How to cheaply book a roommette from NYC -> Chicago?

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fhussain44

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The prices are ridiculously expensive if I try and book a roomette for the entire trip. So I had an idea that what if I break the ticket up by just booking a sleeper from Rochester (NY ) -> Elkhart (IN). But even that short 9 hour trip is showing very expensive roomette ( $281 is cheapest I see ).. Then I would still need a coach ticket for the remainder. So all in all no savings.

How about upgrading onboard to sleeper for just that portion ( Rochester -> Elkhart )? I heard you pay the lowest bucket fare, but what would that be? If it's $281 then not worth it for me..
 
Prices are not cheaper when upgrading on board, anymore. The conductor will probably tell you to call Amtrak yourself too upgrade and the price will be the current national price.
 
Sleeper prices are high,especially in the East. If you can handle one night in Coach,especially if you can get both seats to yourself you can save quite a bit of money. I love train travel,especially in a sleeper,but at some of these insane prices I am seeing,I'll opt to fly or drive. Examples:New York to Orlando $500 Chicago to LA $899,cheapest price roomette for one.
 
If you can handle an overnight in coach, as said, you may get the upgrade email a few days or so before departure. So you could gamble on getting an unsold room for less. I've now seen how this works :) The bid-upgrade email states what the lowest price point is "starting at X dollars per passenger!" and when you click the link, you will see a round "sliding scale" where you select your offer price. The lowest price will be the "starting" point from the email. It will also be labeled as having a "poor" chance of success. When you slide the scale to the highest price, the label morphs from poor, fair, good, to excellent, with that last option probably being more than what you're willing to pay (and it will be interesting to see what people experience with this in real time as the data points roll in). Once you lock in your offer and submit, a confirmation email is sent and you are advised that if your bid is successful, you will be notified via email of the upgrade in the "hours" before departure. You can't change your mind after submitting a bid (I don't think?) it either charges your card if successful, or, you don't get the upgrade and stay with what you've got.
 
The prices are ridiculously expensive if I try and book a roomette for the entire trip. So I had an idea that what if I break the ticket up by just booking a sleeper from Rochester (NY ) -> Elkhart (IN). But even that short 9 hour trip is showing very expensive roomette ( $281 is cheapest I see ).. Then I would still need a coach ticket for the remainder. So all in all no savings.

How about upgrading onboard to sleeper for just that portion ( Rochester -> Elkhart )? I heard you pay the lowest bucket fare, but what would that be? If it's $281 then not worth it for me..

I have used that "trick" in the past where I just booked my roomette for part of the journey. It can work out in some cases, it was a question of finding two less popular start and finish stations to change over.

You are correct about needing a coach ticket for the remainder.

Sadly, the "cheaper Conductor on board upgrade to sleepers" stopped a few years ago. You can always ask en-route, but expect it wont happen, nor be any cheaper anyway.
 
If by ridiculously expensive you mean $394 for one adult in a Roomette on either the Cardinal or Lake Shore Limited between CHI and NYP, then what would you call $740? Those two are the low and high bucket fares.

And your $281 sounds about right for the same low bucket thing but between Rochester and Elkhart: 71% of the fare for 51% of the route. But that's only for travel between those two points.

Want cheaper? Fly, take the bus or hitchike.
 
Pretty much. Want a cheap roomette fare? Step #1, build a time machine...
 
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Demand for roomettes from the East Coast to Chicago (and all points between) is extremely high. Supply is very low. Accordingly prices are very high. For at least the 13 years I have been travelling Amtrak, it has been common for Syracuse to Chicago to cost more than Chicago to Los Angeles -- sometimes twice as much.

The only way the prices will come down is if Amtrak gets the Viewliner IIs into service up here. Even then, Amtrak really needs to order more sleepers for Chicago to East Coast services.
 
For at least the 13 years I have been travelling Amtrak, it has been common for Syracuse to Chicago to cost more than Chicago to Los Angeles -- sometimes twice as much.
Twice as much? Roomettes on both??

Can't confirm that with only 5 or 6 years of Amtrak fares, but based on what data I do have the most expensive Roomette from SYR to CHI is $602 while the cheapest Roomette from CHI to LAX is $623. So SYR to CHI could never have cost more than CHI to LAX much less twice more - provided you're comparing Roomette fares on both trains.

The only way I see that the shorter LSL trip could be even close to 2X more than the longer trip would be if you're comparing the high bucket LSL Bedroom ($1223) to the low bucket SWC/TE Roomette ($623). But isn't that comparing oranges and uh . . .

Then too, it's possible that fares older than 6 years were somehow skewed around.
 
If it is anything like the airline sites, there'll be a suggested bid that is virtually guaranteed to to grab it, but you don't have to bid that. Unless their minimum bid is outrageous, I say low ball them and take your chances. I know that on Amtrak I will be satisfied with whatever I would already have been booked in, so getting an upgrade would be perk, not a necessity and I would bid accordingly.

I'll be anxious to see reports of how it actually works
 
My point is and was if they will only bring down the price 10-15 percent it won’t be anything except an illusion.
That's not what you said in this post. You clearly were implying that they weren't going to bring this program to sleepers and were epically wrong. Accept your wrongness with grace rather than try to lie your way out of it. (edit based on a now-deleted post for profane personal attacks, I'm willing to accept that you weren't being intentionally deceitful but just ignorant of what post you were actually replying to with the recommendation that you look at what thread you're in and which claim of yours has been debunked to in order to avoid such misunderstandings in the future)
 
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As to the original post in this thread, the last time I took the train to Chicago, in Feb. '20 just before the pandemic, I found a bedroom on the Capitol from PGH to CHI for less than the best roomette price on the Lake Shore. So, Empire Service to New York, Midtown diner breakfast, Pennsylvanian to PGH with cafe car lunch, dinner in Pittsburgh, bedroom to CHI. It took a lot longer, but on the plus side I was able to skip all the flex meals, enjoy my morning coffee in the Sightseer lounge (no longer possible), and I arrived in CHI in plenty of time for breakfast at Lou Mitchell's. Alas, there is nothing that works so well eastbound. But the Lake Shore to me is just an abomination now, and I haven't been willing to ride it overnight since my first experience of "contemporary dining" in 2018.

Anyway, at least before the pandemic and the latest round of revenue management adjustments (effectively fare hikes), it was possible to find better deals on the Capitol than on the Lake Shore.
 
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So all in all no savings.
That is my experience as well. I have never seen a useful discount from breaking up trips between coach and sleeper. Nor do I see how the new bidding process works for anyone who cares enough to choose a sleeper in the first place. Why would I sit on a coach ticket for weeks or months on the off chance that a bid might work at the last minute?
 
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That is my experience as well. I have never seen a useful discount from breaking up trips between coach and sleeper. Nor do I see how the new bidding process works for anyone who cares enough to choose a sleeper in the first place. Why would I sit on a coach ticket for weeks or months on the off chance that a bid might work at the last minute?

I'm not sure the Lake Shore is a long enough trip for it to work, but on longer runs I have sometimes found a fair savings by booking coach part of the way. On the southbound Crescent, for example, I recall a few trips on which we saved perhaps $150 by booking a room from Lynchburg to New Orleans, rather than booking all the way through from New York. On at least one of these trips, I went back to the sleeper around Philadelphia and advised the SCA we were already on the train and would be upgrading to sleeper at Lynchburg, and she said no one would be using the room before Lynchburg, so we could move back right away.

Agree with you on the upgrade bidding. If I want to go in sleeper, I'm going to book that from the outset and not leave it to chance.
 
Back when I was tracking it closely, you could save about $200 on the Cardinal by booking a room to Dyer, IN and then moving to coach for the last bit of the run into Chicago. There were several other examples, but that one stuck in my mind the most.

Here's one of the (now 10 year old) threads where we dug into this: Amtrak Fare Comparisons
 
Back when I was tracking it closely, you could save about $200 on the Cardinal by booking a room to Dyer, IN and then moving to coach for the last bit of the run into Chicago. There were several other examples, but that one stuck in my mind the most.0's

Here's one of the (now 10 year old) threads where we dug into this: Amtrak Fare Comparisons
That's a very interesting comparison chart. I am not going to spend hours researching how it compares nowadays, (unless I was booking a trip).

I recall when I travelled often out of Denver in the '80's, I found sleeper fares to be clumped in flat "zones", or groups of stations, before changing. So I would take advantage of that, and book the furthest distance without a raise in fares. For example, when traveling from Denver to Portland on the Pioneer, I would book the sleeper from Denver to Shoshone, ID. That way, I got the benefit of three meals the first day, as well as having the bed for most of the overnight portion of the trip. The next stop, Boise, would have been a significant raise in fare....
 
Just took the Texas Eagle/Sunset from Chi-Lax. By taking Coach to Bloomington and a roomette the remainder of the way I saved $139. Prices have gone up recently by $200,but there still that big savings. I believe this is the only long distance train with that substantial drop off in price. Wonder if the Cardinal still has that price drop in Dyer.
 
That's a very interesting comparison chart. I am not going to spend hours researching how it compares nowadays, (unless I was booking a trip).

I recall when I travelled often out of Denver in the '80's, I found sleeper fares to be clumped in flat "zones", or groups of stations, before changing. So I would take advantage of that, and book the furthest distance without a raise in fares. For example, when traveling from Denver to Portland on the Pioneer, I would book the sleeper from Denver to Shoshone, ID. That way, I got the benefit of three meals the first day, as well as having the bed for most of the overnight portion of the trip. The next stop, Boise, would have been a significant raise in fare....
Used to be that when you booked a Room for a portion of a Hybrid LD Trip, with a Coach ticket for the first or last leg of the trip, if the Room wasn't occupied, the SCA would generally let you occupy the Room without changing to/from Coach.( long as you paid if you ate in the Diner during the Coach portion of the trip)😊
 
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