My Lounge at Gatwick: the casual lounge with the terrace, reviewed

A My Lounge day pass works like the rest of the No1 Lounges family: book a date and an entry slot, come through security, and stay up to three hours before your flight with everything included. The difference is the format. Where No1 has waiters behind a bar and a hot buffet, My Lounge is self-service by design, a grazing menu you help yourself to and drinks you pour yourself, including beer taps and a mix-your-own cocktail station. The room is styled as a loft, smaller and more informal than its sibling, and it aims for a relaxed hangout rather than a hushed waiting room.

The standard mechanics hold. Three hours before departure is the base stay, extra hours sell in advance if you want longer, and infants under two go free. Booking directly with the operator adds delay cover, which keeps your seat until the flight leaves rather than ending it when the clock runs down. As with every pay-per-use lounge at Gatwick, there is no shower at either terminal.

There is a My Lounge at each terminal, and because lounges are airside the choice is fixed by your flight; check which terminal your airline uses before booking, because the pass works only on the side you buy. Both rooms charge £38 to start and keep the same 04:00 to 20:00 day, but they are not quite equal, and the difference is the terrace.

The South Terminal My Lounge has an outdoor terrace with runway views, the only open-air lounge space airside anywhere at Gatwick. It permits smoking, which quietly makes it the single airside spot at either terminal where a smoker can light up, a fact worth the price of entry on its own for some travellers. The North Terminal room has no terrace, and there its history shows: it opened as The Gateway, easyJet's co-branded lounge, and took the My Lounge name in 2024, keeping a fit-out built for the airline whose passengers fill that side of the airport. The South Terminal lounge guide and the North Terminal lounge guide place each room among its neighbours.

Food is a hot and cold grazing menu rather than a full buffet, and it is best understood as snacks done properly. A station carries salads, nachos and toppings, and the mains lean casual: build-your-own burrito bowls with beans, vegetables and pulled chicken, and comforting plates like mac and cheese. Drinks are the strong half, self-service and generous, with pour-your-own beer taps that turn up in almost every review as the thing people remember. Go in hungry for a three-course meal and the menu disappoints; go in wanting to graze and drink at your own pace and it delivers.

The games room is what sets My Lounge apart from every other room at the airport. It runs PlayStation consoles, a pool table and a football table, with a smaller family game zone for younger children, and it solves the hardest lounge problem going, which is a restless child or a two-hour wait with nothing to do. The flip side is noise: at peak the room can tip from lively into what one reviewer called student-union territory, so anyone after silence should book No1 or Clubrooms instead. My Lounge is for the group that wants a drink and a game, not the traveller who wants to sleep.

Two official channels sell the same seat at different floors. On the day this page was researched, the airport's own lounge page listed My Lounge from £34, a useful £4 under the £38 on No1 Lounges' own site. The gap moves daily, so compare both before paying. Booking ahead beats a walk-up either way: entry is space-permitting, and the smaller loft-style room fills fast on holiday mornings, so a pre-booked slot is the only way to be sure of a seat and, in a group, of seats together.

My Lounge is in the Priority Pass network at both terminals, and many bank accounts and travel cards bundle Priority Pass or an equivalent, which drops a £38 seat to a small pre-booking fee or nothing. If you carry the card this is close to a default pick for a relaxed pre-flight hour. If you do not, the £34 airport-channel price is already among the cheapest full lounges at Gatwick, beaten only by Club Aspire at South. The full list of ways in, card schemes included, sits on the main Gatwick lounges guide.

My Lounge is the most enjoyable room at its price point, and for the right trip it is the best-value lounge at Gatwick. A couple settling in with pour-your-own drinks and a game of pool, a family parking restless children in front of a console, or anyone at South who wants to sit outside with a beer and watch the aircraft: for all of them the £34 to £38 is money well spent, and better spent here than on a quieter room that does none of it. Time your three-hour window from clearing the security queue rather than the front door, so you get the stay you paid for.

The honest limits are two. It is not a dining room, so if the plan was a proper meal before a long-haul flight, the No1 Lounge two doors along or a terminal restaurant is the better call. And it is not quiet, so light sleepers and anyone hoping to work should look at Clubrooms or No1 instead. Booked for what it is, a relaxed, sociable room with a games corner and a terrace, My Lounge earns its keep more reliably than lounges costing more; booked for what it is not, it disappoints predictably.