How to ride Amtrak in coach across America | Amtrak California Zephyr and Coast Starlight coach tips

[Music] i just posted my mega usa video c to shining c without flying finally i've been talking about it for long enough i'm so happy to finally got out there and i've had a few people messaging me asking things like did you really enjoy it as much as you seem to in the video what's it like in the coach seats and do i recommend doing a journey like this and do i have any tips for it and i can understand people wanting to check before they commit to doing this journey because you can guarantee if you ask online then the frequent flyer mafia is going to come out like i saw so much of this online that when we turned up to our first sleeper train we got the capital limited from dc to chicago i still had it in the back of my mind thinking is this actually a good idea am i gonna have a good time but firstly yes i did enjoy this as much as seen in the video in fact i enjoyed it even more than is shown in the video if you're a travel nerd with a long-standing interest in american culture and geography like i was i can't recommend it enough but yeah to answer why not fly more fully i'm gonna let the rest of the video do the talking as i talk about things i did and didn't like and all the ups and downs and a big question people have is what are the coach seats like because on amtrak long distance trains there's a few different options for buying tickets and i use the california's effort as an example just because it's the most famous and expensive but the relative price difference between them and all the options is basically the same across the network so this room for two will set you back a thousand dollars between two people you have this round for 560 dollars between two people and at the very bottom of the pile the cheapskate option you have the seat which is about 140 per person and yeah the fancy options seem really nice with access to a toilet and a lot more space and privacy but do you need to spend all that money on a train ticket absolutely not you'll be happy to hear we rode from dc to chicago on the capital limited for 80 each we rode from chicago to san francisco on the california zephyr for about 180 each with one stop in salt lake city and we rode from san francisco to la also with a stop in monterey for eighty dollars each and i'd so happily do it again at the end of the video i said i'd turn back and do it all again in reverse it was great i'd happily recommend anybody to take the cheap option and i'll go over what you get with the cheap option now so this is what a pair of the seats look like on the upper floor they're big and comfortable and you have enough leg room that i could barely touch the seat in front with my toes you get these big tray tables that extend backwards towards you two us electrical sockets between two seats and a reading light for each seat the best part is this huge window next to you to enjoy the scenery from your seat with a curtain if you want to cover up but what was it like trying to actually sleep in these things obviously it's not as good as being at home in your own bed but honestly i found that you can sleep pretty well it's actually quite clever how these things fold out there's a leg rest that folds out from the front of your seat and a foot rest that folds back from the seat in front of you so your legs and your feet are supported very nicely on those it's quite relaxing actually and then the backrest goes back this far i shot this just for this video because i knew people would be asking and yeah i hear you you can't call it luxurious but if you ask me for the overall travel experience that you're getting anyway this is a great option to get some sleep without bankrupting yourself going for a cabin my best tip here is to get a double duvet for the knights we picked one up at walmart in dc and it really made so much difference it adds a little privacy it keeps you warm and i think it sort of tricked my brain into thinking i was at home in bed and not on a train tearing through nebraska in the night but i'd also recommend bringing a pillow i didn't do this and i could tell the first night my neck would have been more comfortable if i did or something that you can roll up for a pillow if i'm on a normal train or coach i normally get really painful and restless after a few hours but these seats really are comfortable enough to spend all day in especially with the leg rests out you have this platform to scrunch yourself up and basically sit in whatever way you want but was it weird sleeping in a shared cabin and this may seem like a weird answer but looking back i honestly didn't think about it at all i was really comfortable everybody is in it together trying to keep it a nice environment for each other and yeah i never felt uneasy oh yeah i should also mention that the rows of seats are staggered so if you turn over in the night it's not like you're going to be making eye contact right in the face of the person across the aisle looking at each other like yeah can't sleep me neither obviously with your coach ticket you get access to the amazing and famous amtrak lounge car i love this so much some of the happiest travel memories i have was spent in this place adjacent to the lounge car is the dining car we didn't actually use it i think it's like almost 20 dollars a meal like it's fine if you wanted to pay for having that like silver service experience on a train moving through america like it does sound great but we were on these so much we couldn't really afford to do it we just decided to bring our own snacks which i'll go through later underneath the lounge car there is actually a little cafe and they do like hot drinks soft drinks uh beer and wine and different snacks and even have those like fast food things where they'll like put it in the microwave for you so i think you get instant noodles and they have a vegan burger it was frozen and then he like puts it in the microwave and it was eight dollars so i didn't have that high expectations but actually for less than half the price of the dining car to have some food on the train it was not a bad option it wasn't definitely not the best vegan burger we had in america that was torn between many different places but it was definitely good enough and you know a nice surprise and the only other section is the bathrooms and this makes a huge difference so you'll be happy to know i found them absolutely fine they were always clean when i wanted to use them and there's so many that i never had to queue capital limited toilet review i've seen train toilets that look nicer but everything's it and everything works the soap running water the sink the toilet clean toilet paper towels and the lock works so now downstairs is also a tap for drinking water and i used this and i also used the staff only water tap that's in the lounge car and the public one has way worse water it's so warm and like sedimentary and so i started using the one in that says staff only in the lounge car that was much more cold and nice and then one day i just happened to be getting the worst water from the public one and a member of staff actually shouted at me had to go at me for getting the worst water she was like you know there's one in the lounge car don't you so yeah i don't know what the rules are there so that's the coach seats like i said a great experience i'll go through now some other tips based on either things we did right or on mistakes we made and then i'll cover booking and packing and things like that on the california zephyr sit on the left i just happened to sit on the left with these other two guys who were generous to make me a space and they could see that i was trying to film something out the opposite window at the right hand side and they just said to me we did this journey in the other direction a few days ago don't worry just wait in a second all the other views for the rest of the day are going to be out our side and they were right they were 100 right all the people on the right wanted to come over to our seats on the left either take a seat in your coach section on the left or get up early at denver and try and bag a lounge seat on the left obviously that's the other side if you're going eastward bear that in mind another tip check your luggage in if it's going to help you we didn't always do this but we had my 40 liter backpack molly's 55 litre backpack our two small day bag backpacks the bag that had the duvet in and a whole bag of food so we were carrying quite a lot and we could actually fit that um all by our feet in the amount of space that you get in the coach seats or above our head but sometimes if we had to check out of our place in the morning and we didn't have a train until the evening we would go down and we would both just check in our big backpacks and you leave them at the train station and then you can pick them up at the train station on the other side that's only available in some stations so check online but also check online the opening times of the station because we checked out our place in salt lake city at 10 a.m and the california zeff doesn't pass through salt lake city until 11 pm to pick you up and so we took our bags down to the station in the morning and it was closed we couldn't check them in it's the only train that goes through utah that day and they open an hour in advance you can check your bags in from 10 p.m so we just checked out and we're planning to do a big tourist day free from all our stuff and it didn't happen we had to drag it all around update thankfully we have this place where we can kill some time so there's no way that we can check in our bags because the station's not open i've looked online there's no left luggage at salt lake city and we've been here for ages five hours it's not been an ideal day don't get caught out by the opening times now these are long long journeys on trains that share the track with freight trains and we were actually quite lucky we didn't have too many delays um but i would still recommend if you're doing a long journey on the other side don't book a flight out that day or don't book anything expensive that day you should always leave you know the next day just in case you're super late one time in the rockies we actually went on another bit of track to let the eastbound california's effort passes all right folks blink and you miss it here goes amtrak 7 off our right side flying this way towards granby colorado right now they're clearing up the track just in front of us and we should be underway here momentarily and we still had a red light even after it passed but they still weren't allowed to go until the light changed so we sat there while all these guys from the train got off in their boots and their shovels and waded through the snow to try to go and fix this red light for us that took about two hours but like i said we were perched in daylight in the rockies so it's not a problem something else to bear in mind is there's no train station no amtrak station in either san francisco or monterey so if you're booking a train to those places online you'll see that it has a connecting bus on the end of it we actually use that service to get from emeryville to san francisco and it was pretty good obviously it's just for people on the train so if the train is late it waits for you so it's very good service but when i was booking our tickets to monterey i could see that if you booked it all the way to monterey then it added the bus section between salinas and monterey and that increased the price so much so i looked into other options and we ended up just getting an amtrak ticket to salinas which some of the staff actually mocked us about because there's supposedly nothing to do there and we walked to the local bus station and got the normal local bus with all these other locals to monterey yes way more effort but it is cheaper so up to you and my last little tip don't ignore leg stretch time when they do an announcement saying that you have a chance to get off and get some fresh air and get some exercise don't ignore that because you don't know when another one's gonna come just go down the stairs run up and down the platform if it's safe do some star jumps stretch your legs get some deep breaths of fresh air and then get back on it will help you sleep at night and help you stay less fidgety while you're on the train but leg stretch time can be taken away from you like i said sometimes there's unexpected delays and if they've booked in an hour as they do at certain stations i don't know if that's because they want you to do a thousand star jumps or because they're picking up cargo or changing stuff or something but if they're booked in an hour but they've had delays throughout the day don't actually chop that down they'd be like the timetable says an hour but you actually have like five minutes to get some fresh air so it can be taken away from you quite easily but i mean it's a good thing there's normally enough of these hour-long breaks to make up a pretty substantial delay which you know if you ask me that's pretty smart but onto booking tickets i actually booked all of ours online in one afternoon that was a fun afternoon and not even sarcastically because i'd had this dream in my head for so long and to look at the big amtrak map and make all these decisions and book the tickets it felt great to actually commit to doing something when i went on the amtrak website to research this video it took me right back i was looking at the map like oh look at all these routes i haven't done when can i go back and finish the whole thing but you can book your tickets online and then download the amtrak app load the tickets into there and just show the tickets on your phone so you don't have to print anything when you show the tickets on your phone at the station some of the stations it's really easy and simple you know like having people walk onto a train and show a ticket should be but some of the tickets sorry some of the stations in california they make it so difficult i guess all those trains are always sold out so they have to be really tight but you have to queue up and see this guy and he tells you what seats are left where he's putting you why it's so important that you sit there and you're not allowed to move and then when your stops coming up he'll come and find you and yell at you to get off it's like okay mate i was actually gonna deliberately miss my stop but thank you now that you've told me to get off the train i'll just jump out the window while it's still moving that's so useful yeah boarding and getting off the coast starlight in california was no fun at all actually the capital limited and the california zephyr it was so easy they're not tight about it at all i mean especially when we got it at 11 p.m from salt lake city in the heart of winter there was nobody on it we went upstairs and we were like oh we can just sit anywhere we want on this whole train and finally things to pack obviously you know things to pack for like general travelling but this is things specifically not to forget if you're going on amtrak you want a us plug to charge your phone with you want a thin double duvet you want something to use as a pillow idiot bring one you want a towel even a small one just so you can wash your face and feel a bit more fresh and you also are going to need some food to survive this whole journey you know so we are pretty used to surviving off a few cheap groceries for a few days but obviously you know the scale goes all the way up some people have breakfast lunch and dinner and wine all in the dining car and if that's you then yeah that's up to you so we brought a loaf of bread a jar of jam and yes jam everybody says americans call jam jelly but this jar said jam and it had jam in it and one time we bought a jar of jelly because we made this mistake and it was jelly you know like jelly like cubes made up and put in a jar yeah fair enough that says jelly on the label and then we bought one that said jam and that has jam so this whole americans call it wrong thing it's just not true yeah sorry a bit of a jam rant but we also took oranges bananas strawberries chocolates and nuts and apples i would sometimes get a coke from the cafe downstairs and like i said we had like a half decent vegan burger from the cafe downstairs too for eight bucks so that's it if you have any more questions then yeah i'll answer them in the comments but if i have one tip that i just want to leave with you is to just go and do it you'll have such a good time rough it for a while see the great american outdoors and speak to as many people aboard the train as possible i really did have the most interesting beautiful and educational trip imaginable and i learned so much more and saw so much more than i would have done if i just spent time sat around in airports instead you would hardly see anything that way i mean what would my train from new york to la video be it would be like oh yeah i got on a plane oh yeah i'm suddenly in la but thank you so much for watching all the way to the end if this helped you plan your trip please let me know in the comments i love nothing more than going on my oslo video and have more people telling me what great time they had thanks to things i said that feels really good and like i said if you have any more questions leave them as a comment but for now yeah quit watching this video get off youtube go to amtrak.com if it's safe if you know you're not going to catch anything and book a ticket for some time in the future when it's safe and go have a cool [Music] experience [Music] you

Channel: Tom Thornton

Views: 144,308

Keywords: Amtrak coach seats, California Zephyr coach seats, amtrak coach guide, amtrak tips, California Zephyr tips, amtrak coach tips, sleeping in coach California Zephyr, seat lean back California Zephyr, usa train travel, USA train travel tips, can you sleep in coach amtrak, california zephyr guide, should I ride coast starlight in coach, coast starlight tips, coast starlight coach, amtrak coach, capitol limited tips, capitol limited coach, how to train travel USA

Id: e5UmUUcWTSo

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021