CNO roomette pricing

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I've been pondering the idea of traveling on the CNO this february up tho Michigan and im a little confused about the pricing. Pricing the round trip on Amtrak.com and Amsnag im seeing that a roomette at low bucket is running 220$ on most days!!! I always thought it was cheaper to ride in the dead of winter when ridership is lower. I did a comparison and saw i could get a roomette as cheap as 98$ as soon as Nov. Whats the deal? Why is the price so high so far out? I would be leaving Feb 14th from HMD "hammond,la" on CNO to CHI and then on to KAL "kalamzoo Mi" and back a week or so later. Will the prices change as winter nears? I went up this spring and it wasn't near this much for the room.

Thanks for any info.

Jake
 
Why is the price so high so far out? I would be leaving Feb 14th from HMD "hammond,la" on CNO to CHI and then on to KAL "kalamzoo Mi"
I'd be surprised if there wasn't demand for sleeper space on the City of New Orleans two days after Mardi Gras.
This, I'm looking to get a train to NOLA for Mardi Gras from another location. It's a good way to go and is actually cheaper for me if I get a friend to share a sleeper w/ me than flying would be.
 
Hi,

While I agree that Mardi Gras is bound to fuel demand, I was myself recently checking prices for an "off peak" Amtrak rail tour, but have been put off by the high prices. Several random dates between Jan 2013 and May 2013 all return roomette prices of $225 one way between New Orleans and Chicago, with coach fares alone being mostly $147 for this period. As Jakeleg remarks, I too am surprised by these fares, as the norm off peak has mostly been around $100 each for coach and roomette.

I imagine these fares may well drop, but how, why, when, or whether by then I will have chosen a different mode of transport I cannot say!

Ed :cool:
 
Don't get me wrong, it's always nice to save some coin but $98 for a roomette is criminally cheap.
 
I would be leaving Feb 14th from HMD "hammond,la" on CNO to CHI
Jake, is the parking in Hammond free? How safe is it to leave your car there for several days? I'm glad we booked our Nov. trip early because I got a roomette thru to Chicago for $100 each way. Last time we went we parked in the $5/day lot in New Orleans for 7 days and the car was fine when we returned.

Hammond would actually be closer for us to drive to from Lafayette.
 
I booked early for a January CHI-NOL trip and our roomettes each way added only $85 to our fares.

I learned something though, make sure you add a roomette to your cart to see the 'real' final price for your total fare.

We had an interesting (to me, at least) discussion about what I thought was an awesome sale here:

CONO and Sleeper Prices
 
Hi,

When booking a sleeper one always gets the lowest bucket price for the ride, plus whatever the sleeper costs. The illustration I was making was that not only were roomettes priced high, but the ordinary coach fares were high too. By "adding a room" the Amtrak website will then show a price for the room, plus the low bucket coach price... It is one way of discovering the lowest bucket coach fare too... subtract the room price from the price shown, and that is the low bucket coach fare. Dunno how to find the low bucket room prices, I think they may be in the printed timetable? (Not available in UK!)

Ed :cool:
 
Hi,

When booking a sleeper one always gets the lowest bucket price for the ride, plus whatever the sleeper costs. The illustration I was making was that not only were roomettes priced high, but the ordinary coach fares were high too. By "adding a room" the Amtrak website will then show a price for the room, plus the low bucket coach price... It is one way of discovering the lowest bucket coach fare too... subtract the room price from the price shown, and that is the low bucket coach fare. Dunno how to find the low bucket room prices, I think they may be in the printed timetable? (Not available in UK!)

Ed :cool:
They don't publish the low buckets. We infer them from Amsnag queries and fake reservations. A friendly Amtrak agent will sometimes tell you. I got into a conversation with an agent on a trip I already ticketed, and mentioned that I thought my fare was the lowest bucket. He said he didn't think so, and looked it up and said there was one bucket lower, but it was hardly ever open.
 
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It must be something like the airlines are doing, If thats the case booking extreamley early may not be the best way from now on. I went month by month on Amsnag and the prices for the next 2 months are cheaper than any following months. That sucks! I guess ill have to keep watching and wait till the price drops. If it doesnt thats the end of Amtrak for me!

Pat, There is no parking at Hammond VIA Amtrak. But there are 2 city lots just south of the station that are open. The only concern i would have is they use them for all the movie filming going on and are closed from time to time.

Jake
 
Pat, I have parked my car to the left of the station at Hammond (HMD) in the grass and under the trees for up to 3 weeks. Parking is free and my car has always been fine. I hope it stays that way!
 
Pat, I have parked my car to the left of the station at Hammond (HMD) in the grass and under the trees for up to 3 weeks.
I was wondering about that area. We noticed several cars parked there when we went through Hammond. I assumed it was short termers or possibly Amtrak employees who used it. Is that public property, or does it belong to Amtrak?
 
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I was wondering about that area. We noticed several cars parked there when we went through Hammond. I assumed it was short termers or possibly Amtrak employees who used it. Is that public property, or does it belong to Amtrak?
I'm not sure. But when I departed from Hammond for the first time, I asked the station attendant about parking and he told me that was one place I could leave my car. I've been parking there ever since, sometimes two to three weeks at a time. I think the other place he suggested was at the other end of the building but I can't recall.
 
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