We recently took the Amtrak Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles.
See our hopes and dreams that it would be like the brochure in my earlier post about it.
Things we liked:
- The food was fantastic, with huge portions.
- Having a bedroom, we always had the option to have our meals “to go,” which IMHO was a lost marketing opportunity to call “room service.”
- We were allowed to bring alcohol on board, but only if you had a bedroom and you could only drink it in said bedroom.
Things we didn’t like:
- We paid just under $1000 for a bedroom on the sleeper car, which was way too cramped and had fold-out bunk beds not really conducive to gentlemen of a certain age, which we both just happen to be.
- Trying to negotiate my way down the ladder to get down from the top bunk the first morning, I almost stepped into our sink. That’s when I — too late! — realized I should have swapped which ends I put my head and the ladder.
- The ride was like being on an airplane with turbulence for 43 hours. You couldn’t ever walk from car to car (i.e., sleeper car to dining car to observation car) without your hands held out to touch each wall and spreading your legs for balance, due to constantly being thrown from side-to-side.
- People are just incredibly self-centered, rude, and give zero f*cks:
- People walked around the train with their pajamas, housecoats, and what looked like shower caps on their heads — everything but their curlers still in.
- A man sitting across from us in the observation car set his phone down on the table and proceeded to broadcast his music on it. I said, “Excuse me, but would you put your headphones on (which were around his neck) to listen to your music?”
- A man sat at another table with wireless earbuds in, holding his phone horizontally in front of his mouth, and had a 15-minute phone conversation like that. More than once.
- We wish more people were comfortable with silence. A lot of the people sitting in the observation car just never shut up. And it’s the same conversations, “Where are you from? Is this your first train trip? Are you going all the way to L.A.?” Ad nauseam.
- We wish people didn’t have to be told things like, “Ladies and gentleman, this is just a reminder to bus your own tables if you eat at any of them. There are plenty of trashcans around the cars,” and “Ladies and gentleman, this is just a reminder that these 1- or 2-minute stops, which most of them are, are to let people get off the train if it’s their final destination or board the train if they’re just getting on. It is not an opportunity for existing passengers to jump off the train for a cigarette,” and “Ladies and gentleman, the next stop long enough to have a cigarette is ____________ in ____ miles. Please move away from the train entrances/exits to smoke in consideration of the non-smoking passengers that might be getting on or off.”
- People walked around the train with their pajamas, housecoats, and what looked like shower caps on their heads — everything but their curlers still in.
- I got up early the second morning and I walked (steadying myself with the walls and with my arms and legs spread apart) to the observation car, where I found that some people who only paid for seats (i.e., not rooms on the sleeper car) had made their way there and were sleeping on the floor blocking access to 3 or 4 seats. And on one of the seats by a person on the floor was their trash from a previous night’s snack.
- As I walked further along the car to get to one of the seats with tables in the observation car, I stepped on something sticky and checking it out found a red gummy bear stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and when I pulled it off, it had a hair stuck to it.
- Although “the brochure” touts three scenic highlights along the route — the Painted Desert, the Red Cliffs of Sedona, and the Grand Canyon — we saw only one red rock formation, which may have been part of either the Painted Desert or the Red Cliffs of Sedona, but we had no idea, and we didn’t see the Grand Canyon at all. (I mean we were asleep for 12-14 hours of the trip!)
- While I mentioned that the food was the best part of the trip, they always wanted to seat you with other people. Even the 2 times (one lunch, one dinner) we had the earliest reservations, we were seated with one or two other people already in the dining car, when the entire rest of the car was empty. I can see seating other people with you once the car starts filling up, but it was annoying to always be seated with other people. To “Monika’s” credit, for breakfast on one day, she did whisper to us, “Would you guys like to sit alone this morning?” to which we gave a resounding, “Yes!” And we were in and out of there before even 4 or 5 — of the about 20 — tables became occupied.
- At some point along the way, we got an hour behind schedule and never made it up. Well, we probably made some of it up, but then somewhere around Colorado or New Mexico, we were delayed by a tree that had fallen across the tracks, and we had to wait for some city’s government workers to come and remove it.
- Of the 31 or so stops only 3 were for more than a few minutes, with the longest being 40 minutes in Albuquerque, where we’d hope to meet a friend for a cup of coffee or a drink at the station, but that ended up not happening due to the unpredictability of when we’d arrive at the station.
- There was no wi-fi service on the train, and the train’s own Amtrak app didn’t stay updated in terms of the schedule indicating estimated arrival and departure times for stations along with actual arrival and departure times.
- There is so much opportunity to incorporate technology into improving the experience — a very simple one being some kind of monitors or electronic signage that showed where we were at any given time (at least what state we were in!) and what’s interesting to look for in any given place. Another easy thing would be displaying the current time. We went through 3 time changes, with no announcement when we moved from one to the next, and they always gave you the dining car operating hours in central time, even when we were no longer on central time.
Of course YMMV if you were to take said trip, perhaps especially if you’re younger. If we were to try another train trip, it’d have to be something like a 4- or 5-hour one, but right now, we don’t see one in our future.
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