Sleeper Bargains

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JoeRids

Service Attendant
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Sep 1, 2013
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One of the best sleeper bargains in the Amtrak system has to be the day trip between Boston and Albany on the Lake Shore Boston section. The roomette upgrade is only $59 (if you book early enough to get the lowest bucket), and you get lunch westbound and dinner eastbound (albeit in the lounge car) plus the use of the Boston Club Acela and a private room for the pretty run through the Berkshires. For a five hour trip, not a bad deal!

I wanted to see if anyone knew of some good bargains for sleeper travel, i.e. what routes give you the biggest "bang for your buck?". How about some other inexpensive sleeper day trips that give you the maximum number of free meals or other perks?
 
It wasn't inexpensive or a day trip, but I just used points to book Denver-Vancouver, B.C. That's a one-zone trip that lasts three days and two nights, with up to nine meals.
 
Am I missing something here, or are you staying overnight in Albany? The schedule does not allow for a one day round trip from Boston to Albany. I have ridden that train only once, westbound in February and it was indeed enjoyable across the Berkshires.
 
Silver Star Miami to Jacksonville....10+ hours...lunch + dinner for about $80 upgrade
 
I tend to look for roomette bargains from a slightly different perspective. I try options around joining a train in coach and booking my sleeper from further down the line, or conversly, moving from sleeper to coach before my destination, Often the $ saving is surprisingly large. I did this once from EMY to SAC in coach and had the roomette booked from SAC TO Chicago. I saw the sleeper attendant at EMY and asked if it would be ok to board in sleeper at EMY anyway, and he was cool with that. Similarly on the Coast Starlight from PDX to EMY, I booked the roomette only to SAC and saved a worthwhile amount, again the attendant said I may as well stay in the roomette as it was not needed before my destination.

I travel light, so it has not been any trouble for me to switch from coach to roomette in mid journey.

Ed :cool:
 
I thought that the onboard upgrades are no longer offered at low bucket but at the highest bucket prices. IMO, this was a bad move by Amtrak because if you depend on the the budget conscience passenger, traveling in coach to have their ticket price jump from the lowest to the highest, the probability is small.. On some routes the sleepers are sold out while on others like the Crescent we've traveled in half full sleepers that remained unsold from Atlanta to New Orleans. The high bucket upgrade policy may be costing Amtrak to lose business.
 
I tend to look for roomette bargains from a slightly different perspective. I try options around joining a train in coach and booking my sleeper from further down the line, or conversly, moving from sleeper to coach before my destination, Often the $ saving is surprisingly large. I did this once from EMY to SAC in coach and had the roomette booked from SAC TO Chicago. I saw the sleeper attendant at EMY and asked if it would be ok to board in sleeper at EMY anyway, and he was cool with that. Similarly on the Coast Starlight from PDX to EMY, I booked the roomette only to SAC and saved a worthwhile amount, again the attendant said I may as well stay in the roomette as it was not needed before my destination.

I travel light, so it has not been any trouble for me to switch from coach to roomette in mid journey.

Ed :cool:
Nice tip! I just looked into doing that on my already booked PDX-MSP roomette trip late March. At current (roomette only) prices you can save $114, from $292 the whole PDX-MSP segment to $178 for the PSC-MSP segment. Nice savings, plus you only miss out on 1 meal. Lucky for me though I snagged a cheap roomette earlier for $201 the whole segment, so basically the savings are nil for me to change. But I will keep this tip in mind for future use! Thanks caravanman!
 
Just for kicks I've tried pricing out multiple service levels on the same journey and in my experience trying to swap coach and sleeper during the trip would save little or no money at all. I guess it depends on the route and the season.
 
Am I missing something here, or are you staying overnight in Albany? The schedule does not allow for a one day round trip from Boston to Albany. I have ridden that train only once, westbound in February and it was indeed enjoyable across the Berkshires.
You are correct; you cannot do this round trip in one day. My trip is actually NYP-BOS-ALB-POU-NYP.
 
Hi DA,

I think you are right, it just depends on the routes, times of day, and passenger loadings.

My impression was that travel just a short way past certain busy stations triggers quite large price steps for roomettes, probably not much of a save on many routes.

Ed :cool:
 
Have any of you thought about trying to book a sleeper for only the night time portions of the journey? I don't know if that's possible but I was able to do it that way, but then again I'm an a previous intern for the company and I'm not sure if the policies for employees / interns are the same as a regular ticketed passenger. I'd assume for company employees/ interns it would be more easy going.
 
Have any of you thought about trying to book a sleeper for only the night time portions of the journey?
The funny way the pricing works means it's usually not worth it. But some people on here have done this.
 
Have any of you thought about trying to book a sleeper for only the night time portions of the journey?
The funny way the pricing works means it's usually not worth it. But some people on here have done this.
Totally dependent on where you're going and when. I think on a day when sleeper costs are in the high buckets, your savings are liable to be more significant using this method. For example, if I look at Tucson to New Orleans via the Sunset Limited leaving August 11, I can book two people in a roomette for $752. If I book coach from Tucson to El Paso (~6 hours), roomette from El Paso to Houston (~18.5 hours), then coach again from Houston to New Orleans (~9.5 hours), I get charged $526. I'd love to be in a room for the whole run, but a $226 difference is nothing to sneeze at, and I still get dinner and then breakfast included (and lunch too if the train's at all late getting into Houston).

Now, if I pick a day that roomettes are at low bucket, like August 21, I get a cost of $561 for a roomette going the whole way, or $498 if I break it up. Not really a difference worth spending almost half the trip in coach and switching back and forth, IMHO.
 
No one option suits every person or situation... just be aware that with late running, your anticipated move from coach into that roomette at station xxx at 11pm might not happen for another 6 or 7 hours!

Ed :cool:
 
Are you booking the coach and sleeper parts as separate bookings? Or is there some way you can upgrade from one to the other for a portion of the trip rather than all of it?
 
It's not always cheaper to book two separate reservations. What ends up happening is that you can pay the rail fare twice. For example, I can book the Silver Meteor for tomorrow from Miami to NYP for a rail fare of $141. A roomette adds $397 for a total of $538.

If I wanted to split in Savannah (where I can still get my dinner in before they close), the rail fare from MIA to SAV is $77. From SAV to NYP, the rail portion is $124 an it costs $325 more for the sleeper. The total doing it this way is $526. You save $12 for sitting in Coach for nearly 12 hours and you miss lunch.

Meanwhile, with a departure nearly 11 months out, the single roomette ride (Dec 9, 2014) would be only $368, whereas splitting the res the same way I did previously would be $454. Interestingly, the room/rail fare from SAV to NYP is actually HIGHER than from MIA to NYP.

Sometimes, it sucks to live here. All the cost, but 1/2 the ride...
 
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Are you booking the coach and sleeper parts as separate bookings? Or is there some way you can upgrade from one to the other for a portion of the trip rather than all of it?
I have just booked from a to b in coach then a seperate booking from b to c in sleeper, don't think one can do it on one booking...
You can book the whole trip on one booking if you use the multi-city option, and at least in my limited testing it's possibly a lot cheaper to do it that way. In my hypothetical example earlier of a trip for 2 from Tucson to New Orleans, leaving on August 11, roomette the whole way is $752. If you break up the trip so you're only in a roomette from El Paso to Houston, it comes out to a total of $650 if you book the legs as separate reservations, but only $526 if you do it using the "multi-city" booking option on the website.
 
Sometimes the multi-city booking doesn't work because you're "connection" is less than the recommended layover. In the example I posted above, you can't do that as a multi-city because the layover time in Savannah is only 5 minutes, thus they can't guarantee a connection. So it gets kicked back. I would have to book it in two separate reservations.

Obviously it works for you, though. Perhaps I just don't get how it all plays out.`
 
We do have similar problems in the uk, not with sleeper upgrades, but simply that some fares booked a to b and b to c all on the same train, work out cheaper than a to c in one booking. The hard part is knowing where the fare breaks are!

Ed :cool:
 
Sometimes the multi-city booking doesn't work because you're "connection" is less than the recommended layover. In the example I posted above, you can't do that as a multi-city because the layover time in Savannah is only 5 minutes, thus they can't guarantee a connection. So it gets kicked back. I would have to book it in two separate reservations.

Obviously it works for you, though. Perhaps I just don't get how it all plays out.`
Ah, I see what you're seeing when I try to break at Savannah. I think you're right that the problem is that the schedule for Savannah shows a departure time 5 minutes later than arrival time, so the system applies logic about connection timing and then disallows it.

So here's what I tried instead: Put the break someplace where departure and arrival times are the same, so the system doesn't even try to guess whether it's allowable. For example, leaving MIA on 2/6 and switching at Jesup gets you in to dinner or your room sooner than Savannah, and comes to only $476 when booked through the multi city tool, saving you $50 in exchange for sitting in coach (sans lunch) for 10 hours.

The savings are bigger on high bucket days of course. Leaving 2/9 with a roomette for 1 straight through is $708. Breaking at Jesup using multi city is $620 - an $88 difference.
 
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