To those who are not familiar, having a Priority Pass (PP) membership allows you and your guest/s to avail of airport lounge access, and in some cases, select airport restaurants as well. For many of us who are in this miles and points hobby, we get our Priority Pass access for free. How exactly? By carrying certain premium credit cards. I have a few of these in my collection:
- Chase Sapphire Reserve
- American Express Platinum (personal)
- American Express Business Platinum
If you have a Priority Pass (PP) membership, let me know which card you carry and which airport lounges are your favorite.
There are a few others credit cards out there that give Priority Pass access. The PP cards from Chase include access to lounges and restaurants. The PP cards from American Express does not include restaurants, but they include all the other lounges linked with PP, and you also get access to lounges owned by American Express such as the Centurion Lounges.
The Priority Pass choices at LAX
There are quite a few PP lounges and restaurants at LAX. Knowing that we arrived early, we had more than enough time to visit a lounge. I wanted to check a restaurant covered by Priority Pass – Rock and Brews. Since we checked in at Terminal 3, we walked 15 minutes to get to Terminal 1 (where Rock and Brews was located). We had to go through security, and then made our way up to Rock and Brews.
Success? Nope. Rock and Brews was closed. Come to find out, they could freely decide when to close their restaurant based on the flights that leave out of Terminal 1. I wasn’t happy with that. Grrrrr….what a waste of time.
I looked at our other options. I checked the Priority Pass App. KAL Lounge only accepted PP members until 5pm. That clearly would not work for us since it was already past 6pm. Alaska Lounge and Point The Way Cafe were our next choices. But we weren’t exactly near where they were located.
How to get in between LAX Terminals via a shuttle
Of course, we could walk, but to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 6 would be a very long walk. Remember, this was before 7pm and we had quite a bit of time. We opted to catch an LAX Airport Shuttle, and we caught a bus from the lower level (arrivals) and got on the shuttle that was marked A, this was our ride to get us to the different terminals. The ride was free. Within 10 minutes, we made it to Terminal 6. We had to go up to the departure level via an escalator, and made through security one more time. Thanks to our TSA Precheck, we expeditiously went through security.
FREE dinner worth up to $112 at Point the Way Cafe
We’ve used our PP benefits at Point The Way Cafe before we flew to Bali in 2019. But we’ve also experienced where PP members got declined from using Point the Way Cafe. But not tonight, everything was in our favor. Nancy and I each had our own Priority Pass card. To use the restaurant benefit, we were allowed to bring one guest each.
Each cardholder + guest could get up to $28 worth of food and drinks. Multiply that by 4 (since we had two PP cards), we could order up to $112 worth of food/drinks (tip not included). That was enough for all 5 of us.
We ordered Pepperoni Flatbread Pizza, Pesto Grilled Shrimp with Quinoa, GRB Burger and Fries, Grilled Chicken Breast and Veggies, Bread Pudding, Hot Chocolate, and Arnold Palmer (Iced Tea Lemonade). Our bill came to $108 out of $112 allowance. Not bad. All we had to pay out of pocket was the tip which we gladly gave to our server. So despite the fail with Rock and Brews, I was so glad we were able to use our PP benefit at Point the Way Cafe in Terminal 6.
Why you might want to give Alaska Lounge another shot
To those with a Priority Pass, and who fly out of LAX quite a bit, you would know why I said what I just said about Alaska Lounge.
We finished our dinner by 8pm. We still had 3.5 hours of wait time for our flight. Alaska Lounge was just a few hundred feet way from Point the Way Cafe. It was known for notoriously declining PP members from entering their lounge. We decided to give it another shot. I did see a sign that Alaska was not accepting PP members to the lounge due to capacity. But, Nancy noticed that there was a wait list.That was new for me. So we entered our info on the wait list. How do you do that? There’s a QR Code. I scanned it with my phone and it took me directly to the site where I could enter the waitlist. We had time to wait, there were 14 guests ahead of us who were trying get in the lounge. So I had no major hopes of getting in.
We found a place to sit just outside of the lounge. I closed my eyes for a bit, and after over 30 minutes of waiting, we both got a text that we were invited to the lounge. Yes!!! The last time I was at Alaska Lounge was in April 2019 (before we flew to Japan). Once we got upstairs, I noticed they remodeled their lounge.
It was brighter, and seemed to have more areas to sit. The food selection was more than before. There were a couple of soup selections, vegetables, desserts, and the good ol’ pancake machine, coffee and soda machines. The bar was still there.
I was just glad that we were able to hang out at the lounge. I actually enjoyed their clam chowder, something I’ve not had in awhile.
TIP:
Alaska Lounge is known to disappoint many PP members due to their acceptance or lounge entry policy. However, if you have time to “wait” – having the option join the wait list paid off for us. So if you’ve got the time, just wait.
Alright, that’s all for now.