Since you were not too familiar with the roomette and the Cardinal - I might add my opinion as a somewhat seasoned Cardinal traveler. All of my trips on the Cardinal in a Roomette have been really nice. You can expect a "First Class" feel to the roomette. It's a lot like the interior on a private plane or a small executive jet. Also the scenery along the route is really nice - Blue Ridge mountains, farmland, huge tracks of cattle grazing in Augusta County, VA (much like Montana). It's earns a "10" for scenery, but overall it's a rather small, short train with just a few cars and no nice lounge car, or a diner with a true kitchen. Just microwaved food - a kitchenette, so to speak, but they do seat you, and take your order from a menu.... The Roomette includes all meals, drinks and deserts - beer and wine is extra, but you can bring your own in a Roomette. And sometimes I've even taken my own wine or beer to the dinning car - no problem. But usually I just purchase it there, it's reasonable pricing.
I would so love to get familiar with the roomette but alas it's a bit out of my price range. One of the reasons I take the train is that its usually quite a bit less expensive than air travel, but the roomette price pushes it quite a bit above that. I love traveling on the train except for the sleeping part. As an older woman, not only do the seats become a bit uncomfortable after a certain number of hours (due as much to my older bones as the construction of the seat) , but there's also so much stopping and people getting on and off, etc.
I find the pricing for the roomettes and sleepers to be extremely confusing on the website, I'm not sure why they can't just state a price rather than going into all the hoopla about paying for a coach seat then adding the price of the roomette and so on. I found a post once with someone who was quite upset because they thought the cost of the roomette included the price of a coach seat (i.e. that they got a coach seat as well) Why must they make that so confounding?
When I rode to Cardinal to Lafayette, I was quite delighted with the food in the dining car - I had a pasta dish and it was very good. And I was seated with two other single passengers - one was a much older lady who travels quite often to see her many grandchildren in different states and the other a young college age man who was traveling home from a friends wedding. Both were very congenial and had some good stories to share.
When I travel the Northeast Regional trains, I get a business seat - they're more spacious and on a couple of the trains they have completely different seats which I like quite a lot, especially the 2/1 seating since I can get a seat alone (not that I'm uncompanionable, but there are, at times, some odd characters traveling and sleeping at night can be a bit close. ) I wish the cardinal has a business car.
On all of the trains, I try to divy up my time between my seat and the cafe car to give my bones a change of seating - another thing I enjoy about train travel - you can get up and move around. The only trouble with that is that the cafe car isn't always open so you can get shooed away.
I've always been a bit bemused by the concept of the "quiet" car. I do understand the desire not to have cell phones going and children bouncing around, but train cars on the whole are simply not quiet. People are always walking through, including children - especially older children who find simply sitting in their seats boring and the concept of the dining car alluring. And then there are people going up and down to the rest room, and those doors are not at all quiet. I suppose I've been fortunate in that the only "disburbing" noise I've ever dealt with on the trains I've traveled, have been a gentleman who snored quite loudly and I'm afraid it would have been rather difficult for him to have turned that "off", lol.
Ah well, thank you so much for your information on the roomette. I do have one other question - I read in one place that if you're traveling alone you must pay for the other seat in there if you wish not to have a roommate - is that correct? Yet on other posts I've read that if traveling alone, you get the room to yourself. How does that work? Who knows one day I may splurge
Thanks so much
