The Last Hurrah....

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Our "last hurrah" has turned into somewhat of a cluster. We weren't doing anything fancy or abusing the system, just a simple CHI-SAN round trip. First problem was booking the trip. AGR would not let us change trains in FUL, we had to stay on the SWC all the way into LAX to catch the Surfliner. Had to do the same thing in reverse, too. In total, that's six hours we're not getting back that wouldn't have happened if we were paying cash, just because of a poorly-programmed reservation system.

For more fun, a week ago we were told by our host that we needed to get off at OSD, not SAN. Change the reservation? Sure... if we cancel the trip booked under the old system and book under the new system, and oh, by the way, you don't have enough points to do that. Lesson there - "last hurrah" reservations cannot be altered. At all. Any changes, even trivial, require rebooking under the new system.

Our solution is going to be getting off the SAN train at OSD, and we've already booked an OSD-SAN train to catch our return train. Another three hours of unnecessary travel (and occupying two seats) due to Amtrak's inflexibility.

Is this any way to run a railroad? Really?

EDIT: In typing this out, I now realize I could have used the changeover against Amtrak and booked the LD travel to FUL under the old system, and booked the FUL-SAN (now OSD) legs under the new system. It would have cost a few more points, but saved 9 hours of nonsense travel. C'est la vie!
 
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I'm using the last of my points on my May vacation. I booked before Jan 24 to get the most value for my 60k points. rvr to san then san to rno then rno to cin. All in sleepers. It seems with the big increase in the number of points needed to travel, I may have to back off on my 3 trips per year.
 
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