After landing early from Jakarta on my Garuda First Class flight, I had a long wait before my room was ready at the Andaz Prinsengracht. Thank goodness for Priority Pass — it gave me access to the Aspire Lounge 41 for several hours.
Let’s dispense with the niceties: this was one of the most crowded lounges I have ever been in and should be avoided if possible during the morning hours. It took me 15 minutes to find a seat and was so filled you had people eating breakfast on the buffet station. The picture below I took after the lounge had “emptied” out.
Aspire Lounge 41 Seating
Notice all the plates and glasses in the picture above–staff was extremely slow to collect these items, leading to a cluttering of both people and dishes.
Aspire Lounge 41 Hours
Hours are from 6am – 11:30pm but in from around 8am-12pm it becomes packed. SkyTeam has its large KLM lounge and oneworld has the British Airways lounge, but everyone else in the non-Schengen area seems to use this lounge for premium passengers.
Aspire Lounge 41 Food + Drink
Walking in, you first encounter the buffet, which has a continental set-up for breakfast. Three coffee machines are stationed around the lounge, but one was broken and the coffee from the other two just wasn’t great (the same H-Milk problem I mentioned at the Andaz). But there were stroopwaffels!
I found lunch to be much more appetizing. I enjoyed a nice salad and a couple slices of flatbread pizza with a bowl of tomato soup.
Aspire Lounge 41 Internet
Internet is two-tiered in the lounge. The standard speed is free and slow: the higher speed is fairly expensive (5EUR/hr), though you can log in with your Boingo account.
The Lounge Within the Lounge
In the back of the lounge is a roped-off section reserved exclusively for Singapore Airlines passengers in the morning, prior to the departure of SQ323 at 10:25a. It contains hot food and a dedicated staff member to serve you drinks. After 10am, that section is opened but the hot food is removed.
Aspire Lounge 41 Bathroom + Wi-Fi
The bathrooms were clean and shower rooms were available, though I just waited till I arrived at my hotel.
Aspire Lounge 41 Smoking
There is also a smoking room behind the bathrooms.
CONCLUSION
When I flew out a couple days later on United, I did not even bother to stop by the lounge. Instead, I just spent an extra half hour at the hotel and cut it close at the airport. If your flight is in the morning, be prepared to fight for a seat. If you are flying out later in the day, a seat should be much easier.
Disappointing. This will be the lounge when we fly 9W AMS-YYZ, right in the busiest bank of departure before noon.
Even the KLM lounge at AMS is quite meh, given it is at the hub.
KLM and Alitalia are the 2 European airlines that have below average lounges at their hubs. I can understand an outstation would be subpar. But at their own hubs? Same can be said for Air Canada too.
Talk about crowded lounge, the Air New Zealand lounge in Sydney was even worse from what you described last time we flew TG SYD-BKK. We spent less than 5 min in it and after being scolded by a lady that one of us accidentally took an empty seat she claimed belonged to her husband who went to get some foods. We promptly walked to SQ lounge next door despite TG gave us the “invite” to NZ’s. Should not even bother to poke in just to check it out.
I have been to that lounge a few times and didn’t like it much either, although it wasn’t as crowded when I was there.
While there are showers, you actually have to pay for them and they are pretty basic.
The food is inedible apart from packets of chips! Beer is beer and u cant really mess it up … unless they served it warm! The worst lounge I ever had been. The poorest food you can imagine. Nearly no choice.You have the feeling you are in a third worl country where they have no money for maintaining the food.
Definitely I will never ever go there again. I highly recommend people to avoid this lounge