First Class Meals

[crabby_appleton1950]

Is it possible to leave personal attacks out of the responses?

 

[Asher]

Is it possible to leave personal attacks out of the responses?

If I may leave a "tip" here, please don't hijack the previous subject.

 

[crabby_appleton1950]

Is it possible to leave personal attacks out of the responses?

If I may leave a "tip" here, please don't hijack the previous subject.

I'm referring to personal attacks in THIS thread.

 

[Ryan]

As always has been, and ever shall be, if you think someone's posts are appropriate, you'll have much better luck contacting the staff than derailing the thread.

 

[Eric S]

Might want to stick to contacting staff for posts you think are inappropriate, though...

 

[Rover]

I suggest a "sticky" for the combined tipping thread. Some people just don't know how to search.

 

[Skyline]

There is no "first class" on Amtrak long-distance trains. Do you mean the meal included with a sleeper ticket? That would be served in the dining car.

It's obvious that's what he's asking about. The pedantry about terminology is uncalled for.

When I read it initially, I thought perhaps the question was dealing with the QUALITY of the food. As in: the food on trains #1 and #2 -- The Canadian -- are truly first class dining, but is Amtrak's diner food comparable?

 

[Maverickstation]

There is no "first class" on Amtrak long-distance trains. Do you mean the meal included with a sleeper ticket? That would be served in the dining car.

It's obvious that's what he's asking about. The pedantry about terminology is uncalled for.

When I read it initially, I thought perhaps the question was dealing with the QUALITY of the food. As in: the food on trains #1 and #2 -- The Canadian -- are truly first class dining, but is Amtrak's diner food comparable?

No, The Canadian is different operation all together, that train has a true first class dining car, year round, for the Sleeper Class Plus and Prestige Class passengers.

The menu is pretty upscale, and the choices are far from run of the mill.

Coach class has a cafe menu, on a year round basis, similar to what is offered on the Silver Star, and during the summer peak there is a coach class diner with food cooked on board.

The Ocean serves food from local caterers, but it is still re-heated, and plated on board in a restaurant manner.

Ken

 

[Triley]

There is no "first class" on Amtrak long-distance trains. Do you mean the meal included with a sleeper ticket? That would be served in the dining car.

It's obvious that's what he's asking about. The pedantry about terminology is uncalled for.

When I read it initially, I thought perhaps the question was dealing with the QUALITY of the food. As in: the food on trains #1 and #2 -- The Canadian -- are truly first class dining, but is Amtrak's diner food comparable?

No, The Canadian is different operation all together, that train has a true first class dining car, year round, for the Sleeper Class Plus and Prestige Class passengers.

The menu is pretty upscale, and the choices are far from run of the mill.

Coach class has a cafe menu, on a year round basis, similar to what is offered on the Silver Star, and during the summer peak there is a coach class diner with food cooked on board.

The Ocean serves food from local caterers, but it is still re-heated, and plated on board in a restaurant manner.

Ken

And if everyone was willing to pay the fares asked on The Canadian, I'm sure Amtrak would put that quality of food in our diners.

That being said, I'm even looking forward to dinner and breakfast on The Ocean next month.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

The food itself on the Canadian is only a step above Amtrak full service diners in my opinion. What really sets it apart is the class. You never see employees sitting at the tables, tables filled with random odds and ends etc. And the way the steward comes around and recommends wines or drink specials just gives you the feeling of being in an upscale establishment.

 

[ehbowen]

The food itself on the Canadian is only a step above Amtrak full service diners in my opinion. What really sets it apart is the class. You never see employees sitting at the tables, tables filled with random odds and ends etc. And the way the steward comes around and recommends wines or drink specials just gives you the feeling of being in an upscale establishment.

I've had some wonderful meals aboard Amtrak full service diners...perhaps not lately, but a grilled red snapper filet on the Broadway Limited circa 1985 still stands out as the most memorable fish dinner I can recall. The Superliner diners, in particular, were (originally—they may have been downgraded during refits) designed to be the best-equipped kitchens ever placed on American rails. If they were properly staffed and supported (I'd love to see "mini-commissaries" located at major service stops at the middle of the 2-night trips), there's no limit as to the quality of meals they could turn out.

Of course, there is a problem. Satisfied and happy passengers would demand more sleeping (and coach) cars, and, in short order, more trains. I have no idea as to how we could possibly deal with that issue....

 

[Devil's Advocate]

And if everyone was willing to pay the fares asked on The Canadian, I'm sure Amtrak would put that quality of food in our diners.

We're already paying much more than we did in the past. In many cases we're paying more than first class airfare and in some cases we're even paying similar costs to that of hiring a taxi or limo to drive us half way across the country. Here in this country Amtrak sleepers are among the most expensive means of travel outside of renting exotic supercars and private jets. Has Amtrak food quality improved several times to match our ever increasing fares? No. It has continued to drop in quality and selection even as the ticket cost has substantially increased over time. So far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be much correlation between cost and quality on Amtrak. The Silver Star situation makes it seem like Amtrak dining car staff and maintenance seem unbelievably expensive and inefficient. Almost to the point that it may never be possible to fix it without starting over again from scratch.

 

[niemi24s]

. . .the ticket cost has substantially increased over time.

Just how much has ticket cost increased over time? I've only got about 17 months of fare data, but a quick look at the EB and CL shows their fares went up about 2.2% during that period (or about 1.7% APR) for mid-bucket coach + roomette. Do you have anything more concrete than "substantial"?

 

[Tennessee Traveler]

Having rode both Amtrak and Via Rail, I prefer the meals on the Amtrak trains. I most recently rode the Via Rail Ocean this past June and their food was nicely served in the dining car but it was reheated airline type first class meals. Choice was limited and comparable to what is now available on the City of New Orleans.

As for the cooked on board food on the Canadian, it's good if you like gourmet type food like duck, quail, lamb chops and instead of my favorite Angus burger on Amtrak, the Canadian serves Bison Burgers which taste a little weird on my taste buds. Yes, the tables are cloth covered and there is real china and a full dining car serving staff but the food is a little off my taste so give me eggs, grits, bacon; angus burgers, and steak and baked potatoes any day which I can get on Amtrak and I'm a happy camper.

As for comparing airline cost to Amtrak cost, I think it is only fair you also include the hotel costs for each night if you arrive somewhere two day earlier. For me staying in Hilton and Hyatt branded hotels that can easily be $200 per night and then there is two days of food to purchase also. In that light my $500 California Zephyr roomette Chicago to Emeryville is much less that first class airline fare.

 

[keelhauled]

Why in the world would you assume one is required to spend two nights in a hotel at the destination as opposed to leaving two days later and not paying for two nights anywhere?

 

[Tennessee Traveler]

Why in the world would you assume one is required to spend two nights in a hotel at the destination as opposed to leaving two days later and not paying for two nights anywhere?

Because if I am on vacation, I would not stay home two days, I would stay two days longer at my destination. It's not that important enough to argue on my part. Just threw that out as a consideration since I travel only for leisure and I have to FLY to a city that has Amtrak service to board my vacation destination THE TRAIN.

 

[Lonestar648]

When I was traveling for business every week, leaving Chicago in the evening or late afternoon and arrive the next morning, saved a hotel night because I would have had to travel almost the same time to fly. I arrived having showered, worked on my reports, had breakfast, and a team member picking me up at the station. Many times I was cheaper on Amtrak in a roomette than flying the night before, staying in a hotel.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

. . .the ticket cost has substantially increased over time.

Just how much has ticket cost increased over time? I've only got about 17 months of fare data, but a quick look at the EB and CL shows their fares went up about 2.2% during that period (or about 1.7% APR) for mid-bucket coach + roomette. Do you have anything more concrete than "substantial"?

Over a period of about eight years routine sleeper fares I was buying for simple transportation between my two most common city pairs more than doubled from a low of around $150 to just shy of $400 each way for the dates I traveled each year. As Amtrak amenities and service levels kept dropping and the schedule worsened I had a harder time accepting the ever increasing fares at reduced satisfaction. I never said the buckets increase two fold, I simply said the tickets available to me increased two fold. That could also be explained with fewer compartments being sold in the lower buckets relative to the number of tickets being sold in the higher buckets.

I still take Amtrak for the occasional joyride but these trips target the best segments of the best routes and I no longer ride Amtrak for basic transportation. Same with The Canadian for that matter. For basic transportation at these price points I'd rather drive or fly first class for less money instead. I'm not sure how to convince you since it's just one person's experience but do keep in mind that there are dozens of threads where forum members remark on the sharply increasing sleeper fares. The only threads I've seen about sleeper prices falling to match the on board service levels in on the Silver Star, which could probably be handled by a refrigerated vending machine and a microwave at this point.

Why in the world would you assume one is required to spend two nights in a hotel at the destination as opposed to leaving two days later and not paying for two nights anywhere?

Thank you for pointing out the fallacy in his reasoning.

When I was traveling for business every week, leaving Chicago in the evening or late afternoon and arrive the next morning, saved a hotel night because I would have had to travel almost the same time to fly. I arrived having showered, worked on my reports, had breakfast, and a team member picking me up at the station. Many times I was cheaper on Amtrak in a roomette than flying the night before, staying in a hotel.

I rarely travel for business but when I have there's never been an extraneous team member with nothing better to do than sit and wait for me at the train station. I can only imagine trying to explain why I should take a train that only travels three times a week at twice the cost to my boss. All the irrational whining in the world about hotel costs wouldn't save that conversation from going south in a hurry.

 

[Lonestar648]

Believe it or not i was able to keep it even. My boss didn't care as long as I was within budget. As far as a team member, we didn't have the luxury of all 10 of us each having a rental car when we were on site. do the low man on totem pole had the the pick up duty since some people came in even after myself and they were flying. For a while four of us traveled by Amtrak rather than fly. we arrived home with our reports completed on the train. It is impossible to do much work on a plane being so cramped, and someone always reading what you had on your laptop. So the fliers had to do their reports when they got home. Now We moved ourselves to the Chicago area so we could be centrally located to hit our customers even though our company was located in Virginia.

 

[Triley]

And if everyone was willing to pay the fares asked on The Canadian, I'm sure Amtrak would put that quality of food in our diners.

We're already paying much more than we did in the past. <sniped out some "yuge" exaggerations> Has Amtrak food quality improved several times to match our ever increasing fares? No. It has continued to drop in quality and selection even as the ticket cost has substantially increased over time. So far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be much correlation between cost and quality on Amtrak. The Silver Star situation makes it seem like Amtrak dining car staff and maintenance seem unbelievably expensive and inefficient. <snip>

Way to ignore what I said, and go off an another tangent. I was making the comparison between Amtrak and ViaRail (notably The Canadian) food quality, and the pricing, since The Canadian was already mentioned by someone else.

From Toronto to Vancouver the cheapest coach fare comes to almost $400USD. The cheapest upper berth is about $875USD. Cheapest cabin for one is about $1325USD. And just for ha has... In Prestige you are charged the full fare for a cabin for two, which comes to $6500USD (depending on the time of year). So even if there's two traveling together, it's $3250/each.

John Q. Public in the US travel from Miami to Seattle for less than those fares, even when in some higher fare buckets. (For reference, routing is always starting with the Meteor, usually connecting to Capitol Limited to the Empire Builder, though connections to the CZ then CS are also offered, some times for less.)

For those city pairs...Coach could be had for as low as $306. Cheapest roomette would be about $1167 if the stars aligned and the roomettes were all in low fare buckets. For a single person a bedroom could be $2425, or for two $2731. A savings of up to $3769 for two travelers, or up to $4075 for a single traveler, when compared to Prestige.

So now armed with hard facts, how many here would be willing to pay $4000 more for the service The Canadian offers in Prestige? Not many would be willing to do that on an even semi-regular (once a year) trip, I would venture to guess.

Returning to what you said now, before the thread is locked for veering way off topic...

Fares have gone up and food quality has gone down? Absolutely. Thank the pinch from the government to lower losses. Does anyone here (besides DA) think Amtrak genuinely enjoys cutting service?

Have fares gone up and food quality gone down on the airlines too? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but on the flights I travel, yes. It's not Amtrak leading this trend here.

How cheap and efficient do you expect maintenance to be on 70 year old cars? We already know the crew doesn't come cheap.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

So now armed with hard facts, how many here would be willing to pay $4000 more for the service The Canadian offers in Prestige? Not many would be willing to do that on an even semi-regular (once a year) trip, I would venture to guess.

The main thing that keeps me from riding The Canadian instead of Amtrak are the obnoxious customs and immigration people I have to pass through to get there. There's also the matter of a limited non-daily schedule that makes planning a bit more difficult, but I suffer from the same problem here on Amtrak as well. Based on what I'm reading in the news it's starting to sound like VIA may be the only long distance option in North America before long. At that point maybe The Canadian will have enough business to increase the frequency to daily again.

Fares have gone up and food quality has gone down? Absolutely. Thank the pinch from the government to lower losses. Does anyone here (besides DA) think Amtrak genuinely enjoys cutting service?

Does anyone here think Amtrak has the staff, infrastructure, and willingness to provide freshly prepared first class food at higher prices? If so how do we explain that not even one single route has been blessed with this opportunity? When the Coast Starlight and Empire Builder quietly lost their "premium service" designation did the price of tickets fall to reflect the change? If not, why should we assume that increasing their fares further would bring premium service back again?

Have fares gone up and food quality gone down on the airlines too? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but on the flights I travel, yes. It's not Amtrak leading this trend here.

Personally I think most airline food has always been crap. Fortunately flights are generally short and unlike train stations airports tend to have dozens of food service options that are better than anything you're likely to find on a plane or train. Accounting for inflation recent coach airfares have actually been among the cheapest I've ever seen. I'm too tall to fit into today's coach pitch but premium economy pitch is similar in price to what standard coach cost in years past.

 

[RSG]

Note, you do have to ASK for the salad. It's free, but not given unless asked for.

I've found, at least in the past year, that is no longer the case. I don't know if it's an official change in OBS policy or just because the dining car staff got tired of people feeling shorted because they weren't automatically given a salad, but my last few trips I've always been asked if I would like a salad.

 

[niemi24s]

. . .the ticket cost has substantially increased over time.

Just how much has ticket cost increased over time? I've only got about 17 months of fare data, but a quick look at the EB and CL shows their fares went up about 2.2% during that period (or about 1.7% APR) for mid-bucket coach + roomette. Do you have anything more concrete than "substantial"?

Over a period of about eight years routine sleeper fares I was buying for simple transportation between my two most common city pairs more than doubled from a low of around $150 to just shy of $400 each way for the dates I traveled each year.

On the surface that does indeed sound substantial. But such conclusions are misleading without knowing what the bucket levels were. F'rinstance, if $150 was low bucket and $400 was high bucket:

• the simple high bucket APR would be 100[(400 - 150) ÷ (150 X 8)] = 20.8% 100[(400/150)^1/8 - 1] = 13.0%

• next bucket down would be about $400 ÷ 1.25 = $320 for a simple APR of 100[(320 - 150) ÷ (150 X 8)] = 14.2% 100[(320/150)^1/8 - 1] = 9.9%

• next bucket down would be about $320 ÷ 1.25 = $256 for a simple APR of 100[(256 - 150) ÷ (150 X 8)] = 8.8% 100[(256/150)^1/8 - 1] = 6.9%

• next bucket down would be about $256 ÷ 1.25 = $205 for a simple APR of 100[(205 - 150) ÷ (150 X 8)] = 4.6% 100[(205/150)^1/8 - 1] = 4.0%

• next bucket down (low bucket) would be about $205 ÷ 1.25 = $164 for a simple APR of 100[(164 - 150) ÷ (150 X 8)] = 1.2% 100[(164/150)^1/8 - 1] = 1.1%

Q: Any recollection which bucket the $400 fare was?

P.S.: If you provide the specifics of that $400 trip I can figure out the bucket.

 

[willem]

Just how much has ticket cost increased over time? I've only got about 17 months of fare data, but a quick look at the EB and CL shows their fares went up about 2.2% during that period (or about 1.7% APR) for mid-bucket coach + roomette. Do you have anything more concrete than "substantial"?

My first Amtrak trip in the modern era (two legs each way, coach-roomette and bedroom-coach) was $815. Looking at the same legs for the entire month of next September, the cheapest coach-roomette is $556 and the cheapest bedroom-coach is $604, for a $1160 total or 42% increase. Is 42% increase reasonable over 15 years? (I was just looking at the cheapest prices, without regard to dates of the legs, so it's not a completely reasonable comparison.)

For my actual dates of travel moved forward 15 years, the total is $1226, or 50% increase. Again, is that a reasonable increase for 15 years?

Meals on the first trip included filet mignon and catfish, both well-prepared. I would say what I had on my most recent Amtrak trip, but I don't remember. (It might be that meal wasn't memorable or it might be failing memory.)

 

[Bob Dylan]

I disagree that the Food ( and drink) on the Canadian is only slightly better than the current bland,generic stuff slung in Amtrak Diners.

Its on a par with Train Diners on the Crack Trains from the Glory Days such as the Super Chief, Crescent,Panama Express etc. as is the Service from the Wonderful Crews!