Escape Lounge at ONT [Closed]
 

As per the Escape Lounge website - Ontario | Escape Lounge | Escape Lounges | Escape Lounges. Lounge Buddy shows that it'll be in T2 (https://www.loungebuddy.com/ONT), so not of help to Southwest and AA flyers in T4. But it's an exciting development!

Website shows hours 4:30am to 8:00pm. They'll need to stay open later if they're going to contract with CI for the TPE flight.

Looks like the lounges might be gone now. T4’s lounge had a “temporarily closed” sign on the door last week when I was passing through, but now Google Maps lists the Ontario Escape Lounge is as permanently closed, and the escape lounge website no longer lists the Ontario locations. Anyone have more details on what happened or what might replace them?

Weird. I got a marketing email from Ontario Airport on May 11 that said that they're open in both T2 and T4 and offering a 40% discount if you pre-book parking. They have my email address from previously pre-booking parking at ONT.

Slightly related, the online pre-booking for parking at ONT is now removed with a note that they're re-doing it and going to relaunch it later. The drive-up price is much higher than pre-book has been all year - Lot 2 General Parking prebook has been ~$12/day for prebook, and is $21/day now for drive up. Traffic is probably increasing enough that they want to make it all short term parking again. Lot 5 is still $13/day but is a little longer walk to the Alaska gates

I submitted a question via the ONT website and got an answer the following day. Of course, I was asking for basic information.

You may not get an answer, but it probably wouldn't hurt to ask. It would only take 2 or 3 minutes to fill out their form:

https://www.flyontario.com/contact-the-airport

The banner on the ONT main page that says parking reservations aren't currently available also says that the Escape Lounges aren't available. I didn't really notice on my first pass through recently because I'd just been trying to reserve parking (it sure was nice to pay $12/day in Lot 2 and have a 3 minute walk to the gate!). It says they'll both be back, but doesn't give details.

ONT Escape Lounge T2 + T4 Permanently Closed as of June 2021
 

I just received a response to my inquiry to Escape regarding ONT lounges. This was their response:

We regret to share that Escape Lounge ONT, in both Terminal 2 and Terminal 4, are permanently closed. We would like to apologize to any customers who have or will be inconvenienced as a result. Great memories have been made at both lounges and we will miss welcoming guests through our doors at ONT. While our journey at ONT has come to an end, we hope to brighten your travels at a different Escape Lounge location in the near future. We continue to operate other Escape lounges across the US and we look forward to opening new locations at FLL, PHX and CMH in the coming months as we build our network across the US and beyond.

Maybe related to this post: Escape lounges to become Centurion Studios?

same as chris i received the email about that long 40% off promotion. I guess the traffic is still too thin? When did they open Lot 5?
And for the pre-booked parking, the QR code scanner is a joke. My phone doesn't even fit in the tiny slot. I'm glad I print it out but still takes many tries to get it scanned.
Just 1 month not travelling from ONT and so many changes!

Lot 5 seems to have re-opened around the time that they stopped taking the advance booking on parking, so maybe some time in early June? I last parked at ONT in March because they kept cancelling all my evening flights and moving me to 11am so I'd change the trip to be out of LAX and add segments through SEA.

ONT has issued an RFP for new operators for the two lounge spaces:

Any guesses on why Escape Lounge has gone from really into ONT (two lounges) to adios? It's been a long time since I've flown out of ONT, but from my outsider perspective it looks like things are getting back to where they were, pre-pandemic. I don't see what's changed since Escape moved in.

I suspect it's more related to the Amex Centurion Studios takeover. ONT has been pretty quiet through the pandemic - I've booked a lot of flights out of ONT that I either had to switch to LAX or change flights and add a connection to when they were cancelled, but seems like it's become pretty stable finally. I think I have 4 or 5 trips booked out of ONT that have been stable through multiple AS schedule updates now. But with Escape Lounge changing to Centurion Studios, Amex or the lounge operator might have decided that the ONT demographic doesn't include enough potential Amex Plat customers to justify converting those lounges. From checking out the Centurion Studios threads, it sounds like they're not going to open those lounges to PP, and I don't know if they have a one-off rate or special rates for gold and green card holders as teasers.

(ETA: they do have one-off rates, but I can imagine the amount of business they see for the next couple years at ONT isn't enough to justify keeping them open. Once you're airside, ONT doesn't seem to be terribly crowded or hectic, even if the flights are all full and the TSA checkpoints are understaffed.)

Travel is so upside down right now that parking and ground transport are as big a driver of the airport I choose right now as anything else. With no economy lots right now, and private lots booking up early, parking has gotten really expensive at LAX, and uber/lyft to the airport have uncertain waits and the lowest price you'll see is still almost 2x pre-pandemic, and can be much more. Economy parking at BUR was closed until about 3 weeks ago. ONT has walkable parking (even from the farthest cheap lot), but you have to face the 210 East for evening flights.

Why not the 10 East as well?

David

The 210 seems to be worse than the 10 for me when I have a ~7-7:30 flight. The merge onto the 10 seems to be slow, but even with the construction going on it hasn't been that bad.

Though if there were lounges I might consider going really early and doing my last few telecons of the day from the lounge.