Lounge review: Capital One Lounge at Denver (DEN)

Capital One opened their third lounge at Denver International Airport in November 2023. I just so happened to be in town for a show and took the chance to check it out. This time, instead of taking pictures, I took a video. Take a look below.

Comparison to the Dallas Capital One Lounge

Overall, the lounge quality is not the same. I’m sorry to say I think the Dallas–Fort Worth lounge is significantly better in several ways:

• Biggest one: the quality of the food in the Denver lounge does not match up to the quality of the DFW lounge.
  • The taste of most of the warm foods were good, but not mouth-watering like the Dallas lounge’s quality.
  • The baked goods (excluding the cookies) were mostly dry by the afternoon, which isn’t the case in Dallas.
  • While the variety of grab-and-go options are both quite comprehensive, unfortunately, the taste of the grab-and-go food in Denver was not as great as what I remember in Dallas.
• The bathrooms in Denver featured less impressive soaps and lotions than the one in Dallas. I’m a bit confused as to why they aren’t consistent across different locations, like how Amex uses L’Occitane products in all U.S. Centurion Lounges.
• The lounge’s bar seemed to be out of a lot of stuff, making for a disappointing experience.

That being said, both lounges feature very friendly staff. And there were a few better things going for Denver:

• Although it’s to be expected that a new lounge won’t be as busy as a more established lounge, the Denver lounge was less busy than the DFW one and felt like had more seating space.
• There were more bathrooms in the Denver lounge and the janitor was always there ready to clean the bathrooms after each use, which isn’t the case in DFW.
• The facilities were less “worn out” than the DFW lounge’s. Unfortunately, the furniture, facilities, USB charging ports, etc. in the DFW lounge were already quite worn out on a recent September 2023 visit. Even the bathrooms looked worse than they did in March 2023. The lounges are used heavily but it looks like they were not furnished with very reliable furniture.

Closing thoughts

I’m glad Capital One is beginning to open more lounges. It took a while for Denver to open, but the wait was worth it. There’s still lots of room for improvement for the Denver lounge to match the quality of the DFW lounge, and I’m hopeful they will be able to make the improvements after more customer feedback.