Children's facilities in airport lounges
 

I know it's won't be universal and that some lounges for a particular airline may not have children's facilities while others do have...

Can you tell me which lounges you've seen offer this?


I have bought day passes in EWR to use the family room in the Continental lounge there during a long layover, and it worked very well. It was wonderful to have a clean, quiet place to sit with the kids where they can move about without getting in anyone else's way, too.

I'd like to know all my airline choices for which this is possible. Thanks.

ETA: My kids are young (3 and 10m), so I'd love to know of lounges that tend to have separate accommodations for families and not just lounges that allow children in all areas of the lounge. They are too young to be handle being in the larger, adult part of the lounges without being disruptive.

Some of BA's LHR lounges have play areas for children. Very few other airlines have lounges except perhaps at their hubs with such features.

While it's not common to have such child-friendly lounge facilities in most airline lounges, some airports have designated play areas for children in some part of the airport and no airline lounge access is needed for them: MSP, HEL, WAW are some such airports.

Even some small segment of regional airports in the US have a play area for children, but that's more of an Upper Midwest feature at a very, very limited number of airports than it is a common feature in the US. European airports seem to be sort of ahead in this game. Asian airports are generally more lousy in this regard despite the much higher proportion of youthful populations than is the case in Europe.

Yeah, the more I looked into it today, the more I realized that the family room in the lounge like we enjoyed in EWR is not common at all! That was a real disappointment. :(

I guess depending on which airline we take for our next big trip, we will end up looking into dayroom facilities instead

Off-hand, I can think of the following:
ICN - not in the lounge, but the airport has a great play area for small kids (slides, climbing structures, etc.)

MAD - ditto above, though even better, with separate adjoining spaces for toddlers and somewhat older kids (say 4-10 yo). In T1 A, I think, near the gates and the "Plaza Mayor" self-service restaurant.

BKK - THAI used to have a kids room in the main lounge, though I hear it's been discontinued

IST - the [old] Turkish Airlines lounge had a kids room, but it was pretty bare. Perhaps it has now improved, to match the rest of the swank new TK lounge?

ZRH - the airport itself has a fantastic room for families, especially for those with infants/toddlers. Lots of games, toys, books, as well as changing stations and sinks for washing out bottles and/or food containers.

AA's Admiral Club at JFK has a family room that includes (if memory serves) a television, some computer games, coloring sheets with crayons, and comfortable seeting. It is a glass-walled room within the club. I believe that they have similar facilities as certain other locations.

Kids rooms inside of lounges are a rare find indeed, especially domestically.

CO tends to have them more than others, IME. I can't think of one in an RCC or SC, but there's one at the LAX PClub as well. (Admittedly, I have almost no experience with AAdmirals' Clubs.)

Internationally, SA has nice ones in JNB.

Great to know - we expect to transit through JNB in April.

Trying to remember since my kids are now getting too old to enjoy them- I believe AA has one at most of their hubs- LAX, MIA, JFK, DFW (not sure which terminals) and ORD.

There's a room in the SK/AC London Lounge at LHR which is meant for families and the TG website describes a children's area in one of their lounges at BKK. I'm hoping to use both of these in the near future.
(hope it hasn't been discontinued, I'll print out the page and pull them up on it if they have - yep, still advertising a 'kids corner' 20FEB11 )

Not sure what I'll find at NRT or ICN but I've seen mentions of a play area at ICN, not necessarily in the lounge though. I'll be happy to report back. (sorry, using an iPod and the post about ICN just wasn't visible to me)

Thanks so far, everyone!

I don't even need/want a room with toys and entertainment. The Family Room at the EWR CO lounge is, well, just a room. LOL
It has a TV and a child-size table, but that's it.

We can supply the entertainment. My biggest desire is just to have somewhere quiet and separate. We don't want to disturb others, but being out in the general terminal for hours on end with 2 little ones who need naps during a long layover is hell on wheels.

Last time my son napped and watched DVDs in the family room in the lounge, and my H and I enjoyed a couple of drinks and WiFi/newspapers during our 5 hour layover. It was a dream come true as far as dealing with a layover with a little one. My daughter wasn't even a twinkle in our eyes as that time, so I can only imagine how much of a lifesaver it will be with TWO kids.

I originally got onto this topic because I was thinking about our nezt trip to TLV to visit the family. We like Continental nonstop from EWR, and our lounge experience was fantastic. However, the Continental flights seat 3-3-3, so with a family of 4, that means we either split up 3-1 or 2-2. I was looking into which airlines fly with 4 across in the middle, and that got me to wondering about the option for lounge facilities en route and which is a bigger priority: a good lounge/nap to hopefully help keep the kids from melting down in flight or better seating with the family all together.

In my (our) experience SK lounges are very child friendly. The old lounge at HEL T2 had a room with walls of glass which we always used while waiting for the flight. The SK lounge at CPH has a playroom on the first floor near the lounge dragons. All dragons seem to melt when they encounter small, well behaved, children :-) Best EBG perk is family access to their lounges.

Contract lounges tend to be the exact opposite.

About family access, Star Alliance lounge policy is that all entitled Star Golds are allowed to bring in the entire immediate family into Star Gold business class lounges when departing on a Star Gold operated flight. So if you as a Star Gold flying a Star Alliance carrier that day have 9 children in tow, they are all also allowed in courtesy of Star Alliance policy when dealing with other Star Alliance operated lounges. :D

As one who has been through (and still go thru) this with my two, as an AA flyer, the domestic hubs have separate Kids rooms where there is a TV, kids sized chairs, computers with games on them suitable for most ages. there are some books for younger kids, some cheap toys for toddlers.

your kids can make their noise in there and should be fine.

I've been to them in ORD, DFW (all four terminals I think), LAX, MIA, & JFK

one constant issue I have with these kids rooms is the lack of outlets to plug stuff into. Usually we have a boatload of electronics to charge for the plane or that we don't want to use all the juice before the plane and there just aren't any outlets available

NZ's lounge at LAX has a room for children.

Psst TrojanHorse- send the kids in the kids' room and you sit outside charging everything. I especially like the ones with the big glass walls for this- you can see the kids but still be outside using laptop, etc.