I used the J lounge on my way to DOH on Friday, departing at 21:40 so one of the medium busy periods, not quite the 2am / 8am crush.

I will admit to being quite picky, particularly given the sheer amount of time and space they had to work with. A few thoughts:

- As I am temporarily Silver, I had to buy access for my travel companion - the paid access fee had increased from AED 440 to AED 590. Ouch. If it wasn't for the excitement of a new lounge, I would have probably settled for the Pearl lounge for this trip.
- The entrance of the lounge is on the outer corridor with an annoying detour from the duty free area. Pro tip: If you go through the corridor next to Le Gourmet towards the toilet and then turn right, it saves a good amount of unnecessary walking.
- The lounge has a long linear footprint, which I thought was a strange choice given the sheer amount of space in the new terminal.
- When you first enter the lounge, they will tell you that the "dining area" is behind the desk on the 3rd floor (same level as the entrance). Although the food was more or less the same as the top floor, the decor, lighting, furnishing and ambiance was nowhere near standard that you find in the rest of the lounge; it almost felt as though they intended the ground floor to be part of a lesser lounge. Next time, I will ignore this room and go directly to the top floor, where there is another restaurant area next to the bar.
- Even on the 6th floor, the buffet area felt unnecessarily crowded due to the buffet stations being too small and close to each other - another curious design decision.
- Food felt more or less the same quality as before. Champagne on offer was Devaux, which was fine. The bartender I interacted with on the 6th floor was unsmiling and didn't seem to want to be there.
- It was already pretty busy between 7pm-9pm, and I could well imagine that it will be rather packed for the 2am / 8am departure banks.
- I wanted to check out the shower room just to take photos, but there was already a queue so I wasn't able to. Again, I'd imagine it might be challenging to have a shower during the 2am departure bank.
- There will be a spa which is not yet open - interested to see what they will offer, and whether it is as good as the previous iteration.

It felt like an improvement overall but not anything transformative, despite the opportunity that the new terminal presented. Maybe it will grow on me as I use it more frequently?