Winter is here, and where chanye lives it was unbelievably cold. I originally had no plans to go anywhere, but at LD’s strong insistence, chanye booked a 9-day itinerary just two days before departure: Miami, FL - St. Thomas, USVI - San Juan, PR. Of course, since chanye is based in Oklahoma, both the outbound and return flights were through DFW. There’s a lot to say about the trip as a whole, and I’ll save the rest for a future post. This time, I just want to talk about the airport lounge-hopping experience and all the eating and drinking along the way.
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To do a good job, one must first sharpen one’s tools
Lounge Availability
This trip’s flight route looked like this: DFW-FLL, MIA-STT, STT-SJU, SJU-MIA-DFW. The airports in bold red are the ones where we could get in some lounge eating and drinking. (A quick note: at most airports, you can only access lounges when departing or connecting. A small number of airports have lounges that also admit arriving passengers, and some smaller airports don’t have lounges at all.)
You can look up DFW lounges on the airport’s official website. The ones I mainly cared about were:
AA Admirals Club(A24, B3, C20, D24) - Citi Prestige/Citi AA Exec
AMEX Centurion Lounge(D17) - AMEX Plat
Delta Sky Club(E22) - AMEX Plat/AMEX Delta Reserve
The Club at DFW(D21) - Chase Ritz-Carlton/Priority Pass Select - Citi Prestige/AMEX Plat
You can look up MIA lounges on the airport’s official website. The ones I mainly cared about were:
AA Admiral Club(D30, D16) - Citi Prestige/Citi AA Exec
AMEX Centurion Lounge(D12) - AMEX Plat
For SJU, the lounges I mainly cared about were:
AA Admirals Club(Terminal C) - Citi Prestige/Citi AA Exec
Avianca Operated by Global Lounge(Terminal C) - Chase Ritz-Carlton/Priority Pass Select - Citi Prestige/AMEX Plat
Cards You Need
The last item listed for each lounge above is the card you need to get in and enjoy the food and drinks. Specifically, these are the main ones:
- AMEX Platinum
- Citi Prestige
- Chase Ritz-Carlton
- Citi AA Executive
- AMEX Delta Reserve
- Chase UA Club
- Priority Pass Select
Of course, the last one, Priority Pass Select, can also be obtained through Citi Prestige and AMEX Platinum.
Dallas (DFW), TX
Since my first flight, DFW-FLL, was at 7:15 in the morning, I got to DFW at around 6:00 a.m. We hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. (The breakfast at the Hampton Inn we stayed at in Dallas wasn’t offered until 6:00, and to avoid missing our flight, we checked out at 5:00.) So at that point, our lounge requirement was simple: as long as we could get some hot food, we were happy. We had two options then. One was to use the benefit from Citi Prestige to enter the AA Admirals Club; the other was to use the AMEX Plat benefit to enter the AMEX Centurion Lounge. I had done a little homework beforehand and found that opinions on the AA Admirals Club were mixed, while the AMEX Centurion Lounge got almost universally good reviews aside from the limited number of locations. So I figured we’d go to the AMEX Centurion Lounge first, and if there was time, maybe swing by the AA Admirals Club afterward.
As it turned out, we never had time to stop by the AA Admirals Club. I felt a little regret at the time, but after visiting the AA Admirals Club in Miami later, I realized this was absolutely the right call.
American Express Centurion Lounge
For information on the DFW Centurion Lounge, see the official page.
This lounge is located on the second floor around a corner, and you need to take the escalator up. The entrance looks like this:
The front desk looks like this:
Since this trip was during the year-end holiday season, the front desk gave each of us two small gifts: a power bank and a box of chocolates.
Of course, what we cared about most was the food, so here’s what the buffet area looked like:
We got there pretty early, before breakfast service had fully started, so the buffet area looked rather empty. Once breakfast was put out, it looked like this:
And I have to say, I was a big fan of how the breakfast tasted.
Once we were full, we headed out to board our flight. This lounge was very close to our gate, so we just went downstairs and were basically there.
Miami (MIA), FL
As mentioned earlier, we didn’t try the AA Admirals Club at DFW, so we decided to give it a shot at MIA. I now regret that decision immensely.
American Express Centurion Lounge
For information on the MIA Centurion Lounge, see the official page.
I do have to complain a bit here: this lounge was not exactly close to the security checkpoint... Of course, MIA’s Terminal D is basically one long straight terminal from end to end, so there’s a people mover you can take to save quite a bit of walking. But on the day I arrived, the train was under maintenance... WTF.
Back to the point: this lounge still maintained the consistent style and high standard of AMEX Centurion Lounges. To enter this lounge, you need to take the elevator.
And the entrance looked like this:
Now for what everyone actually cares about: the food. Since we went right around dinnertime, this was the spread:
There was pudding and mushroom chicken—yes, actually mushroom chicken. It tasted pretty good. Also, this lounge’s windows faced the airport, so the view was nice—at least better than the AA Admirals Club I’m about to talk about next.
American Airlines Admirals Club
For an introduction to the Admirals Club at MIA, see the official page.
About an hour and a half before boarding, we left the AMEX lounge and headed over to check out the AA lounge...
And once again, let me complain about MIA Terminal D: it’s ridiculously long.
I have to admit, the Admirals Club was pretty large, and it felt much more spacious inside than the AMEX lounge. After checking in at the entrance, you have to take the elevator up to the second floor. There are stairs next to it as well.
It was absolutely packed inside:
The food at the Admirals Club was also pretty underwhelming. The only free items were a few cookies, some cheese, and similar snacks. They did have sandwiches and other items, but you had to pay for those yourself.
Also, maybe because this Admirals Club didn’t have exterior-facing windows and the lighting was fairly dim, I personally found it a bit depressing inside—nowhere near as good as the AMEX lounge. That also led to my decision in SJU to skip the Admirals Club entirely and go straight to the PP Select lounge instead. And when I connected through MIA again on the way back to DFW, I didn’t bother coming back to this club. I just rested in the AMEX lounge.
P.S. I also have to complain about the delay performance of the last daily AA MIA-DFW flight. It was brutal... On average it was delayed 1+ hour... and on that day it was delayed by two and a half hours. We literally stayed in the AMEX lounge until closing time before leaving. That said, hanging out by the bar in the AMEX lounge, having a drink and watching football, was actually pretty nice. The game that day was Baylor-UNC in NCAAF.
San Juan (SJU), PR
As mentioned above, although we had two lounge options in SJU, I skipped the Admirals Club and went straight to the PP Select lounge.
Avianca operated by Global Lounge
For an introduction to the Global Lounge at SJU, see the official page.
This lounge is located after entering Terminal C. At the first corner, there’s an elevator—take it up and you’re there.
I wasn’t really thinking about taking photos at the time, so the only picture I took myself was of the food. So shamelessly, I borrowed a few images from the official site... haha. This is what the lounge looked like at the entrance:
And this was the dining area and bar:
And the food that day was pasta, which was acceptable:
This lounge also had a room for sleeping, with several ergonomic recliner-style lounge chairs. Pretty nice.
I really liked the overall vibe of this lounge, and those recliner beds were an absolute lifesaver. I was seriously exhausted at the time—especially after eating.
P.S. After I woke up, the buffet area had added spring rolls, and they were very good. Unfortunately, by then it was already time to head to the gate, so I didn’t take a picture.
P.P.S. To enter this lounge, you can use Priority Pass Select. Both AMEX Plat and Citi Prestige come with PPS. The difference is that the PPS from AMEX Plat only includes unlimited free visits for the primary cardholder, while each accompanying guest costs $27. Citi Prestige’s PPS includes free access for the cardholder plus two accompanying guests. Naturally, I used the PPS that came with Citi Prestige.
Summary
From this experience, although the sample size was small—just two AMEX Centurion Lounge visits, one American Airlines Admirals Club, and one Global Lounge accessible via Priority Pass Select—if I had to rank them, AA Admirals Club would very clearly come in last. I’d give AMEX Centurion Lounge a slight edge over Global Lounge: the AMEX lounge had a staffed bar and somewhat better food. But the sleeper chairs at Global Lounge were a big plus.
If you also want a better airport waiting experience, you might want to apply for one of the “dining cards” I mentioned above.
For an introduction to AMEX Plat, see ymlulu’s article on this site: “AMEX Platinum — A Premium Benefits Card”
As for Citi Prestige, which I personally like even more, I’ll cover it in a future article, so stay tuned.