Christchurch
Instead of the originally planned 2:15pm departure on 12 December, the return flight (United 731) left 17 hours later, due to a maintenance issue with the inbound aircraft. The flight crew-- who was the same as the inaugural flight-- seemed to take it in stride, and now-fixed N26909 (a not quite 10 year old 787-8 Dreamliner) gave a smooth if very belated ride back across the Pacific.
With the originally scheduled 2:15pm departure and 6:20am arrival meaning dinner and then breakfast made sense, the revised 7:30am departure meant that made no sense. Amy and her crew entirely reasonably switched things up so that breakfast was at breakfast and dinner was at dinner, even if that meant for some soggy ice cream as a result. Breakfast in United Polaris remains an underwhelming meal but at least it does the job, and dinner was an outstanding New Zealand salmon main course (the rest was... serviceable). Turns out I was seated next to Hue, another member of United's in-flight catering team, and he (and at least two coworkers) had flown out early and were now returning home after helping to set things up in CHC. Hue also mentioned that nothing served out of New Zealand is frozen, everything is fresh (!). Had some nice bits of conversation with various crew members and passengers as well, including one of the captains, about flying and becoming a pilot, which was a nice touch.
In-between meals on the 12 hour 10 minute flight I had the tomato basil soup, which was unfortunately pretty gross. Or maybe I'm just not a fan of tomato basil? And the cheese plate, while decent, was not the most exciting. Still, great job by Hue and his team-- it's clear United is improving, and yes, they are aware that the "croissants" served at breakfast are terrible... and it also seems unlikely that the Chobani is going to go away anytime soon.
Outstanding service on the return actually off in a much less exciting way, with the rather average Air New Zealand lounge at Christchurch Airport. It was actually more than nice enough, but the food spread was modest and overall, it wasn't anything to get excited about. The gate area used is also a bit small for a 787's worth of people, especially if anything other than the baby 787-8 is used. However, once on-board, as noted, the inaugural flight crew continued to be their amazing selves. Got to sit in the cockpit before take-off, and they distributed not only the local newspaper (with the SFO-CHC inaugural above the fold) but signed prints of the official photos. First Office Chris London also noticed how big an #AVgeek I am, and completely unasked-for, gave me a copy of the flight plan signed by all of the pilots shortly before landing in San Francisco. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay cool.
Going from an early morning arrival in San Francisco to a late night one a day later (well, technically not a day later-- landed at 10:54pm on 12 December) meant a second extra night on the trip. The on-premises Grand Hyatt is too bougie for United, but managed to setup my own stay at the Aloft SFO (Milbrae) nearby and get reimbursed. The shuttle runs every 15 minutes so that was a good 30 minutes of lost sleep, but managed to get on the 7:30am return to LAX the next morning instead of the 8:30am, so I could at least make it to work on-time.
Can't complain about Aloft for the six or so hours I was there, hadn't changed much from previous stays. And the next morning, made good use of the meal vouchers that United provided for a lox sandwich at Napa Farms Market. They do great bagels and cream cheese there, with a quality lox, but sadly they're a bit too heavy handed with the veggies. They're actually so generous with everything that it's a bit of a mess to eat.
Final set of photos is most of the inaugural flight swag/return flight swag from the trip. Later realized there was still more I had not yet unpacked. o_0