Amtrak Beginners Guide | Everything You Need To Know To Ride The Train

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are sharing with you our beginner guide to [Music] Amtrak all right so we get a lot of questions um especially through our videos here on YouTube in the comment section and we wanted to kind of gather together all of the answers for the beginners on Amtrak if you've never been on Amtrak or if it's been many many years since you've been on Amtrak these are the questions or the things that people ask us about the most and also some tips that we think will be extremely helpful if you're a beginning writer first-time writer on Amtrak so what is the very first thing that you should definitely do before you even set foot on am Trak before you even get on the train you do want to sign up for the guest Rewards program it's free to sign up you do it right on their website and this is how you will start to earn points uh with all of your rides and those points can be used to get free rides in the future which is what we do a lot and that is how we get free rides and get to travel so much on Am track that's right it's an awesome program and like you said it's free if you want to earn points faster and maybe even try to earn status you can always get the Amtrak guest rewards uh Master Card and they also have the preferred version as well you can work on getting uh you know status and earning points faster cuz they give you more points if you have the card when you use the card to purchase it and you get a lot of perks in between like you know getting access to the lounges and different things like that so definitely sign up for the guest Rewards program again you don't have to get the credit card but if you want to earn points faster you can do that all right the next thing that you need to do is to plan your route out carefully you don't want to just pick two indiscriminate cities and say oh I want to go from Tucson to uh San Francisco because that may not be a great route for Amtrak so in in other words to get from Tucson to San Francisco you do have to do three things you got to get on in Tucson uh then you got to go to La you've got to do a pretty long layover in La go all the way up to Emoryville and then get on a bus to go to San Francisco so that's like a three-legged trip with multiple layovers uh it's not great even though that's not a very far trip uh but another way you could do it is just like say if you want to go from Chicago to Seattle if you pick that you'd be lucky because that's just one train the whole way and on the MTR website it's very difficult to find out what routes are one train and what routes you're going to have to switch trains all over the place so we have put together a map that we have shared on our website we'll link it in the description and all the routes are colorcoded and so you want to stay on one route for as long as possible because that is going to definitely uh make your uh problematic connections a lot less than if you are changing trains exactly that is so important because also you're going to get uh you know fewer uh opportunities for parts of your trip to get cancelled if you're on just the one train you have much better odds of it working out really well for you exactly uh next two are going to kind of go together and that is Amtrak trains are almost always late unless they're in the Northeast cordor uh they're usually late and so they could be late by 10 minutes 30 minutes an hour 4 hours we've been late 12 hours before so you do not want to book a tight connection either to another Amtrak train or to a flight or a car rental something like that cruise ship a cruise ship we've seen people do that and miss their Cruise uh and Amtrak trains just are just plan on it being late and if you go into a that thought process that this train is going to be late I don't plan anything for that day once you are late on the train you'll just kind of treat it like oh I get free time on the train because it's just going to be extra good experience but if you're kind of watching the clock and you've got a car run or a flight you got to get to you're going to be stressed your entire vacation uh because multiple times we've left late and so if you leave late you're going to be late the whole way and you're just going to know you're going to be late getting in yeah definitely and then the one that goes with that is if you have a layover book a hotel don't just think to yourself well I have a a layover I've got an hour to get to my next train I'm going from Seattle to Chicago and then when I get to Chicago I have an hour for my I got to get on my next train just stay the night in Chicago it's going to be so much better for you you'll get to see something you get to experience Chicago uh and you won't miss your train and the problem with tight connections is that Amtrak will take care of you they will put you on the next possible way to get to whever your destination is but it may not be the train that you booked it may be a bus you may be on a couple of different odd trains and so their their uh responsibility to you is not to put you on the trains you booked their responsibility is to get you to your destination and they can do that any way that they see possible so we've seen people have to get off a train early get on a bus ride for 9 hours and then to catch another train that would get them to their destination so if you just book your own hotel when you get to the place and the next day you get on your next train we find it to be a lot more relaxing way to travel and you actually enjoy your trip yeah for sure uh another thing that you definitely need to think about if you are in the sleeper cars especially if you're in well in any of the sleeper car accommodations but very definitely the roomette is you need to know which one of you is going to sleep in that t bunk area if one of you is claustrophobic then that person probably is not going to be sleeping on the top bunk but if you have at least one person that is not claustrophobic then that person is going to sleep on top if you've seen our videos you know that Rob always sleeps on the top because I'm claustrophobic I cannot deal with sleeping in that small space but if I was traveling with someone who was like me as well then that's going to make it really challenging because one of you have to sleep in that top bunk you need to know ahead of time if you are going to be able to one of you is going to be able to do that because otherwise what you can do is you can book two room Mets and that way each of you can sleep on the bottom yeah and if you're going to do that you want to call in to the Amtrak uh number number phone number because they can help you to book two rooms that are right across the hall from each other and then you can just kind of leave your doors open and you can talk back and forth to each other it's kind of like one big room sweet then just with a hallway running through the middle uh but yeah that is an important thing because on the super liner especially on a VI liner it's not you're not that claustrophobic either on the top or the bottom but on a super liner which is the trains uh west of Chicago that top area is pretty tight like when you lay down at night you only have about that much room between your head and the top of the top of the train so you you need to be able to uh put up with that and you don't want to find out when you get on the train so watch a couple of our super L roomat videos if you if you aren't sure if you can handle that yeah because we actually give out uh measurements too so you can get a tape measure out um if you watch our all rooms reviewed we tell you how you know tall how deep wide uh those beds are so make sure you get your take measure out and actually measure that out and see what you think about that um because it is actually much smaller even than it looks so it's pretty tight uh the next one is that if you are in coach you want to make sure that you bring uh a bag that you're going to be able to secure all of your valuable items in and you're going to keep this bag with you at all times you can leave your you know carry-on stuff or food and things like that behind but if you want to go to like the observation car or go to the cafe or something like that you want to make sure that you're keeping your valuables with you so bring a bag that you're going to put all of those valuables into and be able to carry with you whenever you leave your seat and speaking of bringing things you can bring your own food on the train and people don't often realize this there are a few stations where you can get off and get food sometimes you'll have a much longer stop or there'll be vendors right on the platform but a lot of the stations have like a Subway or a Chick-fil-A you can buy that bring it on the food and eat it then or save it for a couple hours down the road or down the down the rails and eat it then so we usually do that when we're riding in coach we'll we'll buy a sub or something to eat later that night and then that kind of puts off eating the amra cafe food until the next day because if you eat if you're in coach for like 3 days you're going to be eating the same Amtrak Cafe food for all those days and eventually you're going to want to break that up so try to do that by either Brea something with you to start or getting something in the middle uh so that'll kind of give you some variety in your food yeah next one is that the observation car is for everyone on the train for Coach uh passengers and for Sleeper Car passengers it's for everybody it's kind of like the middle uh melting ground usually it's uh kind of like the meeting place it's also where the cafe snack car is as well down below so it's the perfect place for everyone to just kind of come and hang out especially uh this place is great for uh for checking out the views too because a lot of the seats face out towards uh towards the towards the windows so you can look straight out without having to you know crane your neck to look out the window from your seat and then there's also tables back there so if you wanted to sit and either get some work done or lay something out or whatever or play some games with some fellow passengers you can do that in the observation car but it is open to everybody let's talk about checking bags uh because you can do that on MTR if you're getting on a major station like Atlanta New York Chicago they will have a bag check you can check your bag and then pick it up when you get to your destination both stations that you're using have to have bag check though for it to work uh on a view liner we always check our bags those are the East Coast routes because there's very little space on The View liner to put your large suitcase if you get on and try to keep it with you on a super liner though there's always plenty of space to put it because they have huge bagad racks in the cars so on a super liner we don't ever check our bags because when we get off the train we want to just have them and be able to go instead of having to go in the terminal and wait for the baggage unloading to happen it can be a half hour before you get your bags we'd rather just start walking to our hotel so on a super liner we keep everything with us uh all the time yeah and it's specifically very important if you're in the sleeper cars in a view liner you're going to have nowhere to put that bag at least in the coach cars you've got the racks to put that on but in The Sleeper Car you're kind of out of lock if you have your big bag your your big check bags with you uh you know the attendant might be able to help you out but they might not because there might not be extra space if it's a full train so uh definitely keep that in mind if you're on a view liner you want to try to go ahead and check your bag specifically if you're in a sleeper car and if you're on a super liner you can keep your bag with you no problem yeah uh next one is that MTR is not like an airport you don't have to uh get to the airport you know you have to get to an airport two to three hours ahead of time you don't need to get to an amtr train station two to three hours ahead of time because what happens when you get there if it's a smaller station you're just going to walk through and walk right out to the platform and wait for the train and it's not going to leave early so if you're there there 30 45 minutes ahead of time you're fine at a bigger station you need a little bit of time to find the platform something like Chicago you'll need to figure out which train track you're on and there's a lot of them so you got to find that uh so you do want to get there about 45 minutes ahead a small station there may be only one or two tracks and it's one of the other so uh you you just have to figure that it's either track one or track two yeah it won't take you very long to figure that out so you don't need to get there 2 hours ahead of yeah and the other thing about that too is that some of the smaller Stations don't even open till like you know 30 45 minutes before the train leaves anyways so those doors might be locked and you may be stuck just sitting out front waiting for them to open up so definitely don't get there two to three hours ahead of time because you don't need to do that at the Amtrak train stations or it may just be an unmanned station and there is no building to go in so that if you had a small one that could be the case too uh let's talk about tipping because we get a lot of questions about tipping and tipping is generally done by people in sleeper cars and you can there's two people you'll usually tip uh maybe a third but you're going to tip your room attendant generally we always say5 to $10 per person per night and then you're going to tip your and you can do that at the end because your room attendant won't switch the whole ride and then you're going to tip the uh Dining Car attendant we do that per meal $3 to $5 per meal and we do that after every meal because your your dining C attendant will probably switch from meal to meal sometimes you can also tip your Cafe attendant a couple of dollars if you go down there and get something uh and you really liked their service or they were very friendly to you that's some another person that people do generally uh tip yeah they usually have a little jar out in front so people I think generally from what I've seen tip you know $1 to2 depending on what you've bought or and the service some Cafe attendants are super super fun and super super helpful they're all nice but some of them kind of you know go above and beyond so that's definitely worth something extra yeah uh stay near the platform on fresh air brakes don't be wandering off uh on these 15minute breaks because the train will leave without you they'll blow that horn uh they'll yell all aboard and if you're not aboard you'll be getting on the train tomorrow uh and that's just going to be a long night and you're going to miss a lot of stuff so don't think that this is a situation where they're going to wait for you if you're not nearby they will not wait yeah that's uh we've seen people get left behind there's actually like little stores and a couple of of the fresh air Brak stops that you can run in and go grab stuff but so many people go in and the line is so long that people don't have time to get through the line and they blow that horn and they say all aboard and people go scurrying like little ants running back to the train and some people don't even hear it and it's a whole mess so definitely pay attention when you get off for fresh air Brak we always try to just walk up and down the platform as best we can that way we're right near the train we can hear the horn or we can hear the all aboard and hop right back on with no problems another question we get a lot is are there microwaves to warm food up so I mentioned you could bring like a sub with you can you you warm it up once you're in there on coach or even in a superc car and the answer is no there's no microwaves so you do want to plan your food out a little strategically that is why we get subs that can be kind of eaten cold uh because that there's just no way to warm anything up on the train so don't think you're going to be able to bring something and and warm it up and have it uh taste like you want there because that's just not going to be the case yeah and then uh one for Sleeper Car uh pass passengers and that is to bring an overnight bag so if you're going to be checking your bag or even if you're going to be putting it down on the luggage rack you want to have an overnight bag that you keep with you in your room with like toiletries and change of clothes and things like that um something small that will fit underneath the seats and underneath the the lower uh bunk beds so that you still have plenty of space in there just bring something nice and easy um we also have recommendations for those bags in our on our website grounded lifet travel.com where we share all of the items that we think are best to bring with us right mhm yeah so check that out if you want otherwise we hope these tips have been very helpful and that you'll enjoy your next amtr trip whether you're in coach or sleeper room I think uh you're going to love either way yeah if you have any more questions first timers leave those down below in the comment section we'll see you guys next time

Channel: Grounded Life Travel

Views: 39,713

Keywords: amtrak tips and tricks beginners guide, amtrak tips and tricks, amtrak train travel, first trip on amtrak, amtrak travel guide, dining options on amtrak, sleeping on a train, amtrak overnight, amtrak train, amtrak cross country, amtrak comfort, amtrak cross country train travel, amtrak crescent line, amtrak sunset limited, amtrak texas eagle, amtrak coast starlight, amtrak empire builder, amtrak california zephyr, amtrak observation car, amtrak 2020, amtrak guide

Id: dqjc9hpg6uI

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2023