The KLM Crown Business Lounge at its hub Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is a massive space with plenty of seating options, disappointing food choices, and one most unwelcome guest. Free access to the KLM Crown Lounge is restricted to passengers flying on a business class ticket as well as to Flying Blue Platinum and Gold members or SkyTeam Elite Plus members. All passengers are eligible to purchase access as well.
KLM has smaller lounges at Schiphol Airport, for example, if you’re flying intra-Schengen Zone, as well as at other airports, of course, but the Crown Lounge (lounge 52 if you are looking for it on airport signage or on airport maps,) is the airline’s flagship lounge.
After arriving on the Eurostar from Brussels and making it through the priority security, we had almost three hours before our flight to Kuala Lumpur took off. We put our bags in the complimentary luggage lockers and spent almost three hours in the lounge. Here is what I thought of the KLM Crown Lounge at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, and a secret tip for a spot to hit before you board your flight!
KLM’s Crown Lounge has seating areas for miles
One area where the KLM Crown Lounge excels is in its miles upon miles of seating areas. Seriously, no one is ever going to struggle to find a chair, desk, or charging point here. From comfy couch-style chairs, to high-top bar seating, to restaurant seating, to booths to plush benches that one can nap on, the seating areas are stretched farther than the eye can see over two floors. You can sit at the bar or by the buffet if you don’t want to take your food or drink too far away. On top of all the seating options, there are also shower rooms and nap rooms (for a charge) in one corner of the lounge.
I think the lounge was fairly empty because of how quiet the rest of the airport was (it was the day after Christmas after all) but even at its busiest, I cannot imagine the lounge’s seating sections ever getting truly crowded. The smaller buffet and bar area are perhaps another story, but I don’t think anyone would ever struggle to find a place to put what they’ve picked up there.
The KLM Crown Lounge also features a customer service area where there is an airplane drink cart full of all of KLM’s famous delft houses, filled with Bols genever, given to every business class flyer so that if you accidentally take a house that you already have, you can swap yours out for another. It was very noticeably under lock and key though, so don’t think about trying to swipe one!
KLM’s business class lounge food falls short
The Dutch, renowned for many things, have never been known for their food. There is no exception when it comes to the buffet at the KLM Crown Lounge. I had my dinner in the lounge as our flight left at around 8:30 PM and I wanted to sleep on it, but when I was finished, I wish I had sprung for McDonald’s instead.
I had beef stew with rice, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and stewed pear along with some vegetable soup. The Beef stew was surprisingly the best, but that was not saying much. The vegetable soup was shockingly bad, which is surprising because how hard is it to screw up vegetable soup! It was salty and bitter but watery and flavorless all at once.
Apart from the fact that the actual offerings were not particularly delicious, the fact that there was nothing even close to resembling a sneeze guard in sight was a little off-putting, especially in the winter when nearly everyone is sick.
In the upstairs section of the lounge, there is a bar area with complimentary drinks or food that you can pay extra for. I don’t like to pay for something when I’ve already paid, but perhaps the food up there is a little better. Upstairs, you can also check out the outdoor terrace with a drink and watch the planes take off, but it had already closed by the time I arrived.
A most unwelcome guest in the KLM Crown Lounge
The only thing that soured me on this lounge was what I experienced in my last couple of minutes there. As I was sitting at a high-top table with a fake tree carved into the side of it, I saw a mouse run out of a room and then make a beeline for me. I scrambled to my feet and watched it crawl up the tree into the ceiling.
Now, I have a pretty significant fear of mice and rats, but even those who don’t should be able to agree that such animals have no place in any sort of food preparation area like an airport lounge.
While these rodents are likely prevalent in all parts of the tourism industry, seeing one in broad daylight was quite disturbing, to say the least, and I hope that KLM will look into my feedback and solve this serious problem.
The bottom line on the KLM Crown Lounge
If you are early for your flight or have a long layover at Schiphol Airport, it’s a no-brainer to spend some time in the lounge. However, I don’t think I would ever pay for access to the lounge unless I was dead tired or desperately in need of a shower.
One thing to keep in mind is that there are no announcements at Schiphol Airport, so you will need to keep an eye on the screens to know when it’s time to head to the gate. Luckily, there are more than a few scattered around the area, so you won’t ever need to walk too far.
And a special tip for art aficionados before boarding your plane: Make sure you check out the Rijksmuseum Schiphol Airport. Inside the little exhibit, in between the E and F piers and open 24 hours a day, features a small room of still lifes from the Dutch Golden Area. And because it’s an airport, of course, there is a gift shop at the end. The paintings are nothing special and would likely be gathering dust in the basement of the real Rijksmuseum otherwise, but it’s pretty cool to see some 400-year-old art for free in an airport!
