Originally Posted by
ef00
Thank you for the update! What time did the lounge start filling up before the 5-6pm departures?
I would say around 3-4pm it started to fill up. Which makes sense, the IAD flight offered ex-RDU to time into the 5-6pm bank lands around 4pm so I imagine it is similar for others. In this case it was an award trip and due to award availability I could get RDU - IAD - BRU at 66k only if we took the 1030am RDU - IAD flight instead of the 315pm flight so we just did that and worked for the afternoon from the lounge.
Stopped by the EWR Polaris lounge on the way home (will post pictures there) and my conclusion is that the IAD space is much nicer and if given a choice between connecting at IAD and EWR, I would take IAD every time (and that's just based on the lounge alone, not all the other ways that IAD > EWR)