Well, I got back Monday morning from my trip, and wow. I'm really not sure what to think.
On the trip to Fargo from Seattle I sat at a window seat, and soon had an older lady sitting next to me. I was kind of bummed about that, since there were empty seats and was hoping she'd be getting off before me, but no such luck. Part of the reason why this trip might have been unpleasant may have been because of how anxious I was just to get home, but it wasn't soon before my back started to hurt and my butt was falling asleep. I kept readjusting the seat, taking Ibuprofren, stretching as much as possible when I got up to use the restroom, but I was pretty much in pain the whole time. I slept maybe 2-3 hours the whole trip. I was lucky enough to have a plug-in at my seat. I did not eat anything, I didn't feel like paying $15-20 for one meal. The car I was in ran out of water before we even hit Spokane - the bathrooms became disgusting, toilets wouldn't flush, etc. They fixed the problem so that the toilets would flush, but there was still no drinking water. The train was pretty much on time, it departed on time but arrived maybe 10 minutes late.
On the return trip from Fargo to Seattle, the train was late by over an hour. I was very pleased that mostly everyone on board (who were all already sleeping) had both seats to themselves, and found two seats near the back of the car. It was already almost 5am when I boarded, but I tried getting some sleep anyways. It was so much nicer to able to stretch out over both seats. Unfortunately, the lounge car was behind me and I was soon woken up by the doors constantly opening and shutting. It also seemed that the car I was in was incredibly wobbley, although I did notice even on the previous trip that the tracks in North Dakota and part of Montana seemed to be pretty rough compared to the rest, but maybe this was because we seemed to be going faster on this part of trip. Whatever the reason, I was still able to sleep for most of trip and had both seats to myself the whole time. This made a huge difference on my back pain. I was also a little more prepared...brought more food and had IcyHot instead of just Iburprofren. Sad part was I didn't have a plug-in at my seat, so I had to keep my BlackBerry turned off except to send an occasional status text and check the time. I didn't even bother with my laptop, but my Zune managed to survive all but one hour of the 32 hour trip. My only REAL complaint about the return trip was that the car attendant was pretty much non-existant. I managed to get a pillow more than 24 hours into the trip, and when I asked her for one, the response was "Well it's going to be awhile," and she walked away.
Whether or not I'll take Amtrak again is uncertain. The price was nice, but so far I'm 50/50 on good and bad.