Eva has an overly romantic view of train travel.

[conuly]

Nevertheless, her big dream for her life is to ride in a sleeper car to... somewhere. Anywhere.

Tickets to San Diego (to visit family, of course) would be $2200 for the lot of us. One way.

Where the heck can I go that's cheaper than cross country, that satisfies the desire to spend a day in a train sleeping and eating in the dining car (so a jaunt to Boston won't do it), and that has something for us to do once we get there? I'm entertaining all options!

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

The Field Museum in Chicago is nice. Even if you have to pay for a place to stay, it's nowhere near as expensive as going to California. You might be able to find a package deal (room + dinner + museum passes), if you don't belong to a museum that cross-admits to the Field.

New York to Atlanta is an overnight trip. I have no idea what there is to do in Atlanta, but there must be something.

New York to Orlando is another overnight trip. Would is make people miserable to be in Orlando and not go to any of the famously expensive theme parks?

[conuly]

If we only took three of us, we might still manage Disney with the money saved on one train ticket... especially if Disney offers off-peak admittance.

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

NY to San Diego on Amtrak is probably not a good idea for a first train trip anyways; it takes three days, minimum, one way. (I've done North Carolina to SAN round trip four or five times, which is even longer.)

$2200 seems awfully expensive though. Is that in a sleeper car? I actually tend to prefer riding in the main cars even on long trips (the seats lean back partially and are actually decently comfortable to sleep in, and you get to talk with other passengers).

You could try New Orleans. NY-NOL is about 30 hours one way, and I don't know how many people would be traveling with you, but two adults and two kids are $550 one way. Or anything on the Crescent Line or the Carolinian really would do you, I think.

[conuly]

That's definitely a sleeper car. Eva will feel 150% cheated if she doesn't get a sleeper car.

I wonder if we could get a sleeper car for the girls, and have the adults in a seat?

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

No, for a couple reasons: 1) Amtrak doesn't allow unaccompanied minors (and they would be unaccompanied, since they don't allow main car passengers into the sleeping car), and 2) sleeper cars are priced for the entire room, not individual passengers, so it would still be the same price.

Probably your best best would be to find something that leaves from NY at night and gets you wherever you're going the next morning; trips are generally priced by distance. However, sleeper cars are always going to be expensive.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

Does Amtrak do local commuter services, or only long-distance ones? The policy on unaccompanied minors really surprises me, especially the bit about turning up an hour early with a special form for a train if you're even 15 and travelling without a parent. I knew quite a few teenagers who went to school alone by train each day...

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you mean by "local". There are certainly routes that can and are used as commuter routes (Los Angeles to San Diego comes to mind, or the Acela train on the Eastern corridor). However, Amtrak only stops at one central station per city (or sometimes two for larger cities), so you couldn't commute within a city on Amtrak. For that you'd have to switch over to buses or taxis or whatever.

I suspect the policies are designed to prevent runaways from hopping the train to the next state, but that's just a guess.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I think about as local as Amtrak gets would be the equivalent of the West Coast Mainline, East Coast Mainline, Great Western, Cross Country etc. So connecting major cities - remembering, of course, the scale the US is built at. Not the sorts of distances anybody would be travelling for school or that I can imagine younger teens being allowed to do on their own.

When we did Boston-New York-Washington, which I believe is the closest Amtrak gets to a European style service, I can't particularly remember any stops where you'd let a 14-year-old get on in order to go to somewhere on their own. It gets a bit more commutery as it comes down through Connecticut towards New York (iirc, about half the length of the journey was just in that stretch) but there was a proper local commuter service in that area too.

Of course, it's also worth remembering some of Amtrak's policies are apparently not worth the paper they're written on. For example, like on a plane you can't carry any non-checked luggage larger than a briefcase. (Iirc, the size was smaller than normal cabin baggage.) This policy extends to trains which don't have checked baggage. In practice, they simply ignore the policy as long as you don't exceed two bags per customer. But it is still technically policy that you can't have a suitcase if travelling between Boston and Washington, a journey of 8 hours!

Edit: As for turning up an hour early, it wouldn't surprise me if that's also far from the reality. Our tickets said we should turn up at least 40 minutes before departure - even though we weren't boarding at the starting station, so the train wouldn't be there for another 35 minutes... (We actually almost missed our train in Boston due to a moment of Guido carelessness, we got there with a few minutes to spare thinking we actually have 15!) Continuing from New York, we were at the station in plenty of time, then had to wait on the main concourse (ie, we weren't there early so we could get our tickets checked onto the platform or anything) because the train was 40 minutes late! So about an hour and a half after arriving at the station, we were finally allowed onto the platform and then onto the train. (They boarded us in about five minutes - pretty impressive considering the total scrum at the top of the escalators and the fact that we all needed tickets checking. Particularly important as there were now three Washington trains departing within 10 minutes, due to the delay.)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

It's aimed at Europeans, but The Man in Seat 61 (http://seat61.com/UnitedStates.htm) is the most wonderful resource for people with wanderlust. Might give you a few ideas.

I presume Florida would be too frustrating - going all that distance and not making it to Disney. I'd have thought somewhere down South Carolina way you'd probably be going far enough for a sleeper and be able to find things to do down there. Or how about up to Chicago? That looks like it's about a day's journey away. I presume crossing the border's not an option, otherwise Niagara or Toronto would be cool.

It seems Amtrak have family bedrooms on some of their sleepers, which I presume take 2 adults 2 children. Consider making a change instead of taking a direct train, that's normally cheaper. And it means you can book standard class through the day, then just take the room when you transfer onto your sleeper. I've just priced up NYC-Pittsburgh-Chicago for random dates in May, and it was $1400 return by booking NYC-Pittsburgh as standard class and a family room Pittsburgh-Chicago, or $1700 if booking through forces you into business class for the first leg. (Now I have no idea what the implications are in the US if you book a journey in stages like this and then you have a cancellation or delay, you'd need to look into that.)

If you can travel at short notice, we found that Amtrak publish deals every week for travelling in the next three weeks. (And they seem to have a deal for travelling to Chicago for a certain week in March when there's some basketball thing on - though that'll drive hotel prices up, no doubt.)

If you want to do this, you'll definitely want to do it before Ana hits 13 and becomes and adult in the eyes of transport companies.

I'll warn you, a whole day's journey on a train is boring. Even when you've got interesting scenery. And don't count on a good night's sleep either - we had a first class sleeper between St Petersburg and Moscow, departing at midnight. Unfortunately we had the last compartment in the carriage and thus were next to the showers/toilets and over the bogies. It was an absolutely hideous night! I do have happy memories of taking the sleeper train to Spain in my childhood - but I've quite possibly just erased the bad bits ;0)

[conuly]

Actually, I just remembered that Jenn's going to Toronto this summer. Bam, problem solved!

(What the heck do I do in Toronto?)

If you want to do this, you'll definitely want to do it before Ana hits 13 and becomes and adult in the eyes of transport companies.

Psst, they don't check kid IDs, at least, not if they're like anybody else anywhere. They just eyeball 'em, and since Ana is really very short....

(And this is why the girls were ducking under turnstiles until they got their student metrocards.)

I'll warn you, a whole day's journey on a train is boring.

Sad to say, I know that. But that's why we bring lots and lots and lots of books.

[conuly]

I don't know about elsewhere, but if you need to commute around in the NY area, it's a lot easier to take the MetroNorth or PATH than Amtrak - and those most definitely do allow unaccompanied minors to be blithefully unaccompanied. (They're amazingly unsympathetic to said minors if they happen to lose a ticket, too, or at least they were last time I was young enough to know anybody who cared. Well, I guess they have to be, or else every Sunday night they'd be giving out hundreds of dollars in free tickets to kids heading back to boarding schools and group homes upstate.)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Is the border crossing done on the train? If it is, they might well check ID at the same time as the ticket. But Toronto does certainly solve the problem of where to go.

I went to Toronto when I was 8 but I can't remember what we did other than going up the CN Tower. I bet there's loads to do though. You could probably do a trip to Niagara from there, they're certainly impressive (and very different to NYC for the girls).

(I can't disagree with her romantic view of train travel, despite all its flaws.)

[conuly]

Oooh, I forgot about the border crossing. You know, they didn't used to make you show an ID just to go back and forth between Canada and the US, did they?

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I've only ever crossed it as an alien and a child, in a car. We certainly had to show ID but who knows, if the answer to "are there any aliens in the vehicle" had been "no", would they actually have checked.

But they definitely do now - though I believe there's now something sub-passport level which USians/Canadians can use to cross the border. (I mean, I've not done it by train, but I'm pretty certain they'll check either on the train or you'll have to troop off the train, get your documents checked, then get back on.) But I understand it's very easy to cross the border these days if you're a citizen of either country, my Canadian cousins do it all the time. (In fact, they do it just to visit family elsewhere in Canada because it's quicker to go via Maine.)

[conuly]

Yeah, a passport card instead of a book.