pass through LAX during the holiday travel period, which began last Friday and ends Monday, up 2.3 percent from last year.

Kellie McDonald said she warned her family it would be chaotic traveling the day before Thanksgiving. She and her family flew in from Australia, and are going on to Denver to celebrate their first Thanksgiving in the U.S.

"We got here like three hours early. It wasn't fun," her daughter said.

Want to avoid the travel crush? Traffic through airport is expected to trickle down to fewer than 200,000 people on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but will peak again on Sunday.

And if you're already headed to the airport and planning to park your vehicle, you can track available parking in real time on the Los Angeles World Airports website.

A similar crush will hit Southern California's freeways Wednesday – an estimated 3.87 million locals will travel for the long weekend, 86 percent them by car.

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The five top destinations for Southern California travelers are San Francisco, San Diego, Anaheim, the Grand Canyon, and Santa Barbara. Nationally, Anaheim – home to Disneyland – is expected to be the second-most popular Thanksgiving destination, according to the Auto Club.

(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)

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