Neptuno Lounge Review (Madrid T4S)

Myself and my wife have just spent a long weekend in Madrid and were passing through Terminal 4S with British Airways on our flight back to London – so of course we took advantage of our Priority Pass with the only PP lounge in T4S – the Neptuno VIP Lounge.

In this Neptuno Lounge review, I’ll give you a full run down of the facilities, how to gain access – and crucially, what might prevent you from gaining access – as well as my opinion on whether it’s worth using one of your passes to use it.

Neptuno Lounge Facilities

The Neptuno VIP lounge is very well equipped, is incredibly spacious and has a good range of food and drinks – that I will cover in detail later on.

It is one of the more spacious and open lounges I have used, and without a doubt has a business-like feel to it, with it’s padded seats laid out in a very uniform fashion.

Upon entry, you are first greeted by a selection of local and international newspapers, and will then take in the expansive runway views with light flooding in to the lounge.

Neptuno has an array of hot and cold food, soft and alcoholic drinks, clean and well equipped wash rooms – and showering facilities – all of which are located in the lounge itself.

If needed, you can use their fax and printing services, there’s a meeting room if required and there are multiple work stations with tables.

The standard seats all have access to USB type C sockets and European style plug sockets.

There’s a children’s play area and when I was there we noticed some lounge areas were not accessible as if they had been reserved.

Accessing Neptuno Lounge At Madrid T4S

This was my first time flying out of Terminal 4S at Adolfo Suárez Madrid – Barajas Airport – the experience was largely very positive.

First you will go through check-in and security at the main terminal 4. We did this on a Monday early evening (5pm) and the check-in and security lines were fast.

You can fast track security if you wish, but I am glad we saved the 30 Euros here as we were through security in about 3 minutes.

You do however still have to go through passport control (again, this was no more than a 2 minute wait) and travel from T4 to T4S which is a walk and a monorail away.

The signs say this takes around 25 minutes. In reality, it took us about 15 minutes (including the 5 minute monorail journey).

If you are flying out of T4S – you DO NOT want to access the lounge in T4 like we almost did. As you could leave yourself not enough time to board your flight.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can access the Neptuno lounge 4 hours before your flight is due to take off. This is double many PP lounges and even the more generous ones usually only allow 3 hours prior – so you can really make full use of this lounge if you wish.

Once you get in to T4S you will need to go up a set of escalators. Do not go straight ahead in to the connections terminal, instead turn left and you will see the sliding doors to Neptuno.

Walk in and check in with the reception.

When we arrived, there was no queue. We scanned our digital PP card and then scanned the boarding passes and we were in.

Who Can Access Neptuno?

There is one quirk about the Neptuno lounge – although it shouldn’t catch many out due to where the flights are heading from T4S.

And that is that anyone within the Schengen Area – will not be allowed access to this lounge.

Schengen Area countries include: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Even before the UK left the EU, they were not formally a Schengen Area country, and that remains the case – so anyone flying to the UK (like we were) will gain access to the lounge.

Passengers on long haul flights will also be fine.

However, do note that if you are flying from Spain to any of those countries listed above then you will not be granted access to the lounge.

We were asked verbally where we were flying to when we checked in, and of course it will also be on your boarding pass – so there’s no sneaking in!

Other than that – Neptuno VIP accepts Priority Pass or you can purchase tickets for €45.54 for adults and €21.76 for children at the time of writing this review.

Food & Drinks At Neptuno VIP

The food and drink offerings were in line with what I’d generally expect from a Spanish airport lounge – and were far, far superior to the corresponding Heathrow T5 lounge we experienced on the way out to Madrid!

The food and drink is all self-service – and the area in which to do so is vast and spacious. Soft drinks and water are all displayed in refrigerated displays with ice buckets and bottle openers for the glass bottles.

There is a selection of beers, wines and sparkling wines – again, all of which is self serve.

We tried the Cava and a white wine – both of which were excellent and on a par with what we had been drinking in an expensive restaurant the night before at €40 a bottle.

We also had a few of the soft drinks that were as you’d expect.

The food options were good – although there was a lack of hot food at the time we visited. As I mentioned, it was around 5.30-6pm by the time we made it to the lounge – with Spanish people generally not eating dinner until around 9pm onwards.

I have seen other Neptuno reviews that show hot food – which I am guessing would come later.

That being said, there were some hot Spanish tortilla and pizza to choose from – the tortilla was lovely. I added to that a selection of cold meats and cheese – all of which were very good.

There were olives and nuts of all varieties available too – as well as pre-packed sandwiches and rolls – of which we took a couple for our 2 hour flight home (yes we were a little naughty here but it was hard to resist).

A wide selection of cakes, donuts and pastries were also on hand.

If you were traveling through here and found your were out of sync time zone wise you’d be well catered for – as there were also breakfast items available – including fruits and yogurts.

Overall – I couldn’t fault the food and drink options.

Our Experience

I loved the Neptuno lounge. When you first walk in you can’t escape the openness and calmness of the space. In my opinion it is what an airport lounge should be.

My wife felt it was a little less impressive, given the more business-like feel to the place – but for me, this is what a lounge should offer. Somewhere to work if needed, but relax if you so wish – for me, Neptuno hits both target markets perfectly.

A pet hate of mine with lounges is when you have to leave to go to the rest rooms – not a mistake that Neptuno make. I didn’t use the showers but did ask a guest who had used them what they were like and he commented on them being perfectly adequate.

The seats are very comfortable, with USB C charging ports and plenty of plug sockets. The atmosphere was calm and relaxing, and the lounge was very quiet.

I love the large, spacious, open plan nature to the lounge and the staff were very accommodating when we had questions about the facilities.

My only regret about Neptuno was that we weren’t able to check in earlier (due to British Airways) which meant we only spent around an hour in the lounge.

For me, it’s well worth spending one of your PP passes on. Luckily for us, we have unlimited passes with our Amex Platinum so it was a no-brainer!