dag16

hi all, a question about access to this lounge. I'm flying SAN->ORD->YYZ tomorrow. I'm GS, have united club membership, and all legs are in first class. given the international first class portion, it seems like I can go into the polaris lounge, right? on the return, it's a one class plane back YYZ->ORD, and then i'm in first from ORD->SAN. If my reading is correct, I wouldn't be able to access the lounge in this instance, right?
thanks!

WineCountryUA

Transborder flights are not eligible for Polaris admission.

posted earlier

1353513636

I passed through today and asked the dragon about the access rules. She said that you can enter any Polaris lounge if your *A C/F flight departs within the next 24 hrs or your UA C/F flight arrived within the last 24 hours or departs in the next 24 hours (and if you enter before the 24 hours after arrival are up, they won't make you leave when you hit 24 hrs).

I got to say the place is gorgeous. How much you wanna bet they'll water down Polaris lounges and on-board experience before they finish installing all the new seats and building all the new lounges?

FlyfromDenver

Too easy on the bet. It began awhile ago.

Hipplewm

You could have until they changed the rules a few months ago.........

Hipplewm

You mean again, or did you not know about the already 2-3 waterings?

1353513636

What did they cut from the lounge already? Only thing I noticed was they moved the dining area far from the kitchen so the service was really slow and the tables are too small to work on as well as there being no outlets, and you can't order off the a la carte menu if you don't sit there.....seems like they don't want people ordering off it.

kirkwoodj

You also mentioned on-board offerings, I think those are the waterings being referred to...

RobOnLI

I was in this lounge a week ago. It was very quiet when I was there from about 5-7pm.

I sat down across from the bar and was surprised to see no setups on the tables (tableware, napkin, etc.). It took me about 10 minutes to realize no one was going to serve me there and that they expanded the club to a new dining section in the back part of the club.

I have to say, I don't love the dining area. The new area has these very awkward (IMO) booths that all face the tables across the aisle. So everyone is staring at everyone else. And two of the five or so booths have pillars blocking half of them. I get they did the best they could with the space and it's not going to stop me from going to the lounge on international J tickets. It just feels a bit awkward.

United should have put a sign up on the 'old' restaurant tables about where to find the new service area for dining.

Thanks,
RM

Hipplewm

Lounges watered down (Although probably a good thing) in that Int'l J tickets on AC no longer qualify for access
On plane experience:
Already removed one pillow
Wine flights are incredibly sporadic at best
Gel pillows are hard to come by (At first they were hard to find (FA's weren't sure where they were or what they were) now they are plain scarce
Mattress Pads are also scarce
Sundaes - enough said - paper cups - really
Plane conversions are going horribly slow

In general not a SINGLE lounge has opened in 2017 - which means as of next week it will be 13 months and counting since the Chicago Polaris Lounge opened and nothing else has been opened on the lounge front - that to me is a huge "Watering Down"

But, I mean other than that, Polaris is a HUGE success

seacarl

I was in the lounge for the first time about a week before Christmas and I was blown away by how nice it was. The individual seat units with the sliding tray are well designed. The individual bathrooms are nice. The food on the buffet was great. The sit down dining was great. In my opinion, it is far superior to the UA Global First lounges that I have experienced. And really it is at the state of the art for an international business class lounge. Better than NH or LH or LX, maybe on a par with TK and SQ.

I hope UA keeps it up and can afford to keep it up.

When I arrived, the agent at check in mentioned the location of the dining area. That seems sufficient to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobOnLI

I have to say, I don't love the dining area. The new area has these very awkward (IMO) booths that all face the tables across the aisle. So everyone is staring at everyone else. And two of the five or so booths have pillars blocking half of them. I get they did the best they could with the space and it's not going to stop me from going to the lounge on international J tickets. It just feels a bit awkward.

I didn't think the layout was problematic or any different than you would find in a typical restaurant. When I got there only one table was unoccupied, so it's clear that they need the 10 tables. I thought the food was excellent, and I'm happy with the small portion sizes that let you sample several things. It did take a long time to get served, which is not ideal if you have an imminent departure. But the dishes on the buffet looked good, too.

I was surprised/disappointed that there are no newspapers or magazines out. Maybe I'm the last person still reading print newspapers, but I do still like my newspaper - especially on the airplane for the time when laptops can't be used.

cfischer

Agreed. Good start from UA but things have been going at snails pace since then.

StuckinITH

Papers are on request only. You need to ask them to the attendant in the shower section. They have the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Sadly, No New York Times. They also have some Chinese papers.

Since our flight from small town arrives in the F concourse in Terminal 2, my wife does a quick stop to the UC there to check if they have interesting magazines but lately the choices were not so good.

seacarl

It's ridiculous that they don't have the NY Times and the local Chicago paper. They used to have all those plus USA Today in the UCs. And they should be out where you can help yourself.

By the way, I tried to multi quote to answer some previous, but that doesn't seem to be working - at least not with this software and the Microsoft Edge browser.

seacarl

In fairness, there were too many pillows and no place to store them.
I have not had any problem getting a gel pillow but I ask for them right at the start of the flight. I've also not had any problem getting the mattress pad, but not sure it is worth the bother
I think it is ridiculous that a year in they are using cardboard for the sundaes. How hard can it have been to have found some kind of non-descript china replacement? Or to use the old sundae dishes. I suspect that there is something about storage involved. I do wish that the salads were a little bigger and that they went back to offering choices of breads.

As to the pace of aircraft conversions, having recently flown C in a 3-class 772 after 3 flights in a 77W, I do have to agree that I wish they'd convert the aircraft faster. C in the 3-class 772 is pretty horrible in comparison. My understanding, however, was that UA wanted to gain some practical experience with the seats to see if anything needed to be tweaked either for maintenance or customer feedback before doing the fleet upgrades. For all I know there could be some kind of accounting issue as well (if previous seats aren't amortized.) What I find perplexing, however, is that they haven't been aggressive about putting the new seat into new deliveries of the 788 and 789, and have continued taking deliveries with the old seat.

As to the pace of lounges, I think UA quickly realized with the experience in Chicago that the planned lounge sizes were not large enough and went back to redesign the other lounges to increase capacity so that there would not be overcrowding issues on day 1. If that is the reason for slow pace, I agree with that decision.