Rail Discount Failure

[Kevin L.]

Last night I tried to book a ride on the Maple Leaf to Toronto. The Student Advantage card didn't want to play, despite the fact that it discounted me on the ride from Vancouver to Seattle. So, reading that the SA card doesn't work on shared railways with VIA (Via doesn't like to play), I figured that the Maple Leaf must be one of those shared railways.

So I tried to use the ISIC for a discount, which does not say that it has the limitation on shared railways, but it did not work either, and gave the same non-descript error message.

Any ideas on why these discounts won't work for me? AAA didn't work either.

Also, it seems that there is only Business Class as an upgrade on the train, but the train is over 9 hours, so not having any sort of upgrade above that surprised me. (Although for part of the journey, the business class upgrade was retailing for a mere $1.)

When the base price is 136 dollars, it would be really nice to save 15%

 

[MrEd]

When I went this year I booked to the border to get the discount and then another ticket from there to Toronto.

 

[AlanB]

Once this train crosses the border, it officially in name stops being an Amtrak train and becomes a VIA rail train. VIA Rail does not allow the normal discount to be used. So like MrEd suggested, the only way to get a discount is to book two seperate trips. One for the Amtrak leg and one for the VIA leg, and use the discount only for the Amtrak leg.

You can still book both legs through Amtrak, and you'll get two tickets regardless of whether you book one reservation or two.

 

[the_traveler]

Book a ticket to Niagara Falls, New York (the Amtrak portion of the Maple Leaf)- not Niagara Falls, Ontario! This way you can use the discount. (This also applies to other discounts like AAA or NARP.) Then book a separate ticket from Niagara Falls, New York to Toronto (the VIA rail portion of the Maple Leaf).

 

[Trogdor]

If you call Amtrak at 800-USA-RAIL, they can book your ticket and apply the discount properly (which would be to CBN, or Canadian Border-New York, which you can't do online).

 

[Anthony]

Just FYI, VIA does honor ISIC cards for a student discount.

 

[Kevin L.]

Just FYI, VIA does honor ISIC cards for a student discount.

So I can book between the 2 and get myself the 15% savings. Definitely a plus. Thankfully there are no age limits on the "student" age category, so I can enjoy such benefits for a long while to come