Amtrak Empire Builder Route Guide & Travel Planner

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are sharing with you our empire builder route guide all right we rode the empire builder hopping on in seattle and took it all the way across the country to chicago illinois it gave us access to some major cities some of america's great wilderness along the way and it was a very fun ride empire builder is a train that is not equipped with wi-fi so you will not be able to do work zoom calls all that kind of thing on this train which is a little bit of a shame because you're going to be on there for a few days and you you may want to do some work the good news is when you're near the major cities you will have cell coverage but when you're kind of out in the wilderness which you will be on this track for a while you will not have even cell coverage so keep that in mind as you are traveling that it may be hard to to be connected to people only on the mtar builder yeah but the good thing about it is it does have an observation car yes which is where you'll be spending your time when you don't have a self-service or wi-fi you'll be sitting in the observation car enjoying the gorgeous views along the way um on the empire builder it's not necessarily known for the greatest views but we found it to be um really spectacular along the route so we did spend a lot of time in the observation car yeah i thought it was really really better than i thought it would be yeah um the the dining car on the emperor builder is active and that is for people in the sleeper room accommodations they do serve hot meals in there breakfast lunch and dinner and pretty good meals we have a whole video on showing you all the meals on the channel so we'll link that down below we also have a list of all the meals and show you actually the menu on our blog so if you want to really see what you're going to be able to eat on the empire builder check out the blog we'll put a link to that down below as well yes and speaking of food not only do they have the dining car but the cafe is also available on the empire boulder and the cafe is available to all passengers on the train yeah and the cafe also has warm food you can get pizza hot dogs hamburgers mac and cheese drinks snacks all that kind of stuff available in the cafe and you can eat that you can't actually eat it in the cafe right now but you can eat that up in the observation car you can eat it at your seat and coach or in your room if you're in a supercar you can go down there and get something too so yeah that that is a extra charge though if you're in a supercar whereas the dining cart meals are included these are not right and on the empire builder you can check your baggage which is good because you're going to be on there for so long both ends of the train you can check seattle and chicago so we totally recommend that you do that because you do not want to have to keep track of all these bags for essentially three days yeah definitely because not all of the amtrak stations um allow you to check baggage but thankfully at king the king street station and at union station you're able to check your bag so that's great yeah the empire builder is a super liner train so you're going to be equipped with super liner tickets and roommates etc there are several different ticket options on the empire braille the first of course is coach and coach is a good way to go if you want to save some money the tickets are not very expensive and the seats are very comfortable maybe you've never been on an amtrak train they're not like an airplane they will recline quite a bit more than an airplane seat would recline so we have a whole video on what it's like to sleep overnight and coach we've done that and uh not too bad for one night two nights may have been a little more because you're a little bit tired that second day but coach is definitely an option uh going up from there you have the sleeper cars so the smallest type of room you can get is a room at and that is a single uh two people in that and it's single beds one on top of another so you have a bunk bed situation and that's a pretty tight room and the person on top is going to be pretty pretty tight and there is no bathroom in the room at on the super liner that's only on the viewliner train so if you've seen that type of bathroom in the the room at not on this train the bathroom and the showers on this train will be in your car and you'll be sharing that with basically everyone else that has a sleeper uh a room at in your car so probably you know 8 to 12 people depending on how full it is up from there you have a bedroom and in the bedroom it's twice the size of a room at still has the upper and lower bunk bed situation though but you do get a bathroom in your actual cabin you don't have to share that with anybody and it's just uh for you so if that's important to you you may want to step up to the bedroom up from there the next one up is the family bedroom and the family bedroom is the only cabin that you can sleep four people in and you'll put two on the top and two on the bottom but it is the same size as the the regular bedroom and so they accomplished that by taking out the bathroom you'll have no bathroom to yourself and you'll be sharing the bathroom with the people who were and who are in the room at in your in your car and then the other type of combination you can get is the accessible bedroom and those are all going to be on the lower level and they will have an accessible bathroom in the actual cabin but it still is the upper and the lower so if you really want to sleep two people on the bottom level the only way to do it is a family bedroom otherwise you're gonna have one person on top and one person on bottom so we see people do sometimes people do this they'll get we've seen people get who both want to sleep on the bottom two rounets during the bogo sale and they'll be like across the hall from each other which is kind of cool kind of interesting if that's an option if you want to sleep two people on the bottom otherwise go for the family bedroom we do recommend getting these on the buy one get one free sale we have a video on that and a link to that about our blog we've written all about the details how much you'll save but on average you're gonna save about about half price we we paid 550 for our uh room at on the empire builder and the going rate at that time was about a thousand so almost a 50 savings definitely worth it if you need to do the empire builder and you want to save a little bit of cash that is that's what we recommend to do all right guys so some interesting stats and details about this train is you will be traveling about 2206 miles from seattle to chicago or chicago to seattle whichever you're going it's going to take you about 46 hours to do that and the train tops off at a speed of 79 miles per hour now the average speed is really more about 50 miles per hour because of course there are speed limits in between um or if they're passing trains sometimes they have to stop so that average speed is a little bit lower than the top speed when they're running through kind of open fields and spaces where there aren't really speed limits on it eating on the empire builder is pretty much a delight i thought that was it was really good and uh we ate most of our meals in the dining car and they have a pretty good menu it's the same menu for lunch and dinner but at breakfast or something different what were some of your favorite things that they had on the menu um well for lunch and dinner i tried basically everything on the menu actually i did try everything not necessarily on the empire holder but i've had all of the meals on on the menu for lunch and dinner like you said they're the same um and you kind of have to pick and choose how much you want to eat because the thing is that uh you don't just get the meal you also get a roll and a salad and a dessert and your beverage it's a lot of food so you don't want to eat that much obviously for lunch and dinner so you can always just tell the train attendant hey i only want the meal or i only want this or that whatever it is and they can kind of cut you know just cut back a little bit on waste of if you're not going to eat all the stuff that that comes with the meal right um there's so many options and probably my two favorite meals were uh both a part of the vegan menu that they offer which is um very nice and that was the enchiladas and the asian noodle those were basically my favorite they were really really tasty i thought yeah i did find though that some of the meals were bigger than others yes yes you're right so depending on which meal you get it may not be enough food but depending on if you can get one that's a big one that's a small one so yes it just depends on what you ordered and you'll have plenty of time on the empirical they order most of them though so yeah that's definitely a positive uh the cafe then what do you think about the food in the cafe the cafe i thought was great i was really surprised by how many options they have for warm food and they also do serve some alcohol at the cafe as well as obviously soft drinks and you can get like snacks so even though you get your meals included if you're in the sleeper car which is where we were on the empire builder if you want to snack in between meals or or you just want something smaller then you can go down to the cafe you will have to purchase it in addition to what you know the meals but um it was really i think a fair price for for what they were charging uh there the other thing also and this is not food related but the other thing you can get at the cafe is also you can buy their comfort pack which comes with the blanket and um the ear plugs and the mask and stuff on there too which is also very helpful so the cafe does have a lot to offer as well and it's open for breakfast lunch and dinner now the cafe does close when the attendant goes on breaks and the attendant went on uh on about three breaks or so on on our on our entire ride so just listen for the announcements because they will let you know hey the attendant uh you know i'm so-and-so i'm about to go on break you know if you want to get something from the cafe you've got 30 minutes to come down here and get in and then that way you know so they're not just going to close and you know not let you know ahead of time so that's very helpful i thought yeah and if you like if your person likes to snack kind of later at night mm-hmm you have to kind of get that food on time because at about 10 o'clock at night or something neither the dining car or the cafe would be so you'd either have to get your food ahead of time or have snacks with you in that case yeah okay so there are several notable major stations along the route of the empire builder starting out in seattle you're gonna head over to spokane and then on to whitefish and fargo st paul minneapolis milwaukee and ending up in chicago there are several states that you'll be passing through as you'll note you're starting out in the state of washington working your way over to idaho and montana north dakota minnesota wisconsin and illinois the best views on the empire builder are to the north side of the trains if you have a choice or you can decide which side to sit on definitely sit on the north it is the side that is going to see glacier national park which is probably the best thing you'll see it is also going to see a lot of the mississippi river and surprisingly to us we didn't know this but you're going to see puget sound coming in to seattle or leaving seattle which was really quite a highlight for the trip it was it was i was actually very surprised as we were leaving seattle i thought oh this is beautiful and then it just got prettier and prettier and they did come over the speaker and say oh we're passing puget sound it's like oh wow i like i had no idea that we were going to be passing that um so we're kind of just passing it on to you so that you'll know um to be sitting by a window so you can observe this because it really was quite spectacular and it was towards the evening as we were leaving so it was just real pretty as we as we left and the sun was setting and rode out of there so the views are absolutely amazing you're gonna see uh exactly why they call montana big sky country um that was beautiful and like you mentioned you'll be going through you can actually get off and white fish for uh glacier national park that's where a lot of people get off rent a car and drive up there um but you'll also you'll pass the one of the entrances to the park down on that end and then continue on and through you know st paul minneapolis going through there is really cool as well just kind of seeing you know all the big city views yeah i do need to mention that there are three stations that you can begin and end empire builder on because on top of seattle and chicago you could also start or finish in portland and the train basically splits off in spokane washington okay so if you're coming from chicago you'll get into spokane it'll split and one train will go to seattle wanna go to portland if you're going the other way they'll meet up in spokane and then go as one train the rest of the way across so does serve seattle and portland but you can't go to both seattle and portland at the same time on the same ride okay so the seattle station which is the king street station is really a beautiful station yes king street station is a fantastic the architecture is beautiful it's just been recently renovated and it's just a beautiful old station now it doesn't have they didn't add any amenities that it didn't already have so there is no metropolitan lounge at king street station and there's there's nowhere to get food inside the station other than the vending machines but the nice thing is it's very conveniently located right in pioneer square so you can just walk outside and really within like a hundred feet of the station you'll find several places where you can purchase food and just bring it right back to the station the other thing that i really like about king street station is that if you have to do an overnight either right before or right after your uh your ride there is a great hotel which we've actually done a video review of uh right here on the channel of the embassy suites it's directly across the street like literally you walk out and it's the first thing that you're gonna see is the hotel just walk right across the street take you 10 seconds and you're at your hotel so that's really nice too yeah that's a really amazing hotel we really liked it one of our favorite probably you know amtrak hotels where you're going to stay up yes and there is no car rental place right there at king street station so you will have to figure out if you're renting a car how to do that right and the airport is not nearby either so you will need to figure out transportation we rented a car about a half a mile away and kind of went to the national parks from there but we hadn't ended up having to get uh an uber to take us to the car rental the next day uh now on the other end of this ride is union station in chicago and it's probably the best amtrak station in the country it is and it's actually the hub of so many of the amtrak train routes um either go through there or start there or in there i mean it's a flurry of activity when you walk in there and the other really cool thing about it is it's a gorgeous station um you feel like you're you know in an old movie when you walk in there right with your bags and one also of the very best metropolitan lounges that we've been in uh it's a two story two levels uh metropolitan lounge and it's absolutely stunning there's also restaurants upstairs uh in in the in union station there so you can pick up some food to eat or you can eat before or if you've just arrived you can grab something to eat before moving on so there's really a lot at this station you're going to want to get there a little bit early because you're going to want to walk around and just i mean we took a bunch of pictures yeah if you've been to our blog you see a lot of pictures on there or like on instagram or something but we we took a lot of pictures at union station in chicago because it was just beautiful there are a few hotels around there that are they're not as close as as uh right no embassy suites seattle to the king street but there's maybe within walking distance you depends on how far you want to walk but we have those listed on the blog as well so check those out if you want and then uh the other station we'll talk about is the portland station yes so the portland station is uh it's really another one of those kind of cool classic the outside looks really cool with that big kind of clock tower on the outside of it it's a beautiful station um it's in the pearl district which is kind of the new cool place to be right and you see that as you're pulling into the station all of the gorgeous new apartment buildings right around there so there really is a lot going on there near portland union station and the portland station does have a metropolitan lounge which is kind of a new modern looking it's pretty well appointed metropolitan lounge as far as they go so don't miss that if you're going to be traveling in or out of portland and like you mentioned none of these three stations are near the airport so you do have to plan accordingly if you either have to catch a plane or you're trying to run a car or whatever the case may be they're not real close so you'll have to arrange for either a taxi or uber or if you know somebody who can take you just kind of keep that in mind when planning out a vacation that includes the empire builder you have a lot of great options as we mentioned empire building does go to chicago and chicago links the entire west coast to the east coast you can really go anywhere in the amtrak system from chicago so what we did was we did a 14-day trip where we took the empire builder from seattle to chicago then took the california zephyr back from chicago to san francisco emeryville and the co-star light up to seattle so we did that in 14 days and in each major city we we rented a car and drove around and saw some national parks and such so you could do a lot of things with the empire builder you could go to new orleans on the city of new orleans once you get to chicago or you could keep going as one of the passengers we were riding with did you went from seattle to chicago and then from chicago all the way to new york city right so you could do all the way across the country or you could do some type of loop so you want to find out more about all those other routes uh go to the trip planning section on the blog and it'll tell you you know all your options for what you can do but it's a it's a really good train to link up with some other trains yes and one of the the questions to outside of that that a lot of people ask us is about safety on amtrak is amtrak safe the short quick answer yes it is safe um we've been on it as we've mentioned numerous times never had any problems we have seen problems arise and issues come up but those are taken care of really really quickly very swiftly if you're coming on the train and you're looking to make trouble you're not going to last very long and you're not going to make it to where you want to go because the the attendants and the conductors are constantly literally just constantly walking through so you see them all the time right just all the time walking through there and they're paying very close attention now there are some things that you can do that's going to make things even better for you safer easier and less hassles to think of and the first thing is to make sure to check your bag when you get on the train so if you get on at a station where you can check your bag definitely do that one less thing to worry about yes there are luggage racks on the train and in the sleeper cars but you don't want to have to worry about is my bag okay are there any problems you're not going to need the stuff that's in your big bag so just go ahead and check it and just keep minimal things with you the stuff that you bring onto the train with you keep those pack those small you're not going to have a ton of spaces if in if you're in coach and you're going to have to try to keep track of it you can't just leave your things at the seat um you know in some countries you can leave your things behind you cannot do that in the u.s so you want to take those things with you and if you're in a sleeper car you're not going to have a ton of space in your in your accommodations so you don't want to have a ton of stuff with you because that's less space for you to move around in right right yeah if you're in coach our biggest recommendation is just bring a backpack or something like that that you can have everything valuable in and then when you go to the observation car or you go get food you can just put that backpack on and create with you you want to have your wallet your purse you know your passports anything keep that stuff with you your phone and a little backpack will do that perfectly for you everything else if you have a food bag or some other stuff you can just leave that at your seat just don't don't leave anything super valuable just laying around right on the train and uh another question we get a lot is how do you actually book these tickets so there's three ways you can do it you can go to amtrak.com you can book right on there but a lot of people don't like the amtrak.com website because it can be confusing then the second way you can book is on the app which most people think is less confusing so if you don't like the website download the app on your phone you can book right on there and if neither of those work for you you can just call them so call 1-800 usa rail and you can talk to them and book your ticket so we've done it all three ways all three have been fine and got our tickets whichever way we did it so yeah it didn't really have any any problems at all uh what i what i did like about booking through the app though which is probably my favorite way to book through the app is you know you get your your ticket qr codes are right in there and so it's all just saved under your trips and you don't have to worry about trying to find emails and things like that um it's just very easy right there on your phone um to keep track of the app is really pretty good yes so the empire builder is definitely a trip that surprised us we weren't sure what we were getting but we ended up getting amazing views that we thought were pretty spectacular and it's just a great way to see a part of the country that you may never have traveled through yeah definitely so guys don't forget to subscribe to the channel give us a like on this video if you have any questions uh if you will send those to us down here in the comment section that's where we look uh the most it's the easiest way to get a hold of us is by leaving comments down there below so we can see those and others can see them too because if you have questions other people have the same questions too and it's going to be helpful to other people if you share your questions in the comments section don't forget to visit also the description box that's going to have all the links to the videos that we mentioned below and don't forget to visit the blog we'll see you guys soon

Channel: Grounded Life Travel

Views: 28,230

Keywords: amtrak, empire builder, amtrak empire builder, amtrak train, amtrak tips and tricks, amtrak tips, amtrak vacations, amtrak guide, amtrak roomette, chicago union station, empire builder 2021, empire builder amtrak, empire builder bedroom, empire builder roomette, empire builder amtrak bedroom, amtrak empire builder 2021, empire builder family bedroom, amtrak chicago to seattle, empire builder coach seats, empire builder coach, empire builder train

Id: C0AwbHJfeuU

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021