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| - Loved the United Club, very nice staff, full bar, light snacks, and seemed to be fairly well maintained. It's on a small to medium size level, but has all the amenities you'd expect and was a very nice oasis away from the main terminal gates.
The issue is with McCarran airport itself. We flew with Southwest and our outbound flight was delayed 1.5 hours. There are inter-terminal trams, with signs indicating you can take a tram to T3, gates A,B, D, etc, so we decided to take the tram from T1-C gates (Southwest) to T3-D gates (United Club).
Little did we know..... we rode from T1 to T3, to be let out near T3's baggage claim, not the gates. Our options were to either leave the post-security area and go through security again at T3 (after having gone through T1's security already), and board a second tram to the D gates, where the Club is, or very kindly ask airport staff with badges to let us through the door. The trams are divided by a large glass wall and a glass door, but you cannot get through the door without an employee pass card. WTF indeed.
Coming back from the Club, you have to go through the same convoluted routine in order to avoid going through security again. The risk you run is that there are no airport staff or TSA agents sitting around waiting for you to need to go through that little glass door to get to the second tram, thus forcing you to go through security a second time, or multi-tram delays. Fortunately, we were there when it was busy enough and there were people around, and the trams were working well.
Just as a side note, the terminal that the United Club is in is fantastic, new, modern, bright, clean, not crowded. T1, Southwest, is a complete pit. Overpacked, hot, old, floors vibrate because it's on some sort of pre-fabricated building frame, etc. For all the flights Southwest operates to LAS, you'd think they'd invest in a much better terminal.
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