I Visited Chase’s Tiny New Las Vegas Airport Lounge — And The Surprisingly Short Wait Was Worth It For Premium Champagne And Breakfast

My actual wait on a Sunday morning? One minute.

Chase opened its new Las Vegas Sapphire Lounge on Wednesday. I went out to see the lounge the day before it opened. I was only in Vegas for three and a half hours, but I came back three days later and was anxious to see what it looked like once it was open for real.

• The lounge itself was gorgeous
  
• And the food was good when they were showcasing it
  
• Most strikingly, they were serving $50 bottles of champagne.
  
• But the lounge is small, with just 87 seats – so I wondered whether cardmembers could actually get in?

My flight out of Vegas was at 8:15 a.m. from gate C24. The Chase lounge is by gate C23. So this would be perfect. I arrived at the airport at 6:35 a.m. CLEAR for the C/D checkpoint had only a few people waiting, while the PreCheck line was quite long. Once IDs were verified the queue to get screened was fairly deep, though, and I find this one claustrophobic.

It moved fairly quickly, and the time from curb to the Chase lounge door was only about 10 minutes. There was a line to join the wait list.

Las Vegas is the second airport to have Capital One, American Express and Chase lounges. We’ll have that soon in Dallas and New York LaGuardia, too.

American Express let you join the wait list via app. Capital One’s app also tells you how long the wait will be. With Chase you have to stand in line to join the queue, and wait to find out how long you will wait. (There was no wait for the Capital One or American Express lounges when I checked in with Chase.)

Once I was added to the list, it only took 1 minute to get the text that it was my turn to enter the lounge. Before 7 a.m. on Sunday it wasn’t taking more than 5 or 6 minutes for anyone to get in (even Priority Pass guests, who have lower priority than Sapphire Reserve cardmembers).

There’s been a lot of chatter online about (1) why Chase would open a lounge this small (it’s the space they could get) and (2) whether a lounge this small was worth opening, given the small number of people that could access it? So far the answer is yes.

• At 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, while the airport is busy but much of Vegas has yet to start recovering from their Saturday night, the answer is a resounding yes!

• The lounge manager tells me they had 700 – 750 guests on Friday and Saturday, and they expected 850 – 900 on Sunday. That’s approaching 1,000 people who will find it worthwhile.

• Concourse did not have any lounge before. This brings pretty good food, and very good champagne.

I was checked into the lounge quickly once it was my turn after a minute. I went directly into the space beside check-in: the champagne lounge. Nobody else was doing that, and the staffer there was almost lonely! It was just 7 a.m. and they offer a variety of drinks, but I wasn’t going to skip the champagne. They serve Gosset!

To be sure, they serve both Gosset and a respectable $20 value sparkling and they don’t promote “Gosset is the good stuff.” You can get the Gosset in the champagne lounge. I didn’t check if they have it at the bar on request. But it is not listed as a champagne option when ordering via QR code. You need to know this is what you want to drive up Chase’s costs. But with only a small fraction of the 800 lounge guests a day having some, the incremental cost of nice bubbles is probably worth it for those who know the difference (and for the reputational boost of serving something nicer than competitors do).

After picking up my champagne I headed downstairs to a seat. I selected a solo seat out of respect for other guests – I wasn’t going to take a couch that supported several people, just for myself. Shortly after I arrived the staff was helping to seat guests, which I’ve seen Capital One do at peak occupancy. It’s a nice experience – and it helps ensure that each guest uses a space appropriate to their party size, to help accommodate the most people.

I picked up a couple of items from the buffet, made myself a double espresso, and ordered two items via QR code as well.

That way I could sample several things and see how quality held in operational situations (versus at an official preview event). Everything held up nicely, though the scrambled eggs were a bit underdone (and I don’t like my eggs overcooked) and the sausage did not look appealing.

I also I visited Capital One’s lounge on Tuesday of last week, when I was in town for the Chase lounge. I’ve been to Capital One and American Express in Las Vegas at various times in the past. Capital One has better pastries at breakfast otherwise the food was probably equivalent. Capital One also has its ‘grab and go’ which is a real value add. The person in the seat across the aisle on my flight had a Capital One water bottle. I bought a bottle for $5 in the terminal prior to boarding.

You’ll want to visit (1) the lounge on your concourse [American Express and Capital One are on the D concourse), (2) that you have access to [based on which premium credit card you have – and only Chase can be accessed via standard Priority Pass – if you want to burn the card’s one free Sapphire Lounge visit per year], (3) that you can get into based on wait time.

However, I think that the Chase lounge needs to improve its wait list handling. It needs an option to join the list via app, and an estimate of how long the wait time will be in the app. And this lounge in particular likely will need to follow the Phoenix Sapphire Lounge model of setting aside ome capacity for reservations to give some guests certainty that they’ll be able to use the lounge.

I also think they should find a way to prioritize customers (the way that Amex does for their Black Card members) – because someone with $50 million in investments on deposit with the bank getting turned away is a serious own-goal, and because their competitors now use guest access to incentivize spend. Maybe each cardmember should get one priority token per year, with additional priority entries earned alongside other benefits (like Southwest and IHG status) at $75,000 spend?

There have been reports of 30 and 60 minute waits at times already for this lounge. And perhaps not all eligible guests are aware of the option yet, though it even appears in the Priority Pass app. So we’ll have to see what lines look like. But it was certainly a plus to have this option for a bit of a nice breakfast before my Southwest Airlines flight.