During one of our trips, we needed to get from Las Vegas to Orange County, California. I found a pair of award seats on Delta for 5,500 miles each, so we decided to fly instead of drive there. I put very little thought into our time at the airport. as we were flying out in the morning and were planning to get to the airport just ahead of our flight time. I forgot that we were checking bags and would need to get the airport early. When I checked us in for our flights using Delta’s app, it automatically checked us in for our flight, I had no idea how to add our luggage fee so I’d have to pay at the airport. Fearing a long line, we left extra early for our flight.
This meant that after checking in (a quick process thanks to the helpful Delta agents at LAS) we were through TSA Pre✓® and at the D Concourse of Terminal 1 with 45 minutes before our flight would board. Plenty of time to stop in a lounge and relax.
I was thinking without coffee, so I’ll chalk this up to grogginess and lack of sleep. I pulled up the Priority Pass app on my phone and found there was a lounge I could get into right in the D concourse. The Club at LAS.
We have two outlets of this lounge chain at Orlando Airport and find them to be clean, with decent amenities and not very crowded. We decided to pop in and spend a few minutes.
We really shouldn’t have bothered. This place is TINY!!!! It’s the smallest lounge we’ve even been in. It consisted of two small seating areas. (Pictures from the lounge website)
That is all of the seating this club offers. There were between 20-30 seats in the club, max. It wasn’t busy when we were there but it was still crowded and there was nowhere for us to sit. We eventually managed to grab a table with four chairs (which was wasting two seats but that’s all we had to choose from). Food consisted of a small selection of snacks (think pre-packaged chips and cookies, and some stale pastries) and a coffeemaker. The area does have a bar where you can get complimentary drinks. I wasn’t in the drinking mood so I asked for a can of Sprite.
We hung out for 15 minutes and decided to head to our gate. The nice lady from the front desk came to us as we were preparing to leave and thanked us for coming. She proactively offered us two bottles of water to take with us on our flight. This was a very nice touch and really unexpected from a contract lounge.
In all, I left rather unimpressed. It was better than sitting at a crowded gate but there wasn’t much drawing me back. I didn’t even take pictures of the inside of the club, as it was that bland. I also couldn’t manage to take a picture without getting other people in it (I still don’t feel comfortable taking pictures with strangers in them).
It was only later that I really felt bad about visiting this lounge. That’s because just a few feet from where I was sitting, sipping my Sprite, there was an American Express Centurion Lounge. Look and see how close I was:
I could have been sitting here:
Sipping on this mojito:
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m getting more depressed just thinking about it. How did I forget that there was a Centurion Lounge in Las Vegas? There are only nine of them, so it’s not like there are that many to remember. Having access to AMEX Centurion lounges was one of the reasons I kept a Platinum AMEX card (I’ve since canceled it.) I didn’t pay attention to the lounges in Las Vegas airport because we don’t visit Las Vegas often, When the lounge opened in 2014, I merely scanned the posts about how wonderful this club is. What was the chance we’d ever be in Las Vegas to visit it, anyway?
My biggest mistake was depending on the Priority Pass app to find a lounge. Since I don’t have any status that would get us into the major airline lounges, I depend on my Priority Pass card to get both of us into clubs for free. In order to not make this mistake again, I plan on downloading the LoungeBuddy app and adding it to my folder of travel tools. It lists every lounge in the airports and even offers discounted admission to some clubs.
I’m not going to plan an extra trip back to Las Vegas just so I can visit the Centurion Lounge. It’s the fact that we were there, right there and spent time in a room drinking a soda and eating cookies when I could have been sipping on Prosecco while eating some French toast with caramelized apple and caramel sauce instead of a package of Lorna Doones.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
