Perks, Rooms, & Roomettes: Tips, Strategies, & Notes

electricron wrote
. . . The rail cars with compartments are sleepers. Families tend to stick together and don't wish to share a sleeping compartment with others.
Amtrak reflects this truth on how they charge for riding sleepers. Everyone pays the same basic fare depending on availability of coach seatings when you purchase the tickets, individual sleeping compartments are sold by type, cabin or roomette, which the price also varies depending upon availability.
Beds, or bunks are not sold individually. Because they are not, Amtrak actually collects more in fares from the cabin/roomette than they would by selling beds individually when you consider some single passengers are have booked both beds in a cabin/roomette.

Some of that explanation must be confusing me; I'm not sure I understand how it works.

If you make a booking for one in a compartment for 2, does that mean you will or may end up with another passenger in the compartment? If so, does Amtrak try to fill these partially booked compartments before the empty ones if another single books?

How does one go about reserving the entire compartment for 1 person?

How is this system not the same as selling bunks individually?

If you make a booking for 2 in a compartment for 2, are you assured that you will both be in the same compartment? If not, will it tell you that you are not in the same compartment while you are booking? Are other scenarios possible, such as ending up in 2 separate compartments single occupancy? Some other arrangements?
How creative does the booking computer get? Can 2 people book separately and arrange somehow to be in the same compartment? Is it able to accommodate people booking together by rearranging previously booked parties if necessary?

Is all of this stuff possible to do on-line, or is it sometimes necessary to involve a ticket agent (and can one do that on the phone)? Does one have to buy tickets first and then do the (re)arrangements later (and might that incur a fee depending on the type of ticket purchased originally)?

Basing the price of sleeper accommodations on the demand for coach seats seems to be a bit UN-AdamSmith-ish. I can dig how the price of sleeper accommodations could become relatively attractive (would it actually be less sometimes if not for this?) compared to coach, but since when are widgets priced according to Whygets - and how do you spell price gouging? Do they so the same thing with business class? Does it also work the other way should business &/or sleepers sell out, does coach max out in sympathy?

Sorry to keep piling on the questions, I didn't realize how little I knew about this.

And it's not even the area of Amtrak pricing I have questions about/issues with.

The way it works is you pay one price for the bedroom or roomette, regardless of the number of people actually in it. Then you pay your normal railfare on top of that. The roomette is yours however.
i.e. If I'm going on a LD train and my fare would be $136 and I book a roomette, my total cost may be $636. $136 for me and $500 for the roomette. If I choose to bring my wife, I add $136 to the total cost (so $799). I don't pay the roomette cost again. Amtrak doesn't try to put someone else in the roomette if it's just me. They don't split up the roomette.

Now if I want to bring my girlfriend along ALSO, since that's now 3 people, I need to book another roomette and that costs my gf $536. She now has the extra bunk to herself.

Does that make sense?

Only if you have both a wife and a girlfriend.

I would really appreciate a chance to ask: how do I sneak 4 kids into a Room to Orlando? But I've asked the Mods to find a new thread (or was there some other thread this got quoted & diverted from)? NEC Future is almost the perfect opposite-topic from "Room & Roomette: Tips, Strategies, & Notes"

Arlington wrote:I would really appreciate a chance to ask: how do I sneak 4 kids into a Room to Orlando? But I've asked the Mods to find a new thread (or was there some other thread this got quoted & diverted from)? NEC Future is almost the perfect opposite-topic from "Room & Roomette: Tips, Strategies, & Notes"

Use the Auto Train to get to Orlando, book a Family Bedroom that sleeps 5. There's only one per Superliner sleeper car, so you'll probably have to reserve one far in advance of your trip.

electricron wrote:

Arlington wrote:I would really appreciate a chance to ask: how do I sneak 4 kids into a Room to Orlando? But I've asked the Mods to find a new thread (or was there some other thread this got quoted & diverted from)? NEC Future is almost the perfect opposite-topic from "Room & Roomette: Tips, Strategies, & Notes"

Use the Auto Train to get to Orlando, book a Family Bedroom that sleeps 5. There's only one per Superliner sleeper car, so you'll probably have to reserve one far in advance of your trip.

I said "sneak" in the sense that the kids are used to sleeping in cramped quarters, particularly when we're in a hotel room. So the question put more bluntly is: as long as everyone has a ticket to ride, does Amtrak care how many I might pack into any bedroom? Let's say I had Mom, Dad, and triplet 5 year olds and 1 more sibling? (I don't, but know such a family). How about rotating members of a larger-than-normally-prudent party from their coach seats (that come with their ticket, right?) through a bedroom (like: if you had to sleep overnight in a coach seat, you swap places by day and get to take a flat nap).

And then, separate from how many one actually does or doesn't fit into the room, how do meals work? Is everyone booked at the same time as the Room entitled to a dining seating, or is food cut off at the "Recommended Capacity" of the room (or recommended-plus-one)? Like, do my coach-ticket holders booked at the same time as the room automatically get food, regardless of whether they slept in the room or not? (Opposite question also holds: if someone decides to claim a seat instead of joining me in a room overnight, they still get the food, yes?). But if i swore out an affidavit that 6 of us slept in the Viewliner Bedroom on a BOS-NYP-Meteor-ORL trip, would all 6 get free dining?

Somewhere in the fine print, you'll find the capacity limits for the various types of rooms. I think a Bedroom allows 3, but I forget if 2 have to be children. Remember, passengers booked in a Sleeping Room pay the lowest Rail Fare, even if Coach seats at that price are Sold Out. But, they are not entitled to occupy a Coach Seat.
You could have Dining Car meals delivered to the room, where they could be shared.

JimBoylan wrote:Somewhere in the fine print, you'll find the capacity limits for the various types of rooms. I think a Bedroom allows 3, but I forget if 2 have to be children.

You can have 2 adults and one child in a bedroom (I speak from direct experience); I do not know if you can have 3 adults, however.

Hamhock wrote:

JimBoylan wrote:Somewhere in the fine print, you'll find the capacity limits for the various types of rooms. I think a Bedroom allows 3, but I forget if 2 have to be children.

You can have 2 adults and one child in a bedroom (I speak from direct experience); I do not know if you can have 3 adults, however.

I believe that Amtrak states "two smaller adults in the lower bed" are OK. Hence 3 OK.

http://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-train ... mmodations" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

^ they put the "recommended" in the big visual chart, and we know there is a "maximum" (such as 3 for a Bedroom, which they describe in the text), but do you see a max for each type?

Lower bed of a room is the size of a double, I think, so you'd have to be pretty friendly with the second adult and neither adult can move around much. Doesn't work in my marriage. Either bed of a roomette is probably a single size or less, doubling up on a bed would not be fun.

The A and B bedrooms in Viewliners (and some of the bedrooms in Superliners) have doors between them, so you can make a suite out of both rooms. If you have a particularly large family, that's the way to go.

If, say, 4 family members were ticketed in a Room, and two more were ticketed in Coach (paying for real seats) would Amtrak have a problem with rotating people to/from the Coach seats and the Room? IE, at some instances a family member with a Room ticket might be sitting in another members Coach seat while the ticketed Coach passenger takes a nap in the room. Also, you'd try to book the heavy-eaters in the Room and have the light eaters doing Coach a-la-carte.

So, I'm booking a trip SAV - WAS - CHI - NOL (98 - 29 - 59). I'm going to get a Roomette redeeming points. Two segments will be Superliner. Assuming I have a choice, upper or lower level room? I'd assume upper.