Lounging around… a review of LNER First Class Lounges in London & York
Anybody who has been reading this blog for a while will know I love visiting lounges - especially those of some of the world’s premium airlines like Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. For our journeys on LNER railway, I had significantly lower expectations…
LNER King’s Cross Station Lounge
With a sneaky entrance next to the Waitrose supermarket, the King’s Cross Lounge is LNER’s flagship - and is one of their largest lounges on their network. It’s also likely to have the highest amount of footfall due to the sheer number of services originating from the UK’s capital city.
Once you’ve found your way to the entrance, you’re greeted by an elevator - this is slightly unexpected, because you assume it’s directly behind the door. Instead, the lift takes you directly to the first floor where the lounge is actually situated. Once you exit the lift, walk around the corner and you’ll need to show your ticket in order to enter.
Once in, the lounge is a reasonable size - but certainly not comparable in scale to an airline lounge unsurprisingly. At the centre of the room is a drinks station that features a self-serve coffee machine that also dispenses hot water for tea and hot chocolate. During our visit, presumably due to Covid-19 measures, no alcohol or soft drinks besides bottled water are served. This seems a little odd, as you would expect soft drinks like Coca Cola or lemonade to have been served also. In terms of food offering, only salted crisps and a variety of lovely 2-serving shortbread are available. I would have expected a little more, but I do not have anything to compare this with pre-Covid - although other reviews suggest a similar offering. This is at least balanced out by the food offering on-board their trains which is more extensive.
As for seating, there’s a variety of areas available to relax or work. Some are in the reclining seat style, others around dining tables, or at high table tops with power outlets for working from - although I suspect that you wouldn’t want to do much of that here with the very flaky Wi-Fi on offer. The station Wi-Fi barely reached the lounge whilst the full strength LNER Wi-Fi wouldn’t connect at all on any of my devices… (Mac and Android). If the lounge seating seems a bit busy when you walk in, then if you go to the area where it is catered to working and go further round the corner you will find additional seating. I didn’t see this until I went round taking photos - this may be useful if you want to get some peace and quiet away from other guests and the BBC News playing on the TV.
LNER King’s Cross Station Lounge is open every day. Monday - Friday 07:00 - 21:25 | Saturday 08:00 - 20:15 | Sunday 09:00 - 20:15
LNER York Station Lounge
The lounge at York Station is the newest one on the LNER network, as reported by HeadForPoints, and very much is a sister of the King’s Cross Lounge in terms of design. You’ll find it near platform 3 with a large sign pointing out exactly where the lounge is situated… You can tell the lounge is extremely new, all the furniture is in great condition and everything still has that new sheen to it. Besides being smaller than the King’s Cross Lounge, the experience (in terms of food, drinks, lack of Wi-Fi) is more or less the same - and I suspect this to be the case across the entire network.
There was two annoyance with this lounge. The first being that they were playing Beauty & The Beast out loud in the lounge…which is not particularly relaxing. The second annoyance came from being advised the lounge would close two hours early by the attendant for no apparent reason… a little annoying. Hopefully you will not face the same problem but I could imagine as the lounge is only managed by one attendant at a time, this could become a common issue at the lounge if on a late departure. If it is open, pop in, kick back and get a fresh coffee with some nice shortbread.
The York LNER lounge is open Monday - Saturday 06:00 - 20:00| Sunday 07:30 - 20:00.
Who can get in?
If you have a First Class Ticket that is worth more than GBP 10, you are free to visit one hour prior to your departure time between 1500-1900 on Fridays and Sundays - or two hours the rest of the time. I don’t think this is strictly enforced though, as we got in 90 minutes prior to our train on a Friday at peak.
SeatFrog upgrades are able to get in too, you just need to show both the upgrade QR code and original ticket.
Should you bother?
Unlike some of the world’s leading airport lounges, I wouldn’t bother turning up too early to a LNER First Class lounge. Definitely pop in if you have free time - but don’t go out of your way to experience it. And hopefully they will have the televisions on mute in future.
