When is your trip? I will do a 2-hr turn-around at MEL in early June. This thread will be helpful for me.

June 2: LAX/MEL/LAX
June 4: LAX/MEL/LAX
June 9: LAX/MEL/LAX
June 11: LAX/MEL/LAX

Four trips so far.

Mine is June 8-10. Please post your experience here after your first two trips. Thanks.

Will do. I’ll likely book other trips in June if the fare stays low.

Well, I’m testing it out with SIN. I’m doing three LAX/SIN MRs this week. Out on Sunday and back on Saturday. I like flying. Being on the ground is for the birds!

Browsing around FT, I found this excellent thread that provides detailed information about connecting in MEL. (Edit: I have to thank mwenenzi, who actually provided a link to the thread in an earlier post.) I was most interested in connecting from one to another international flight in T2. The thread echoes what was discussed here.

I will post what happens when I’m there. I’ve identified two *G lounges. An AMEX lounge and one that accepts Priority Pass, so I’m confident that I’ll find a shower!

Thanks.
There are two *A lounges, Air NZ and Singapore Airlines. Air NZ has showers, but I am not sure of SQ lounge.

1. The American Express Lounge
2. The Air New Zealand Lounge
3. The Singapore Business Lounge (also includes the FC lounge
4. A review of all lounges that includes Priority Pass, which is the Plaza Premium Lounge.

NZ seems to be the best and has showers. AMEX shares a shower with an adjacent lounge, the Plaza Premium lounge, according to one review (review is not accurate). Another review reports that the Plaza Lounge has no showers, but is working to get them. (I have since discovered that the AMEX lounge has no shower facilities; see below). The Singapore Business Lounge has showers.

As I have no first-hand knowledge about any of these lounges, I’ll check them all out when I make my trips in June. I want to sort out the confusion about the showers.

Next, I’m off to find out what visa I will need to transit!

_______________________
Edit

I checked out the website for the Plaza Premium Lounge; it doesn’t appear to have showers!

AMEX Lounge Update

08.05.2019

Hi ContinentalFan,

In regards to your enquiry, unfortunately our AMEX and Plaza Premium Lounge here at the Melbourne International
Airport, do not have any showering facilities at all. If you wish to use either of our lounges, you are more than welcome to.
If there is anything else I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Warm Regards,
Guest Service Officers

www.plazapremiumgroup.com

Thanks. I was thinking the same thing: to be prepared for every eventuality. I think I’ll go for the visa that offers most flexibility.

Exactly, I was trying to do six, but the fare shot up, so I’m left with four. I’m on the first leg now. I’ll post later this week on my experience at MEL.

Please let me know how smooth the transit experience was. Did anyone answer the phone on the other side?
Apparently, I have an Electronic Travel Authorization (e-visa) on my other passport, which is still valid. I guess that UA will only check my name against e-visa site. Just in case, I will bring my other passport with me.
Here are the relevant statements on the last step that I went to.

Please note that you already have a current visa for travel to Australia with the following data and conditions:You should only proceed if you intend to arrive in Australia after the current visa's Expiry Date or if you intend to apply for a different type of ETA.If you choose to proceed, your credit card will be charged with AUD$20.00.
If you proceed, any ETA granted will come into effect once your current visa expires.

Edit: Checked in my outbound segments (three of them) after same-day change to shorten the layover times between segments. App only asked to confirm the passport (that one was not associated with my ETA application) and finished it. Everything was good. It is too early to check in my return flights.

There are no issues in moving from arrivals to departures. I have just arrived home from my first of two MRs to MEL. I return this evening. I left LAX on UA98 and returned on UA99.

UA98 arrives at gate 20 in terminal 2. Here’s a map of that terminal.




Gate 20 is on the top right. After you exit the aircraft, you walk down the concourse, following signs for baggage claim. You make a left turn down the end of a corridor. At the end of that corridor, you’ll arrive at an escalator headed down to the lower level. There’s an overhead sign letting you know that you’re headed to baggage claim or international transit. At the end of the escalator, you’ll see a sign for “Transit.” You turn left, then sharp left. You’ll see a roped off section where people line up—there was no line. I was it.

if you look at the map above, the cordoned line for security is the section just before gate 15B. Just keep an eye out for the sign that directs people in transit to the left and those wanting baggage claim to the right.





You’ll arrive at security screening. Two people were working there. One manned the regular induction coil, the other a back scatter X-Ray device. I was the only person being screened. It took one minute. I then took an escalator into departures. I looked to the right and saw a sign directing me to the lounges.



When you emerge from the escalator, you’re in the main concourse. If you’re going to the lounges, you turn right (following the signs) then left to the lounges.


MEL is really well signposted.


All the lounges are bunched together: Amex, Qantas, Air New Zealand and Priority Pass.


Loads of directional signs everywhere.


Air New Zealand is tricky in that you have to take an escalator down to the lounge. Don’t worry, just follow the signs and you can’t go wrong.


The escalator to the Air New Zealand Lounge.

As I said, all the main lounges are bunched together. If you’ve time, you can move from the AMEX, to Kris Flyer, to Priority Pass and Air New Zealand—they’re adjacent. I have access to all of them, though only at time for the NZ Lounge. The Qantas Lounge is in the neighborhood too.

The Air New Zealand lounge is really excellent. There’s plenty of seating. The food is great. It has one of the best set of showers of any lounge I have visited. The shower suite has about six or seven showers in total. They’re all private. They have excellent shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. They are clean with lots of towels. (I had three bath towels, a flower towel and a hand towel). There are two electrical outlets, but you will need an adapter for the Australian socket.



The shower suites are really spacious.

One of the best shower suites that I have experienced. Each suite has bathroom facilities too.

The shower gives a powerful blast of water. I loved it.

I didn’t take pictures of the buffet, but there’s a typical “English” breakfast: scrambled eggs, sausages, beans and potatoes. There is an assortment of fruits, yogurt, breads for roasting and cereal. I enjoyed Australian Weetabix, which differs a little from the British version, but is excellent.

To recap’, for a MR, MEL is very easy to navigate. I was in 24L in a United B789. I’d say that from the time the door opened to my arrival at the Air New Zealand Lounge in departures, it was, at most, 20 minutes. There are no visa checks—though I had one, just in case—just security. I checked in for the return journey before leaving LAX, so had a boarding pass with me, which I used for the lounge. Overall, it was a great experience and went far more smoothly than I expected.

Additional Comment
June 6, 2019: I tried to make a time-lapsed video of the journey from the aircraft to the lounge: an iPhone in the front left pocket doesn’t work! I’ll try again on Tuesday.

If you’re switching to another international flight, my experience this morning is that no cares if you have a visa for Australia. My passport wasn’t checked. The only people to look at it we’re two screeners when I arrived back at Gate 20 for my return trip. They only use it to confirm that I was the person with the boarding pass. There was no visa check.

In fact, when I checked into UA98 on Sunday, I was told that they couldn’t issue a boarding pass until they checked my documentation. Fine, I thought, I’ve been through this before. However, on Sunday afternoon I got a text that I could check in to flight UA99. When I checked in, I not only got a boarding pass for the return flight but one appeared on the app for the outgoing too. So it’s not clear if anyone checked for a visa. Perhaps it was done electronically.