In reading this thread, it appears that:
- Some folks are ok with eating bone-in chicken while standing up in Amex Centurion Lounge, pretending it's a night market.somewhere in Asia.
- The lack of cheese cube or soup choices is driving decisions on whether to visit United Club or not
- Despite of all the cuts at Admirals Club and Sky Clubs, United Clubs are infinitely worse because, well, there's only hummus and hot sauce to go with crudite
- Only white wines from United Club will give you heartburn, but not the sauvignon blanc from Amex Lounge
- 1 broken coffee machine means that every coffee machine is broken systemwide
Maybe I set my bar low, but I don't think the expectation for an airport lounge is meant to feed you all three meals before or after your flight. True, United Club will never be the same as LH's Senator's Lounge, TK's Istanbul Lounge, or NH's noodle bar at NRT club. At the same time, with my UC membership via the Chase Club card, I was able to access clubs at ATL, BOS, FLL, MCO, SAN, SAT, and SNA and can bring up to 2 friends/colleagues in without additional charges (unlike DL club access with Amex cards). In absence of *G benefits while traveling internationally, it's a good option for some people who do not travel between SFO and SEA exclusively.
One thing that UA needs to do is make the UC experience consistent across all clubs and stop the beta testing. I mean, AC serves the same meager offerings across all of its MLL in North America.