Going to Glacier National Park

[wayman]

The dining car is an experience that shouldn't be missed right? If I take a sandwich the first night and can't get an early dinner reservation the second, I'll miss it completely. On the other hand, how often are these trains late? Also, how often does dinner fill up completely and there's no space? Is that possible?

I don't know how often the train is late, but others on this forum might know.

As far as the dining car being an experience that shouldn't be missed, I agree everyone should try it. You're not likely to get early seating for dinner, so I'd suggest breakfast in the dining car. Or lunch, but because you're on a budget, if you take a look at the lunch menu you'll find you can get most of the same things in the lounge at a lower price.

Some of the lunch menu items look the same (burger, pizza), but they're not. For instance, in the cafe the burger is a meat patty in a bun in a vacuum bag and tossed in a microwave (in bag) for a minute or two. As you can imagine, either the meat patty winds up cold or the bun is awful, generally the latter. There's no option to improve it with condiments (lettuce, tomato, onion). In the diner, the burger is prepared in the kitchen, putting a cooked meat patty on a fresh bun with lettuce, tomato, and onions at your option, served with chips (no free chips in the cafe, you can pay extra for them separately). The diner burger may cost a few dollars more, but (a) if you bought a burger and chips in the cafe the prices would be more similar, and (b ) the burger is simply a much better burger in the diner. (Do you get free soda with lunch, or is that just dinner in the diner? If you get a free soda with the lunch in the diner compared with having to buy one in the cafe, it's an even more equitable cost.)