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Over a decade ago, I remember sitting outside one of the airline club rooms at LAX. Why was I doing that, you may ask? Well, my parents, who were flying international business class, were inside. My friend and I, who were flying international economy, were not inside. The lure and lore was just too great for us, I guess, that we’d rather sit outside the club room (!) than wait for the flight (and my parents) at the gate.
Needless to say, I don’t frequent airline club rooms at the airport. In fact, I had never been in one…until now.
We’ve had a United MileagePlus Explorer Card for a couple years. One of the benefits attached to the card is receiving two one-time passes to a United Club each year. So, for our recent trip to Hawaii, we just had to utilize this card benefit and check out United Club LAX! (And since we had an early afternoon flight, we were counting on United Club LAX to feed us lunch.)
Once inside, the seating choices are quite numerous. There are pods of arm chairs with charging stations, restaurant-style booth seating options, and even this patio area.
Our family found a large round table that suited our needs. We immediately set-up the girls with bread, cheese, carrot sticks, Sprite (hey, we’re on vacation), and granola/fruit/yogurt parfaits.
My favorite station was the cheese station. Oh, and I guess there’s some veggies there too!
While there are no hot meals served in United Club LAX, there was definitely a wide array of options, including all the things we’ve mentioned here, plus salads, soups, cookies/brownies, and Coca-Cola Freestyle machines. We did not go hungry. Our time in United Club LAX crossed over their breakfast and lunch/dinner times, so we had both the yogurt parfaits and this delicious salami, mozzarella, grape tomato, and pesto combination.
One of the things my husband and I enjoyed most was the availability of customized espresso drinks. We’ve loved Illy coffee for a long time, so to be able to have several Illy espresso machines right there in the United Club LAX was so fun! One Americano comin’ right up!
Illy Americano and snack mix…airport lunch of champions! We did eat other things, but you know…
Once the girls were done eating, we busted out some homeschool work. Yep, homeschooling in United Club LAX! The big table made it easy to spread out and get some work done…much easier than sitting at the gate.
How about an Illy latte for Mommy?
In addition to the United Club benefit, we’re not sure how it happened, but we were also given United Premier Access. This meant that there were special check-in lines we could use, priority boarding, and priority baggage handling. We’ll take it!
Once on board and looking through the in-flight magazine, we were reminded of the Illy coffee and United Club LAX that we had just been in.
P.S. This is the fanciest ginger ale can I’ve ever seen!
We’re glad we got to experience United Club LAX. Having the free passes is really what made it possible. We wouldn’t have been able to swing it otherwise. It was definitely better than sitting at the gate for a couple hours, given that we had a “free” lunch, endless Illy espresso, checked off some homeschool items, and the bathrooms were way nicer too!
If you’re flying United out of LAX, we would definitely recommend waiting for your flight in United Club LAX.
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