Updated Amtrak.com Coming 6/28

FYI - Amtrak.com is scheduled to receive an overhaul this Sunday, 6/28. Functionality is supposed to remain the same but with an updated look and feel.

Shoot me now.

jb

John Bobinyec said:

Shoot me now.

jb

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Bang.

AmtrakLKL said:

FYI - Amtrak.com is scheduled to receive an overhaul this Sunday, 6/28. Functionality is supposed to remain the same but with an updated look and feel.

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Source?

John Bobinyec said:

Shoot me now.

jb

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Haha - when I saw the notice my first thought was, "Oh no, the status maps!"

I would prefer that some of this terminology such as overhaul, updated look and feel were to apply to the entire Amtrak operation effective 6/28, not just the website! :unsure:

greatcats said:

I would prefer that some of this terminology such as overhaul, updated look and feel were to apply to the entire Amtrak operation effective 6/28, not just the website! :unsure:

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DITTO!!!

Hope it's not a repeat of 10/05/14.

What happened on 10/05/14?

All the computer systems went down for a day, ticketing, reservations, operations, and even the conductors iPhones were unusable!

Yikes.

I agree with others, here, though. I would much prefer to see Amtrak itself refreshed and updated and overhauled rather than its website.

And it was the day I left on my great adventure to the west coast gathering. Unable to track my 1st train which was coming from VA - and had less than an hour connection to the LSL - I went to the station a lot earlier than I needed to in case I might need to try to catch an earlier train. My train was running late, but made it in time for me to do a cross-platform connection (LSL came in about 10 mins after I arrived).

Wow, what a stressful way to start a trip. But you had the Gathering at the other end, which I'm sure made it all worthwhile!

What could possibly go wrong??

Mystic River Dragon said:

Wow, what a stressful way to start a trip. But you had the Gathering at the other end, which I'm sure made it all worthwhile!

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And in between, the bus from Toledo (was already warned), seeing parts of the country I had not seen before via the SWC & CS. Then the part of the CZ I had not seen coming back.Having this great group traveling with me, via the Internet & text msgs, certainly helped.

Same functionality? Update the look?

I'd rather see more functionality and leave the look alone.

Web sites' obsession with change is obnoxious. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And don't add movement and color for the sake of movement and color. Just provide the information, and leave the entertainment out of it.

My father banked at the same building for about 40 years. After 30 years, the bank was bought by a larger bank. Five years later, that bank was purchased by a still larger bank. The people in the building stayed the same both times. My father told one of the senior people, "I hope you don't get bought again. I don't think I could adjust to another upgrade in service."

Still waiting for the OP to offer any concrete evidence of this happening.

Sorry, but I have no concrete evidence to offer. Even if I did, the roll-out could be delayed by last minute glitches, so the only way I don't look like a schmuck is to wake up to a new website Sunday morning.

me_little_me said:

Same functionality? Update the look?

I'd rather see more functionality and leave the look alone.

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^ This!

Amtrak.com already looks fine to me and I'm one of the most critical and judgmental members on the forum. If they're going to muck with it anyway maybe they could leave the look alone and figure out a way to provide point redemptions for sleepers and connections. We've been told that Amtrak is starving for money and they've been busy removing services and products that I actually enjoy. Wasting time and money on some froufrou visual "enhancement" to a perfectly serviceable website sounds like a big waste of effort to me.

I'm going to go out on a limb and reserve judgement until we actually see the finished product.

Heck, if it makes it so that the roomettes/bedroom/family room aren't hidden behind those triangles that nobody can find, I'll call it a success.

I haven't seen anything about the site being down for upgrades or maintenance. Generally a notice is posted about a period of time when the web site will be inaccessible.

There is a scheduled outage every Sunday early in the morning. Lasts about 3-6 hours each time

It's up, look and feel changes only.

The triangles are now arrows, maybe that will help people see they can click on them.





Amtrak Status Maps doesn't seem to be pulling in updates, to there must have been a minor change, hopefully John can fix it up without too much work.

Like most members I was extremely familiar with the previous site. That made it quick and simple to find what I needed, even when viewing the full site on a tiny mobile device like a phone. This was important because Amtrak's actual mobile site is extremely limited compared to the full site. In fact Amtrak's mobile site could have greatly benefited from a makeover that brought more functionality from the full site. Now I have to relearn the primary site all over again and figure out how to make it work in a mobile situation. Then again I'm just a current customer and proponent of passenger rail so maybe I'm not Amtrak's priority. Thankfully the benefit to brand new users who don't know anything about Amtrak is that triangles have become arrows.