Typing this at the Al Mourjan Garden lounge to pass the time. Thought someone else might find this useful.
Our travel experience: 6 monthly to yearly travel, to Europe and Asia, in J, usually on Singapore or Cathay, as a couple, for many years
It's our first time flying Qatar, in Qsuite.
Hardware:
The good: the pseudo "double bed" configuration of the middle seats was definitely a winner. The ability to fully drop the divider and bridge the two seats with furnishing made the whole suite look much bigger than it actually is. We both gained extra "visual room" from the essentially same overlapping visual space. This is a very efficient design. The bed and pillows (plural) felt slightly more comfortable than Singapore and Cathay (non-Aria).
The bad: my seat completely lost power towards the end of the 14hr flight. It had to be manually reset to upright position and couldn't be operated at all after that. I was offered a spare seat in J, but I declined as there were only 2hrs remaining on the flight.
Service:
Very attentive and appeared very willing to oblige (I am generally an undemanding person so I always declined when something looked like it was too much trouble but they appeared willing). But I wouldn't say it's leaps and bounds ahead of Singapore. Perhaps 5% better, let's say.
The lounge - we decided on the Garden lounge because it was closer and newer and sounded more interesting.
The good:
1. The attendants are very obliging and aims to provide a personal service like a restaurant, despite being very busy.
2. The open design can be very "anti boredom" if you have a long transit. You don't feel "jailed" in a small space.
The bad - unfortunately many...
1. By design, it's huge. It's essentially a sectioned off part of the airport. So it doesn't give you the "cosy", "exclusive", "VIP" sort of feel. It just felt like you are "in the airport", other than the fact that a non-J class holder can't access this part of the airport. Some might find this to be a positive. We didn't, perhaps because we are used to the (slightly) cosier feel at Changi and dark and moody feel at Hongkong.
2. Because it feels like just "regular airport" space, some lounge goers lied down across 3 seater sofas.... further leading the space to look like a regular airport... They were later told off by the attendants, of course.
3. There was an internal line inside the lounge to get a seat at the food area.... People stood there and waited with their carry on luggage to be let in for lounge food... This.... was poor. This shouldn't be how things are inside a J lounge. But I guess it's unavoidable when there is a rush. We estimate some people waited 20 minutes like that.
4. The showers were makeshift in feel. Doesn't contain a toilet. Subpar compared to HK or Changhi.
5. The male toilet and female toilet are 200m apart. Between them, there were: female prayer area, family room, male prayer area, spa/shower, lounge reception, other rooms..... This was unintuitive and inconvenient design...
6. Some of the signs were wrong. The shower sign pointed at the wrong direction. After asking an attendant, we were redirected in the complete opposite direction, going back past the sign. Upon reaching the correct shower area, it's not called shower. It's called "spa". So we overshot again.... only to realise this after asking a second attendant when we ran out of lounge to walk...
7. We arrived during breakfast time. The food options were very limited. We heard from friends who have come before us about how they could order sashimi and that the staff freshly prepares them for you and bring to your table. Unfortunately this type of service, or anything close to it, was not available during breakfast time. Bad luck for us. Overall, we recall Singapore and HK had much more food options at all hours.
Summary:
Great pseudo double bed in the sky, until mine broke towards the end of the flight.
Good service in the sky and the lounge.
Poor lounge design in many ways - I am sure some people will prefer this "part of the open airport" style. But not us.
Not clearly superior to Cathay/Singapore by much overall.
But any day we get to travel in J class around the world in good spirits and good health is a good day. So we count our good fortunes and continue on.
Our travel experience: 6 monthly to yearly travel, to Europe and Asia, in J, usually on Singapore or Cathay, as a couple, for many years
It's our first time flying Qatar, in Qsuite.
Hardware:
The good: the pseudo "double bed" configuration of the middle seats was definitely a winner. The ability to fully drop the divider and bridge the two seats with furnishing made the whole suite look much bigger than it actually is. We both gained extra "visual room" from the essentially same overlapping visual space. This is a very efficient design. The bed and pillows (plural) felt slightly more comfortable than Singapore and Cathay (non-Aria).
The bad: my seat completely lost power towards the end of the 14hr flight. It had to be manually reset to upright position and couldn't be operated at all after that. I was offered a spare seat in J, but I declined as there were only 2hrs remaining on the flight.
Service:
Very attentive and appeared very willing to oblige (I am generally an undemanding person so I always declined when something looked like it was too much trouble but they appeared willing). But I wouldn't say it's leaps and bounds ahead of Singapore. Perhaps 5% better, let's say.
The lounge - we decided on the Garden lounge because it was closer and newer and sounded more interesting.
The good:
1. The attendants are very obliging and aims to provide a personal service like a restaurant, despite being very busy.
2. The open design can be very "anti boredom" if you have a long transit. You don't feel "jailed" in a small space.
The bad - unfortunately many...
1. By design, it's huge. It's essentially a sectioned off part of the airport. So it doesn't give you the "cosy", "exclusive", "VIP" sort of feel. It just felt like you are "in the airport", other than the fact that a non-J class holder can't access this part of the airport. Some might find this to be a positive. We didn't, perhaps because we are used to the (slightly) cosier feel at Changi and dark and moody feel at Hongkong.
2. Because it feels like just "regular airport" space, some lounge goers lied down across 3 seater sofas.... further leading the space to look like a regular airport... They were later told off by the attendants, of course.
3. There was an internal line inside the lounge to get a seat at the food area.... People stood there and waited with their carry on luggage to be let in for lounge food... This.... was poor. This shouldn't be how things are inside a J lounge. But I guess it's unavoidable when there is a rush. We estimate some people waited 20 minutes like that.
4. The showers were makeshift in feel. Doesn't contain a toilet. Subpar compared to HK or Changhi.
5. The male toilet and female toilet are 200m apart. Between them, there were: female prayer area, family room, male prayer area, spa/shower, lounge reception, other rooms..... This was unintuitive and inconvenient design...
6. Some of the signs were wrong. The shower sign pointed at the wrong direction. After asking an attendant, we were redirected in the complete opposite direction, going back past the sign. Upon reaching the correct shower area, it's not called shower. It's called "spa". So we overshot again.... only to realise this after asking a second attendant when we ran out of lounge to walk...
7. We arrived during breakfast time. The food options were very limited. We heard from friends who have come before us about how they could order sashimi and that the staff freshly prepares them for you and bring to your table. Unfortunately this type of service, or anything close to it, was not available during breakfast time. Bad luck for us. Overall, we recall Singapore and HK had much more food options at all hours.
Summary:
Great pseudo double bed in the sky, until mine broke towards the end of the flight.
Good service in the sky and the lounge.
Poor lounge design in many ways - I am sure some people will prefer this "part of the open airport" style. But not us.
Not clearly superior to Cathay/Singapore by much overall.
But any day we get to travel in J class around the world in good spirits and good health is a good day. So we count our good fortunes and continue on.
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