Ticketing rooms when boarding at different locations

[dart330]

We have booked a few trips where 4 people are traveling together in 2 rooms. Our first trip was MIA-OKC with two of the people getting off in STL. We had a bit of an issue with the attendant, but AGR ticketed us both rooms the entire way.

On our upcoming trip, we are doing a RT from NEW-SAV. Our traveling companions are getting on and off in LAP. On the way there AGR ticketed us separately, with one room originating in NEW & the other in LAP. On the return they said it was only possible to book both rooms all the way to NEW, as they had on our MIA trip, so we will have a suite the whole back. They mailed us the tickets from NEW, and the other 2 the tickets from LAP. We will print the return tickets in SAV.

We are in the works of planning the next trip which will be OKC-BUF while picking up two more people in STL. We will be going in roomettes this time and it would be really nice to have two the entire way (OKC-STL). We know that booking the other two on the return trip to OKC will be fine as they can just get off in STL (might have some trouble checking bags though).

Is there any reason we can't just book them to BUF from OKC and have them board in STL? We would need to mail the tickets them or have them on a separate reservation so our tickets printed in OKC don't include theirs. Any suggestions on how I should handle this? It is costing the same amount of points, so I see no reason not to try.

 

[the_traveler]

Is this AGR or paid?

If AGR, it should be no problem to book all from OKC to BUF. A few years ago, I booked a bedroom for 2 BHM-WAS-CHI-PDX-LAX both ways. The other person could only join me for WAS-CHI-PDX both ways. They didn't care!

 

[dart330]

This is AGR.

How was that 2nd person ticketed and how did they pick up their ticket?

 

[Hotblack Desiato]

I realize that it's AGR and that's how the zones are setup, but it's really doing a disservice to potential fellow passengers to tie up a roomette on an overnight segment of a train (FTW-STL) with limited sleeper capacity...for what reason, exactly? Why do you need to hold a room that you won't be using for seventeen hours? That just sounds beyond selfish.

 

[dart330]

We will be using it, neither of us really enjoy sleeping in the tiny upper bunk of the superliner roomette. Given it is the same points cost, might as well be more comfortable for those 17 hours.

 

[Ispolkom]

Here's my experience, which is limited to the Empire Builder. I live in St. Paul. My mother lives in Minot. My wife gets much less vacation than I do. If we are heading east on an AGR award, we start the award not in St. Paul, but in Minot. We print out the AGR tickets in St. Paul. I ride west to Minot to see my aged mother for a few days, then start the AGR award trip east in Minot. The next morning Mrs. Ispolkom meets the train in St. Paul with her ticket that reads Minot-Chicago. No conductor or sleeping car attendant has every had any problem with this, and we've done this 6-10 times in the past 4 years.

Last year, I got more adventurous. We booked a bedroom Seattle-Chicago-New Orleans on the Empire Builder and City of New Orleans for me, my wife, and my sister. Mrs. Ispolkom and I boarded in Seattle, but my sister met the train in Stanley, ND. Since we didn't print out the tickets until we were in Seattle, she didn't even have a ticket to board. I explained the plan to the SCA in Montana, and then again to an assistant conductor after the Williston stop. When we stopped in Stanley, I found my sister and got her onto our sleeper, when we encountered the conductor I gave him my sister's ticket, and he said, "Oh, you're those people in Bedroom D." I guess we were already notorious. Mrs. Ispolkom left the train in St. Paul, and my sister-in-law and I continued on to New Orleans. We didn't try to use Mrs. Ispolkom's ticket to get an extra dinner, though.

You have two people traveling from Oklahoma City, don't you? Book one of you in each of the roomettes, and then have the two riders boarding at St Louis split up between the two roomettes as well. That way you don't have a no-show situation (not that I've often encountered a conductor willing to sell an on-board upgrade, but you never know).

I'd print the tickets out in Oklahoma City and figure on getting them to the St. Louis parties at the St. Louis station. Alternately, you could Fed Ex the tickets to them, given that St. Louis is a trifle larger than Stanley, and might have some sort of security issues. I wouldn't do a separate reservation OKC-BUF, for fear that the reservation would be canceled as a no-show.

That just sounds beyond selfish.

Nonsense. Not if dart330 has paid for it. I imagine dart330 and companion probably each want a lower bunk that first night.

ETA: I guessed right.

 

[dart330]

Thanks, that is really helpful. I think we will go that route and send them the tickets ahead of time so that they can use the first class lounge in STL.

As to the 2 roomettes, it is often recommended on this board to get 2 roomettes over a bedroom for 2 people as that is often cheaper. I do not find that to be selfish at all, go with whatever you are more comfortable in. If we were going a longer distance then we would be getting a bedroom suite instead.

 

[the_traveler]

1340678912[/url]' post='375877']How was that 2nd person ticketed and how did they pick up their ticket?

He was ticketed on all segments. I gave him his outbound ticket in the CA in WAS, and I gave him his return ticket at PDX during the layover. (He was visiting friends in PDX so did not use the Metropolitan Lounge there.) The conductor asked for his ticket also on the BHM-WAS segment, but not on any others where he was not there.

 

[dart330]

Really my only concern with that is an employee trying to not let them board in STL with a ticket that is from FTW-CHI. If it was a full segment I would not be worried.

 

[Ispolkom]

Really my only concern with that is an employee trying to not let them board in STL with a ticket that is from FTW-CHI. If it was a full segment I would not be worried.

Mrs. Ispolkom has never had a problem with boarding at MSP with a MOT-CHI ticket. Her prepared response (which she's never had to use) was that a) her husband is already on board in that room, and b) there was a last minute emergency and so she couldn't travel to Minot. Some variation on that would work for your St. Louis friends, I think.

Your experience with the busybody SCA not wanting people to debark early is decidely unusual, I think.

 

[AlanB]

I don't think that they'll have a problem boarding in St. Louis with a ticket that reads from OKC. The may get a few stares and perhaps a question, but the simple answer that "it's how AGR booked things and that you are already on the train should suffice."

But it is very likely that they will have a problem if you don't get them their tickets ahead of time. Many conductors collect the tickets from boarding pax before they let you into the walkway to get out to the trains. No ticket, no access. Yes, a good conductor would radio the AC (or vice versa) to confirm that someone on the train has their tickets. But who knows what might happen with a lazy one. So it is imperative that they gets tickets of some sort, somehow.

 

[dart330]

Any idea how soon AGR will move to e-tickets? Would be great if we could all print from home, and not have to FedEx tickets in a situation like this.

 

[Aaron]

I realize that it's AGR and that's how the zones are setup, but it's really doing a disservice to potential fellow passengers to tie up a roomette on an overnight segment of a train (FTW-STL) with limited sleeper capacity...for what reason, exactly? Why do you need to hold a room that you won't be using for seventeen hours? That just sounds beyond selfish.

Sorry to veer off topic for a bit, but I have a potentially related question about what exactly constitutes selfishness.

I've been planning a big train trip that will probably combine some AGR points and some segments paid with money. For a long distance train using points, I'd just book the roomette or bedroom for the whole run of the train. However, if I'm looking at a long distance route that I'm paying out of pocket for, it's significantly cheaper to book the rooms for the nights, then switch to coach for a few hours during the day, then switch back to the room for the next night. If you pick the right cities, you might leave the room at 10:30am, but get it back at 3:00pm, so you'd still be entitled to breakfast and dinner, and you'd still have plenty of hours of leeway for if the train was late to your switching city so that you'd still get your dinner. For a family of four on a two night train, this way would save me about $500, which more than makes up for whatever I'd have to buy at the cafe to make up for missing lunch.

So, here's my question. Doing it this way deprives Amtrak of a large chunk of revenue, and leaves them with a couple of sleeper rooms that they'd have a really hard time selling for the mid-day times that I wasn't occupying them. Is this selfish? Is this cheating? If so, who's being cheated here? Only Amtrak? Or am I somehow hurting my fellow passengers with this plan?

I wouldn't have thought to ask about this until you brought up the point above. I don't know whether I agree with your assertion of selfishness, but the fact that there's at least one person that considers the OP's plan to be a selfish act leads me to wonder if my plan can somehow be construed as selfish as well. Maybe I'm missing something, so I'm genuinely wondering if I'm doing something wrong here.

 

[Ispolkom]

Maybe I'm missing something, so I'm genuinely wondering if I'm doing something wrong here.

Are you doing something wrong if you buy a ticket when it's in a low bucket? That deprives Amtrak of money. Was it wrong to book a two-zone AGR bedroom award on March 31, when it was 30k points, rather than waiting until April 1, when it was, what? 40,000 points?

I understand your concerns, I once had them myself. Back in '09 in this very forum I squeamishly wondered if booking a roomette for two from New York to Alexandria on the Crescent was dirty pool, since Amtrak clearly didn't want people booking sleepers between New York and Washington, and it deprived someone of a roomette from New York to some destination further south. The answer is that you don't know. Maybe my purchase allowed someone boarding in Manassas or Culpepper to get sleeper accommodation. The conclusion I keep to is this: Amtrak makes the rules in its own interests, which it knows much better than I. My job isn't to watch out for Amtrak, but instead to follow the rules they've implemented with my own interests paramount.

That means that in November I'm booked in coach from Minot to Wolf Point, then in a bedroom to Portland, Sacramento, and Denver. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Heck no! I'm going to sleep like a log in my one-zone, three night bedroom award booked for 20k points.

 

[Aaron]

Thank you. I agree with everything you said, and wouldn't have ever thought that what I'm suggesting or what you're doing is "wrong". But then, the post from Hotblack Desiato came in and called what the OP was trying to do "beyond selfish". And that made me wonder, is there someone else out there that might be offended by what I'm doing? I'm kind of sensitive to that, and even if something's allowed, I don't want to make other people unhappy if I can help it.

An example is with reclining the seat on an airplane. I'm big and tall and I'm uncomfortable on airplanes, and as soon as it's allowed, I would recline my seat in order to get that 1 degree more of comfort. It wasn't until I started visiting some travel forums on the internet and reading some of the rants from people that I realized that some people think it's beyond rude for the person in front of them to recline their seat. That never in a million years would have occurred to me otherwise. I think that the seat was designed to recline, and how could I possibly be offending anyone by using something the way it's designed? On top of that, it only moves back a couple of inches, so how could that really get in the way of anyone? I've certainly never had a problem with the person in front of me reclining their seat.

Evidently, though, there are many many people who feel differently than I do. And now I know that, where I didn't before. So, again, even though I feel like I'm completely in the right, I have a hard time knowingly doing something that I know will cause someone else discomfort or anguish or unhappiness. So now, whenever I'm on a plane, I just suck it up and stay upright just in case the person behind me is one of those who's going to be upset if I recline. It makes me more uncomfortable, but I think I would be even more uncomfortable knowing I ruined someone else's flight, whether their anger was justified or not.

So, anyway, that's why the "beyond selfish" post raised my alarm level a bit. I'm going to proceed as normal unless someone else can tell me otherwise.

 

[trainman74]

No, you're fine. I think you just need to realize that no matter what you do, there's at least one person on the Internet who's going to have a problem with it for one reason or another.

"I'm going to do an AGR redemption for two roomettes for the two of us, so we can both have a lower bunk." "What?! Don't you know how many people would be clamoring for that second roomette blah blah blah..."

"I'm going to volunteer at the animal shelter." "What?! Don't you know there are lots of human beings you could be helping blah blah blah..."

"I found this genie lamp, and I'm going to wish for world peace." "What?! Don't you know how boring that would be blah blah blah..."

 

[dart330]

I went ahead and booked all 4 people for the entire trip. I listed the two departing from OKC as first and last with the STL two in the middle so we should be in seperate rooms.

I will probably print them a couple weeks ahead of time to make sure everything is looking good and mail them the tickets. Thanks for the help!

 

[dart330]

So is this still possible with e-tickets? Could they just present a printout of the QR code in STL and board there? I would like to rebook/convert to an e-ticket reservation so I don't have to mail tickets.