amtrakmichigan
Lead Service Attendant
I just thought I would say hi to everyone, I just got back home last night (Nov 29) from a 2 week and 1 day rail trip from Michigan to Florida covering a few miles short of 4,000. I am going to write a trip report on the trip report page as I get time. I will write it in sections, since I rode 6 different trains, it will take a long time to type it all in one.
Trains we rode (myself, wife and 8 year old daughter)
- Wolverine- Dearborn, Mi to Chicago - Business Class
- Capitol Limited - Chicago to Washington DC - SL Deluxe Sleeper
- Silver Meteor - Washington DC to Kissimmee,FL - 2 VL Standard rooms
- Sunset Limited - Orlando to New Orleans - SL Deluxe Sleeper
- City of New Orleans - NOL to Chicago - 2 SL Standard Sleepers.
- Lake Cities - Chicago to Dearborn, Mi. - Business Class
Overall it was a great trip. I was getting nervous on Wed. night when I found out that the eastbound Sunset was running 13 hours late into Florida. I was riding this consist on the next day(Thanksgiving) westbound and thought they would have stopped it in NOL to turn back around. I was not about to ride a bus for much distance if this was going to be the case. Anyway this worked out alright, and the train departed Jacksonville westbound on Thanksgiving about 2 hours late, and arrived into NOL about 5 minutes late (talking about a ton of padding
The next nightmare happened in NOL boarding the City of New Orleans. This could have been a true nightmare but actually turned out to be ok. When we went to board our Deluxe room "e" we were stopped like normal by the attendent for him to check the manifest. We wern't on it !
:angry: How could this be?? The conductor came over and checked my tickets,sure enough we had the correct tickets. He informed me somebody was in our room already, and couldn't kick them out because they were the ones on the manifest. The conductor walked me into the station to the agent. After the agent checked the computer there was only 1 Standard room available out of both cars. He refunded the difference between the DLX room and STD room which was a whole $16. But wait we have 3 people, one STD room wasn't going to do the job for 3 people. After boarding and on our way our car attendent informed me that he had 2 extra STD rooms and I could have one of them. (he really went out of his way to do this for us) I will explain all of this in more detail on my trip report in the near future. What it came down to is we were in the Dorm car whre the DLX rooms are not sold they are only used for the crew. And 2 STD rooms in this car are not sold for whatever reason. I won't mention the attendents name since he did some "extras" for us that he would probably gotten in some big trouble for if a higher up found out what he did. But I can say this,he was the best attendent I have ever had in all of my many travels. This person really truly enjoyed his job and it showed!
Well that was the most nerve racking part of my trip. In a few days Iwill start my actual trip report and give all the details.
Have any of you guys ever ran into the "double booking" problem on a trip?? and how did you handle it??
Trains we rode (myself, wife and 8 year old daughter)
- Wolverine- Dearborn, Mi to Chicago - Business Class
- Capitol Limited - Chicago to Washington DC - SL Deluxe Sleeper
- Silver Meteor - Washington DC to Kissimmee,FL - 2 VL Standard rooms
- Sunset Limited - Orlando to New Orleans - SL Deluxe Sleeper
- City of New Orleans - NOL to Chicago - 2 SL Standard Sleepers.
- Lake Cities - Chicago to Dearborn, Mi. - Business Class
Overall it was a great trip. I was getting nervous on Wed. night when I found out that the eastbound Sunset was running 13 hours late into Florida. I was riding this consist on the next day(Thanksgiving) westbound and thought they would have stopped it in NOL to turn back around. I was not about to ride a bus for much distance if this was going to be the case. Anyway this worked out alright, and the train departed Jacksonville westbound on Thanksgiving about 2 hours late, and arrived into NOL about 5 minutes late (talking about a ton of padding
The next nightmare happened in NOL boarding the City of New Orleans. This could have been a true nightmare but actually turned out to be ok. When we went to board our Deluxe room "e" we were stopped like normal by the attendent for him to check the manifest. We wern't on it !
:angry: How could this be?? The conductor came over and checked my tickets,sure enough we had the correct tickets. He informed me somebody was in our room already, and couldn't kick them out because they were the ones on the manifest. The conductor walked me into the station to the agent. After the agent checked the computer there was only 1 Standard room available out of both cars. He refunded the difference between the DLX room and STD room which was a whole $16. But wait we have 3 people, one STD room wasn't going to do the job for 3 people. After boarding and on our way our car attendent informed me that he had 2 extra STD rooms and I could have one of them. (he really went out of his way to do this for us) I will explain all of this in more detail on my trip report in the near future. What it came down to is we were in the Dorm car whre the DLX rooms are not sold they are only used for the crew. And 2 STD rooms in this car are not sold for whatever reason. I won't mention the attendents name since he did some "extras" for us that he would probably gotten in some big trouble for if a higher up found out what he did. But I can say this,he was the best attendent I have ever had in all of my many travels. This person really truly enjoyed his job and it showed!
Well that was the most nerve racking part of my trip. In a few days Iwill start my actual trip report and give all the details.
Have any of you guys ever ran into the "double booking" problem on a trip?? and how did you handle it??