Originally Posted by
evergrn
My US-domestic travels are limited, haven't found airline fee credit to be all that beneficial with Hilton Aspire due to lack of flexibility, and I don't really use Uber. So really I was after the Centurion Lounge access for me and the family mostly in SEA but sometimes in HKG. Centurion lounge access certainly wasn't meant to be the icing on the cake... for me, it was central to signing up for the Plat card. With UC policy changing this Nov, I was gearing up to ditch UC for Centurion lounge, but this first experience tells me Centurion lounge will not be a replacement. It's extremely rare for me to not find an available seat at UA Club. SEA's UC is never packed even if it gets busy sometimes.
I understand that the sign-up bonus alone would cover the annual fee. And I can always figure out ways to make use of those other benefits. But AMEx Platinum card to me is really just a membership card that earn poorly asides from air tickets and provide poor travel protection. So I much would've preferred to instead have gotten CSR and its slightly lower AF (albeit also slightly lower sign-on bonus) and flexible travel expense credit and superior protection, had I known that Centurion lounge was going to be a disaster.
Anyways, I'm just explaining why I would cancel the card if I could.
Based on this comment, I guess I will just have to stick it out. My fault for not doing enough due-diligence on SEA Centurion Lounge situation.
Probably not going to be that exciting for you given your intention to cancel the card already, but one option to overcome the issue of getting the whole family in would be to add your wife as an authorized user, which costs another $175, but would come with the benefit that she would have her own card and could access the lounge even if she was traveling without you, if that's a common occurrence. She would also get most of the other benefits, like hotel and rental car statuses and her own Priority Pass card, and by presenting both cards you'd have enough access to get the whole family in while you're traveling together.
The $175 fee also gets you up to 3 authorized users, so if there were others (parents or something) who you would trust to have as an authorized user on your account and who would benefit from the lounge benefits and other features, you could get further benefit and/or get others to split the costs with you that way.
But yeah if you're primarily looking for SEA and HKG lounge access it may just not be for you. The SEA club is often overcrowded, and IMO the HKG club is not quite to the same quality standards that the US clubs are. (HKG also has a few just-about-as-good Priority Pass lounge options which you could access through the PP card available through various credit cards, though again in most cases you'd need 2 PP cards to get the whole family in for free.)