I'm pretty happy with this change. My kid's 4 now, so not benefiting from this currently, but I always found the preboard to make our life easier when he was younger. (we never traveled UA while he was younger than 2, so we got this on other airlines) Now that we're flying IAH-MUC-BOM as our preferred route for India trips, this makes me comfortable about flying UA in the future whenever we decide to up our kid count to 2. Not to mention domestic travel in general.

(and yeah, this overhead bin space thing is overblown. With a stroller, backpack, and diaper bag, we'd always try to check as much as could.)