OpenVPN was designed for the "Starbucks WiFi" scenario, it can traverse a NAT, and uses standard TLS. It therefore appears like any other HTTPS traffic and will be very infrequently blocked.
There's nothing inherently wrong with L2TP/IPSec; it is secure and fast. Just nicer to blend in with other TLS traffic for reliability reasons.
For a specific example, GoGo Internet (in-flight WiFi), doesn't allow L2TP/IPsec unless you use UDP encapsulation. OpenVPN works out of the box.