30 HOURS in Amtrak's NEW Roomettes | Reviewing the Amtrak Cardinal

complimentary meals showers and of course beds today I'm going to be trying out Amtrak's new rets on a nearly 30-hour Journey so join me as you try this unique product while also dealing with a classic Amtrak mess good morning from the Oculus at the World Trade Center it is 5:00 a.m. and we're on the way to moan train Hall where we're going to try the brand new VI liner 2 rets on the Amtrak Cardinal today I'm joined by my friend will who is thrilled to have woken up at 4:00 a.m. for this adventure if you're wondering why we're up so early it's because the Cardinal leaves New York at 6:45 in the morning Mahan train Hall is an amazing place and our early departure meant that it was much calmer than usual usually when you're traveling on an AM trck Sleeper Car you get access to the Metropolitan Lounge here unfortunately despite there being several early morning departures on the weekends this wasn't actually open by the time that our train left so instead we killed some time in the pleasant Amtrak waiting area complete with surprisingly comfortable benches and somewhat functional Outlets about 15 minutes before departure we were called to track 8 where we finally got a glimpse of our home for the next day we stepped on to the very last car which is a combination of a baggage room and room Mets here's a quick glimpse of what our room looks like complete with a bunk bed that lowers down whenever you want it pillows and water bottles were also waiting for us at the room in the back of this car are a few bathrooms and of course a shower which we'll be trying out later and don't worry we'll be back in a bit with an in-depth look at the room setup we pulled out of Pen Station right on time so while we roll through New Jersey let's talk about our route in the room today the Amtrak Cardinal runs from New York City down through Philly and DC before heading west to the virginas Ohio and Indiana ultimately arriving in Chicago after a scheduled 28 hours however as we'll see later long amp trck trains like this are known for notorious delays and they can really add up on such a long trip 20 minutes after leaving Penn Station this menu reminded us of one of the biggest perks of sleeper cars free meals unlike other routes this train doesn't include any freshly prepared meals so it's all just microwavable stuff but it's still nice to not have to worry about bringing or buying food though somewhat unknown you also get unlimited complimentary beverages throughout your trip this morning will and I both opted for the pancakes and sausages not a luxurious meal by any stretch but it satisfies the needs of two college students will thoughts it's fine it's pretty [Music] good on this route Amtrak sells rette tickets but not rooms are created equal on many routes Amtrak uses their original view liner one trains which are much older and infamously have a toilet in the room but on the Cardinal as well as a few other routes Amtrak has introduced New View liner 2 cars over the last few years which means newer toilet lless rooms for passengers by the way make sure to stick around for the end where I'm going to talk about how much we paid for this ticket and analyze if it was all worth it while stopped in Philadelphia we finally gave into our tired State William you know what time it is bedtime so under each chair is a thing that you push and then you push down this seat as well struggles with it and then essentially you get this long bed which does get wider here this seat is a bit wider and the same is true with the bed on top and the bed on top you lower by rotating this and then point once made the beds were surprisingly comfortable will is 6 ft tall and even he didn't have any issues fitting into either of the beds our pillows were pretty basic but the sheets and blanket that they give are really soft and [Music] [Music] comfortable after some quick rest we rolled into Washington DC this is the stop where Amtrak switches from Electric to diesel engines so we were told that we had to wait an hour here at the time we were oblivious to the chaos that awaited anyway to kill some time we toured the station by the way when trying to get one of these clips of the train an employee from our specific train came up and did the whole you don't have permission to record thing which has actually never happened to me before ironically Amtrak has a very clear recording policy on their website which says that I was all good so I really don't know what that was about what a beautiful station this is actually quite big it's not the nicest but it's big we just walked like a minute out this is very different and look at this another cool fancy place will you give a thumbs up we hopped back on our train rolled just out of the station and then sat with these Pleasant views of Washington DC for the next hour eventually we were told that we had to go back into the station to solve some issue with our computers and we weren't really given any updates beyond that thankfully will and I had our scheduled lunch to kill the time will got the chicken parm and I tried the salmon all the meals also come with a bun as well as your choice of a dessert pastry neither of our meals was terribly memorable though I do think that chicken parm is just something that's a bit more easily microwavable what was memorable was this the legitimately amazing butter cakes from a small restaurant in Delaware I'd never had anything like this and will and I actually ended up switching both of our dessert orders for dinner to these butter cakes despite being packaged and prepared for travel these still tasted fresh and sweet as ever after our meal we continued sitting now without electricity for hours no updates were provided and the best we got was this notification from Amtrak more than 5 hours after arriving in DC we finally left just past 300 p.m. Beyond just general boredom and inconvenience this delay was really unfortunate for one big reason the scenery the Cardinal is a route that's known for some amazing scenery as you travel through West Virginia but with this delay we were scheduled to pass all of that well into the night regardless we did our best to enjoy the remaining views we also tried out our brownie that we left over from lunch nothing [Music] special ladies and gentlemen to stretch our legs we explored the rest of the train while I don't yearn to try them for a dayong trip amtr has some pretty spacious and comfortable coach seats I've actually quite enjoy these on other overnight trips but a full day plus an overnight might just be too long after the dining car we passed through the other Sleeper Car which is a combination of Amtrak bedrooms and rooms as an apology for the delay all customers were given these little snack packs it's a nice thought but I really don't feel like these made up for the 4 hours of sitting around especially since we were in DC which is an AM track Hub that almost certainly has access to actual [Music] catering I don't [Music] know Charlottesville was our last fresh air break before dinner apparently this is where the crew from the Eastbound and west bound Cardinals meet and like do a little swap over so the the eastbound one that wasn't as delayed as ours was was just waiting here or at least the crew was waiting here for a long time very nice trees out here in [Music] Charlottesville the landscape became increasingly hilly a somewhat sad reminder of all that we were said to miss in the nighttime soon it was dinner time this time we tried the enchiladas and the beef burgundy the stew was really good but the enchiladas weren't great it's also worth noting that will actually tried to order the chicken parm but they'd completely run out of it not a huge deal but you would think that they would stock all of their popular options accordingly they're all right but they're not warm this time I headed back to my room but not before doing a quick bathroom tour [Music] this definitely could be less Rusty there's also a lot of places that say cups and do not have cups same thing is the case in our room also amp track locks and bathrooms have this little light that indicates when they're actually locked this rattles a lot and of course before getting ready for the night we have to try out the showers will went first and when he came back he didn't seem thrilled and here you'll see why thank you William we got towels here got my clothes have a bunch of little soaps shampoos little rags and whatnot let's check it out we got a kind of see-through window amp Trak theme door and then an actually pretty big shower although Will warned me that the pressure on this isn't the best so I think I found what Will's talking about there's like a total of three streams of water coming out of this they're warm but that's about it a few moments later conclusion yeah the water was warm but there's like three little streams with the entire pressure of like a fire hose and it just hurts also this linen shoe is like really small which either is poor design or just means that not a lot of people use the shower last call for all right so now that we've had plenty of time to get familiar with this room my good friend will is going to guide us through the many amenities and features I think the light switches were the first things we noticed there are seven light switches each seat has its own area light which is just a bright General light that lights up the area o there's also a more focused reading light next to it that you can swivel and point the same goes for that side also on that side is a ceiling light this is what we have on this is the only light we have on right now throws Into Darkness for a bit uh there's also the NightLight I'm going to show that a little blue it's like right in the middle of the ceiling light yeah yeah so if you turn the ceiling light on it sort of gets drowned out drowned out yeah here we have a reading light when the top bunk is down this is that reading light up there that's actually very handy um so i r in that bunk and there are two light switches for the mirror light one here and one here oh interesting so they both control the same thing yep huh uh so that those lights those are the lights all right there are four AC vents in this okay okay show us around there's are the standard two at each seat or one at each seat as you would expect there's also one where each bed would be so when the top bed is lower this one's going to be sort of at face level and this one's at face level with you I see I see at the bottom this button here there's a PA in each room so that you don't have to strange listen through the door you can just press that and uh let's look at the sink this is the goofiest random thing normally we've noticed all the other roomat have had cups sort of like little small paper cups I don't know why we don't I assume just some sort of oversight go with the sink the little light turns on when it's open here we have a whole sink and it drains just back down here I see I see uh when you fold it back up I guess all the water pops on down the room came with some hand towels and washcloths and bar soap uh for the sink I guess if we want to brush our teeth or something and of course the classic for the V liner 2 is that the upper bunk actually has a window very nice I think the upper bunk view is actually better than the lower bunk VI yeah I got to try it for a bit you're below eye level of the window not to mention that your window is lower yeah something else to note the door here like it doesn't actually go all the way like it only goes that far and a little hook holds it in it's not very clear but like I don't know if that's just our door that's messed up after a somewhat successful shower we got in bed and watched the sunet over hilly Virginia while it may initially seem inconvenient to be at the back of the train that also meant that we were the furthest away from the train horn which is pretty [Music] nice I'm a really light sleeper so I still woke up every few hours but there really wasn't much to see in the [Music] night at 6:32 a.m. I properly woke up as we were just leaving Cincinnati and the sun was rising over the Midwest had we been running on time we'd be eating breakfast somewhere past Indianapolis at this point and we would have been about an hour south of our destination Lafia Indiana however by this point we were still running about 4 hours late so we had plenty of have time to take in this cloudy morning in the midwest good morning it's just before 7 a.m. will slept very well I slept pretty well too I had a few times where I woke up but yeah I'm going to try to get some more shedi cuz we still have like 4 hours and a half left but pretty [Music] comfortable we rolled into Indiana and got our breakfast just past 8:00 a.m. will stuck with the pancake and sausages and I tried the cheese omelet final pancake bite on am tr satisfactory it's pretty good I like those I think for future breakfast I would alternate between this and the omelet just for health at 9:30 we arrived at indianapolis's Union Station now there was something wrong with the bathrooms and Coach so we were stopped here for an hour I love Indiana but jeez is this a sad station if I were not here while there was a train I would assume this was abandoned there's a bunch of these like railings with where they're used to be staircases to something so final review actually really nice like both will and I we're not short we're not like super tall but we're not short and both had plenty of space pretty comfortable like this mattress topper is pretty good these blankets very nice I've heard other people talk about them they're very soft and yeah like I sub well will sub well he's holding the camera but he's not at 11:00 a.m. we finally left [Music] Indianapolis as we passed through our last stop Crawfordsville Indiana and near our destination of Lafayette let's talk about how much this trip cost and if it was worth it I booked this trip 8 months in advance and it cost me $382 including all taxes on sleeper cards having two people inail was an extra cost so when we added will to the reservation that was an extra $144 you can still find tickets at that price but only if you're booking way out so more likely you're probably going to be paying somewhere in the range of $400 to $600 for this specific route note that the same experience on other routes tends to be a lot more expensive so is it worth it well it really just depends on who you are and what you're trying to get out of this if you're like me and are interested in the scenery and just getting this experience at some point then yeah it's not bad it was surprisingly comfortable and if you're with someone it's not too boring that being said you really shouldn't have your expectations too high the microwavable food just isn't that great and you always have to be ready to accept defeat in the form of a brutal delay and honestly our 5 hours are nothing compared to some of the delays that Amtrak has Additionally the state of these relatively new cars was just disappointing having a working showerhead really doesn't seem like that big of an ask and what we experienced effectively took away showers as a reasonable amenity all also although Wi-Fi is always free on Amtrak trains neither of us were ever able to connect to the signal in our car in fact while we were stopped in DC our phones only got working Wi-Fi when they connected to another train that pulled up to the platform next to us making it clear that it was some issue with our car specifically Beyond just dealing with delays Amtrak's customer service is also just really bad so if something goes wrong with your trip don't expect anything from them for example Amtrak usually sends out a survey after you've taken a trip with them to hear about your experience evidently they didn't want to hear anything about how they'd handle this delay because this was the first time ever that I just didn't get that survey nonetheless I wanted to give them a fair shot so I reached out to Amtrak about the delay the broken shower head and the issues with the Wi-Fi I got an automated response telling me that they'd respond in the order that my email was received and 2 months later I've gotten no response so yeah are Amtrak sleepers overpriced and kind of glorified on YouTube absolutely does that make these trips any less cool not really my conclusion is that if you want a comfortable and very reliable way to get from A to B where you might have some decent customer support just save your money and buy a first class plane ticket but if you want to try something new and hopefully see some amazing scenery then this is something worth trying at some point and just like that the Cardinal heads out for the few hours remain to Chicago leaving us in Lafia Indiana or off yet I guess

Channel: Danielator36

Views: 514,571

Keywords: Danielator36, Amtrak, Amtrak Roomette, Roommette, Roommettes, Amtrak Roommette, Amtrak Sleeper Car, Amtrak Cardinal, Cardinal 51, NYP, LAF, Lafayette Amtrak, Amtrack, Lafayette Amtrack, Lafayette Indiana, New York City, Amtrak Sleeper, Amtrack Sleeper, Amtrak Sleeper Review, Amtrak Roomette Review, Review

Id: OAzAUzFOe6U

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023