Tension running high here.
I had ~50min to kill. Stopped by but saw a sign blocking the escalator which said the lounge was at capacity and their waitlist was closed. A lady saw that and turned away exasperated. We were going to turn away also, but I saw a guy wall right around the sign and up the elevator so I just followed him.
Turns out the sign was incorrect, because they were indeed putting people on waitlist. Took over 10min just to check in and was quoted 20min. Frustrating thing was that there were two employees at the desk with one of them just checking people in while the other checking people in while policing entry by people cutting lines and trying to sneak in as well as people cutting lines to do the secondary check-in after receiving text that it’s their turn. Unfortunately we got stuck with the latter employee, and consequently two groups behind me got to be checked in by the other employee before we did. The desk employee looked understandably stressed out trying to police entry, dealing with two different groups of guests, and dealing with complaints.
We got in after 15min. There was a line for check-in as before, and we only had ~20min at this point so we cut the line and walked in through the exit side (similar to what others were doing) and showed the desk person our text and told her our name. She waved us in, but we got cursed out by someone for cutting line.
The lounge was very busy but we were able to find seats at a shared table. I think we were lucky, though, because I saw others walking around looking for seats. The food here is very impressive, best I’ve seen in America, even better than Delta. They had a pork plate and chicken in white cream sauce, wild pilaf, sautéed veggies, numerous high quality desserts, very nice mesclun. I wish I had an hour here instead of 20min.
If I had 90 min to kill, I think I’d pay $50 to use this lounge, which is the guest fee that kicks in next Jan. The food here exceeded my expectations. But, Even though this is a relatively new lounge, it is already a situation where the demand seems to be exceeding capacity, resulting in stress and angst. My 50min of spare time turned into 20min of lounge time, whereas it would’ve been 45-50min at United Club. The tradeoff is the F&B offerings.