Mr Hat. What do you mean by paying for drinks? PAX pay for alcohol after they have had their first one free of charge. Although from what I have seen the crew are just giving away 2nd and 3rd drinks because of the extra work involved in charging for extra drinks. All soft drink etc is inclusive. Of course the crew can drinks soft drinks/juices and take a bottle of water off for the hotel.
Hotel is really nice although not in the best location. A fantastic crew room is provided with internet, TV, DVD player, coffee machine and a couple of fridges that the hotel stock up with soft drinks for us.
Current time at hotel is around 50 hours but there is a rumour this might be reduced to a single night in LA. If this happens the feedback from crew I have spoken with is that they will be exhausted and will have to reconsider if they want to stay at V.
No problems with transport to from airport as far as I know and the hotel provide a complimentary shuttle for the crew to various tourist spots.
Onboard food is not too great. We are provided with an economy meal for dinner and breakfast and although the economy food is good it is still an economy (high salt/fat/sugar) meal. Our business class service is on demand so its difficult to judge what is going to be left over for crew to eat (if anything) because a pax might wake up and want lamb shanks with wasabi mash potato at any point during the flight. So to sum up there is plenty of food for crew but not enough healthy stuff.
All pretty good so far. Still teething problems but we are only a month old. Feedback from pax has been very good.