- Joined
- Feb 18, 2003
- Messages
- 8,507
One of annoying idiosyncrasies of the Amtrak.com reservation system is the inexplicable manner in which the date and time you enter for your trip reverts to today’s date and 6:00am every time you return to the starting page. For example, you want price a trip from PHL to ORL in October. You start with 10/1, 4:00pm, enter the number of passengers, select your accommodations, and get the price. Now, you want to try 10/2 to see if the price varies. Page back to the start, and the date has reset to today; the time has reset to 6:00am. To get the data for October 2, you must reenter the date and time from scratch. It’s a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Now try this: Go to the Reservations home page. Enter your origin and destinations. Enter your number of passengers. Now, enter the date for yesterday. As I’m writing this it is June 5: I would enter June 4. Click “Show Schedules”, and you will get an error message; “The date you selected is in the past…”. Now, enter the actual date and time you want (say October 1, 4:00pm), and proceed as normal to the fare page. Get the fare for 10/1, and page back to the starting page. The original error message will still be displayed, but so will all your entered info with your desired date and time unchanged. Now, you can just increment the day by one, and price the trip for the next day. Or, you can leave the date and time unchanged, and try a different O&D (say PHL to JAX). Or you can leave the date unchanged, and just incriment the time. Every time you page back to the start, the error message will still appear, but all the data you entered, including date and time, will be unchanged.
Another minor victory over stupidity.
Now try this: Go to the Reservations home page. Enter your origin and destinations. Enter your number of passengers. Now, enter the date for yesterday. As I’m writing this it is June 5: I would enter June 4. Click “Show Schedules”, and you will get an error message; “The date you selected is in the past…”. Now, enter the actual date and time you want (say October 1, 4:00pm), and proceed as normal to the fare page. Get the fare for 10/1, and page back to the starting page. The original error message will still be displayed, but so will all your entered info with your desired date and time unchanged. Now, you can just increment the day by one, and price the trip for the next day. Or, you can leave the date and time unchanged, and try a different O&D (say PHL to JAX). Or you can leave the date unchanged, and just incriment the time. Every time you page back to the start, the error message will still appear, but all the data you entered, including date and time, will be unchanged.
Another minor victory over stupidity.