This is part of the Trip Report Welcome to the Cold where I went from NYC to:
If you’re just tuning in now be sure to read how I ended up with this unique itinerary by checking out The Original Plan: The $77,000 Trip Heard Round the World, the subsequent Change Up: Riga, Latvia? and the Mongolia angle: IGLOO-GER: The Helsinki-Ulaanbaatar Trip Report.
Who hates waiting in an airport? If you do then you’ve never been to the Turkish Airlines Business Class Lounge in Atatürk Airport. Picture Costco meets Chuck E. Cheese with multiple levels. If you’re flying business on Turkish I boldly suggest skipping the Park Hyatt and milking the lounge for as long as you can. You’ll never go hungry, never get bored, and never want to grow up. It’s that fun.
<==Back to Park Hyatt Istanbul – Onto Turkish Airlines Business Class to Seoul==>
That food selection is insane. Looks so good!
Yeah it was unique compared to the basic rough steak. Would fly them again but United has made it too expensive.
Count me a dissenter on this lounge. The food is good, yes, but the lounge fails at the thing that lounges need to do most of all – provide a calm, relaxing space away from the craziness of airports. Turkish is one of the largest (and fastest-growing) airlines in the world, yet at its one (and only true) hub it has just this one lounge, where most other airlines of this size have three or more at their largest hubs. Yes the lounge is huge, but that still means from check-in to actually finding a space it can feel awfully crowded. And forget trying to get a shower (a real benefit on layovers between on flights) – have flown through here half a dozen times and never been able to get a shower, always told instead that it would be a 2 hour (or similar) wait. Bottom line for me – yes, lots of bling, but give me a calm relaxing space with usable showers, rather than a pool table and a movie library nobody uses.
For first time ingenuity I liked it. For a blogger who likes to compare lounges I thought it was clever.
For real business class passengers, it is a bit over the top. That is why I wrote, “Picture Costco meets Chuck E. Cheese with multiple levels.”
Neither of those places are relaxing.