Roomettes Now Available for Sale On the NEC

[Tadman]

Until someone falls off a ladder in Union Station over in Chicago...

[gokeefe]

I believe ARROW may have already been replaced as part of funding from the Recovery Act.

[Rockingham Racer]

Did anyone mention that this is not a new concept? The New Haven [don't know about the Pennsylvania] had roomettes on several of its trains between BOS and GCT. Drawing rooms, too. I rode in both.

[Arborwayfan]

So did the California Zephyr on the Rio Grande leg; I think "day rooms" are specifically listed there in my 1967 Official Guide of the Railways, which I can't get at right now. (Similar situation: lots of people taking sleepers westbound to Denver and from SLC, and lots of day-only passengers on the Denver-SLC leg (or on part of it), so why not sell the rooms in the daytime and get some extra revenue out of those cars?

Amtrak should consider having the reservation system keep track of every room or roomette that gets a long daytime gap between two overnight bookings, or after the last night of a run, or before the first night, and offer those specific rooms for those specific segments at slightly more than the highest coach price, with big boldfaced notes saying no meals and you can't use the bed. It would be a trivial programming task. It would be no problem for a "daytime" passenger to get out of a roomette on the southbound City of New Orleans in Champaign, IL, and have the next occupant board at the same station. There would be no need to clean between passengers. Probably limit the "daytime" passengers to those getting off at stations before the attendant is supposed to go to bed, ie, just because someone books a sleeper from Carbondale to NOLA doesn't make it sensible to sell the same roomette from Chi to Carbondale, because the attendant would reasonably be asleep before Carbondale and the boarding passenger would want to find the bed down when they got on. I know the system offers sleepers for short distances on the northbound CONO out of, say, Champaign (6:30 am ish), but those include a meal and cost something similar to regular sleeper prices -- couple hundred bucks for a four-hour ride. Ditch the meal, or offer a choice of meal-no meal at different prices.

Any restrictions on using the beds need to be spelled out in boldface, to avoid angry passengers. Also, if passengers can use the beds, attendants need to be told. Example: I once got a sleeper from Effingham to Chicago (4:30 am boarding) expecting a three-hour nap, and found that attendant would not put down the beds, and pestered us to go eat when the diner opened at 6, claiming that the diner would be closing soon. It was open until we passed Homewood at 8, same as ever; the attendant had not worked the CONO before and was confused but also seemed to be avoiding having to make up the beds. We put them down ourselves and tipped the attendant for the trouble, but I'm pretty sure Amtrak would have expected us to sleep, as we have often slept after getting on at SLC at 3:30 am.

[mtuandrew]

I don’t think one can reasonably expect a roomette passenger to not want to use the bed, not for a 4+ hour trip anyway! Even a 2-3 hour trip will see people who want a nap or to lie down.

I think it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to omit a hot meal under the old structure for short-trip passengers. With the new dining structure though, it’s not a problem for those passengers to just grab an Amtrak “bento box” and go about their day. That’s a selling point for Amtrak too, it saves passengers the cost of lunch (in time and money) at their destination.

[ExCon90]

There was a period when the Michigan Central operated sleepers as parlor cars on day trains between Chicago and Detroit, listed in the timetable as "Sleeper as Parlor Car." I think the cars operated on the night train in the opposite direction as regular sleepers and I'm assuming that "as Parlor Car" meant that the beds were not to be used.

[CarterB]

Even after Amtrak, in the 80s, I took the Coast Starlight Oakland to LA and booked a roomette for the day trip sold at a reduced rate as a 'day room'

[leviramsey]

This does not surprise me. There's been a number of times the algorithm misses something and bedroom is cheaper than roomette. I've had two trips in a Bedroom when an open roomette was $150 more expensive. That actually was offered once for a family bedroom but I passed, no idea what I'd do with all the space and don't want to block someone who needs it.

There are recent FlyerTalk posts about cases where (domestic) first class gets cheaper on Delta than main cabin when the latter's non-refundable inventory is exhausted (also cases where basic economy is more expensive than main and sometimes even more expensive than Comfort+).

[Tadman]

I don’t think one can reasonably expect a roomette passenger to not want to use the bed, not for a 4+ hour trip anyway! Even a 2-3 hour trip will see people who want a nap or to lie down.

I think it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to omit a hot meal under the old structure for short-trip passengers. With the new dining structure though, it’s not a problem for those passengers to just grab an Amtrak “bento box” and go about their day. That’s a selling point for Amtrak too, it saves passengers the cost of lunch (in time and money) at their destination.

Perhaps meals and bed use would be adders that could be bought through a new rev management system. There is a distinct cost to using the bed - laundry and crew time. I've used roomettes during the day and I'll sleep reclined but never brought the bed out unless I was overnighting.

Of course this assumes a new revenue management system is coming, have we heard? It would be nice also if they made the app work better with the website. Right now, it's hard to find tickets bought through the website on the app. Can you imagine Amazon treating your app and website purchases as essentially two separate accounts? It's crazy.

[lordsigma12345]

Right now, it's hard to find tickets bought through the website on the app. Can you imagine Amazon treating your app and website purchases as essentially two separate accounts? It's crazy.

Lately the app seems to see everything if you have an AGR number and the number is on your tickets. The website only sees tickets you booked through the website. For me lately, the app sees all reservations as long as my AGR number was entered - whether over the phone, online, or from a station agent. I buy at the station quite often and even those always show up in the app pretty quickly. It would be nice if they updated the website to do the same. I think I did uncover a bug in the app though. For my upcoming Auto Train trip I used points to pay for one leg and I bought the other leg at the station. At the same time I bought that, I also bought a priority offload for the leg I used points for as you can't use points to buy that (which gets created as a separate reservation # in the system - if you book AT with points you have to call in or go to a station agent to buy the priority offload.) The priority offload reservation seems to be screwing up the app - the reservation lists in the app are screwed up now since I had bought that.

[Ridgefielder]

There was a period when the Michigan Central operated sleepers as parlor cars on day trains between Chicago and Detroit, listed in the timetable as "Sleeper as Parlor Car." I think the cars operated on the night train in the opposite direction as regular sleepers and I'm assuming that "as Parlor Car" meant that the beds were not to be used.

In the 60's and 70's the Long Island(!) operated leased sleepers with roomettes and drawing rooms on the Cannonball and Shelter Island Express summer-only service to the East End of Long Island. Got to imagine that's the shortest haul for which individual rooms have ever been available, at least in the last 100 years.

[Tadman]

Right now, it's hard to find tickets bought through the website on the app. Can you imagine Amazon treating your app and website purchases as essentially two separate accounts? It's crazy.

Lately the app seems to see everything if you have an AGR number and the number is on your tickets. The website only sees tickets you booked through the website. For me lately, the app sees all reservations as long as my AGR number was entered -

I guess I'm on Santa's bad list these days... Tried that exact move yesterday when I had an armful of luggage and was really hoping to find my ticket without going eight layers deep in my email. No luck.


Also, the new boarding kerfuffle: They announce "HAVE YOUR PHONE AT YOUR WAIST WE DO NOT WANT TO SCAN TICKETS AT EYE LEVEL IT TAKES TOO MUCH WORK". There was lots of shouting about this.

First of all, maybe if there was a uniform boarding protocol, it might be less frustrating. Second of all, I've never heard the airline gate people shouting about phone positioning. This is because the gate agent has a machine in a base. Perhaps if they used such it might help.

But I have little hope for the boarding process ever improving.