This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew

As our flight time was 11:30 and we live a long drive from LHR, we decided to book a night at the Hilton T5 the night before as they had a great deal on parking. We arrived at about 20:00 and there was an issue with the booking--for some reason they'd cancelled our room with the parking included, but left my sister's room on the reservation! After a bit of confusion they found the original booking and apologised, and we got to check in and drop off our bags, then have a quick meal in the hotel restaurant before getting to bed. The room was nice and we'd stay again, despite it being a bit of a trek to T3. I got everyone up early the following morning as I wanted us to get the most out of the Clubhouse experience; no one else was quite as enthusiastic as I was about the 5am wake up call (until we got there, of course...) We got a taxi, as by the time the four of us would have paid for a shuttle it was only a few pounds more to go for a taxi and seemed more convenient.
We arrived at T3 and checked in very swiftly, the lady at the desk was courteous and helpful, told us that the Clubhouse would open at 7am and directed us to the fast track security lift. Security was very quiet; we were through in minutes and noticed that the regular security line was pretty sparse, too, so waited a couple of minutes more for our travelling companions to join us. We then decided as it was about 06:35 that it was worth heading up to the CH to wait for them to open. When we arrived we were greeted by a lovely lady who informed us the CH was now open from 06:30 onwards, not 07:00 as we (and a lot of the ground crew!) seemed to think. She gave us a quick tour as it was our first time in there, and there were no issues with bringing in our guests. When we arrived it was actually really quite empty, only one or two tables were occupied, so we choose our seats, opting for a table in the bar area, and then went straight off to book treatments. At this point everyone else I was travelling with got pretty excited--my sister booked a free hair styling appointment, both my OH and her OH opted for haircuts, and I went for a wash and blow dry. Having booked those we went back to order our breakfast. My sister wanted to try a cocktail but I think expectation outstripped reality once she realised even she couldn't stomach alcohol at 7am! Still, it was of course instagrammed for posterity


Boarding happened shortly after and we were the first on board. I think as I've read a lot about travelling in Upper thanks to all the helpful posts here I knew what to expect and was perhaps less excited, but my OH surprised me with how enthusiastic he was about it and that made me really happy in turn. The aircraft was an A340-300 and we opted for seats 3K and 4K. The seats were a little tired around the edges but overall very comfortable and all in good working order. The gentleman in the seat in front of us had to move seats, as try as they might, the CC couldn't convert his seat to a bed. We decided for the main meal that my husband would join me sitting on the ottoman so we could eat across from each other; another first

For entertainment, the crew brought everyone in Upper iPads that had more films loaded on to them. My OH was pretty happy with this as the resolution was much better than that of the screens. I read rather than watched anything, so the 4 star rating came from my husband who caught up on a few films and was happy with the iPad.
The food was definitely the best food we've had on an aircraft. Our orders were taken promptly by very lovely staff. I opted for a soup of some kind and my husband wanted a Japanese yakitori selection which they had some sort of stock issue with, many people ordered it, but only one guy in the cabin got it in the end due to special dietary requirements. OH got something else that he said was decent, and had the steak as a main which he was pleasantly surprised with! I had a miso cod dish that was really very nice. Dessert was a bit more ordinary and not too memorable, but as we'd already been fed well in the CH it was more about trying things than anything!
As I'd not slept much the night before I then tried to sleep but failed. The beds were made up for us and were really cosy, but sleep eluded me (until about half an hour before breakfast was due to be served!) My OH got a couple of hours of sleep in between watching films. I visited my sister and her partner in Y at one point. They were pretty cramped and had a very awkward lady in front of them who'd had too much to drink and was causing a stir. Her laptop ran out of batteries and she managed to convince a member of CC to let her sit in UC for an hour to charge it, but when she was asked to return to Y she kicked up a bit of a fuss, and then kept trying to find other ways to be allowed back in to Upper. She was very loud and apparently pressed the call button for CC so many times that my sister lost count!
We noticed a few people sit at the bar throughout the flight and chat, but everyone was friendly and low key so there were no disturbances. I went down to the bar once to grab a snack but at that time no one was there.
We landed on time and immigration was really straight forward, our bags were some of the first off the conveyor belt and we were off to enjoy our Tokyo adventure! We were collected by the Limousine Bus which after a journey of just over an hour dropped us off at our lovely hotel.