multicity booking versus single segment booking on my dream trip

Hi all I am a 63 year old Irish woman I am going on vacation to Washington State Seattle Spokane etc I want to fulfill the dream of a lifetime of taking a train through the Rocky Mountains I love trains I have spent many hours planning the trip  I am booking a late evening flight into Denver and intend to get the train the next morning coach to Glenwood Springs. I am now at the booking stage for the train and looking for information on booking value multi city tickets from Denver leaving on March 21st, 2019 with a 5 day stop off in Glenwood Springs then re boarding the California zephyr on March 26th to Emeryville which arrives on March 27th then overnight in Emeryville and boarding train on March 28th to Santa Barbara. The  trip if booked as one complete booking in Coach is $201 but is $228 if booked in separate segments .If I opted for a roomette on the Glenwood Springs leg of the journey there is no price difference if booked as one trip or in segments Whether as a single booking or booking the trip in segments I want to book everything in the next day or two 

I am tempted to book the journey in separate segments because if I miss a train it is only that segment of the journey which will be affected. When booking separate segments there is an option to buy saver or flexible fares which are more expensive. Here are the terms and conditions

[SIZE=10.5pt]https:/…guide-to-fares.html[/SIZE] .

Unless I am doing the single multistrip booking process wrong it does not give a saver fare or a flexible fare option. However, I know there are advantages, in booking multi city FLIGHTS, to book as one single trip because if a flight is delayed or cancelled then the airline must look after the affected passenger in the airport with possibly having to provide meals and/or accommodation depending on the length of flight delay or cancellation. Is it similar in Amtrak? I am particularly worried that if my Seattle to Denver flight is delayed or worse still cancelled, I am at the loss of the whole ticket?

What is the advantage of multi-city tickets? If any of the trains are delayed will Amtrak pay for meals and/or accommodation if necessary? Please advise me of the best way to do this Thank you so very much

my second question is regarding a seniors discount I am aware that if your journey originates in Canada the age threshold for seniors is 60 years During my research  I have also come across reference to a threshold of 62 years Which is the threshold which is applicable to my journey  Finally if I book a roomette I am assuming that I will be sharing with a stranger unless I book two tickets Am I correct ?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and for any help and advice you can give me I have e mailed Amtrak but have not had any response 

Amtrak's senior discount is now age 65, recently raised from 62.  It does not matter where your journey originates.  VIA Rail Canada's threshold age is 60, but that only applies to VIA services and has nothing to do with Amtrak. 

On Amtrak, when you buy sleeping accommodation, you buy the whole room and the accommodation charge is the same regardless of how many passengers occupy it.  No one will be placed with you.  Think of buying a hotel room, the hotel isn't going to put another guest in there.

The senior discount only applies to the rail portion of the fare.  It does not apply to the accommodation charge for a sleeper.

You should buy all through connections as one segment, not try to force connections.  If booked that way, Amtrak will honor guaranteed connections with rebooking, meals, hotels, etc.

Where you are laying over, not having both bookings on the same reservation number has advantages.   Particularly, that other segments won't get cancelled if you miss a train or your ticket doesn't get scanned (that happened to me).

Multi-city can often produce combinations that aren't specifically programmed into the booking engine.

I've discussed using multi-city to get certain bus combinations that aren't programmed into the normal system. Sometimes it can be used to create a stopover if the time is less than 24 hours where the price is roughly the same as if it were direct.  That can be useful on routes where there are multiple trains per day running the same route.

A small correction to the above advice.

You should book all your Amtrak travel from point A to point B. Then the connections all are guaranteed. HOWEVER, if you’re stop is more than 23 1/2 hours (say you want to stop for 3 days in the connecting city) you must buy a new ticket from there. In that case, you’ll need one ticket from A to B and a separate reservation from B to C.

Guest MAYO MAGGIE said:

Unless I am doing the single multistrip booking process wrong it does not give a saver fare or a flexible fare option. However, I know there are advantages, in booking multi city FLIGHTS, to book as one single trip because if a flight is delayed or cancelled then the airline must look after the affected passenger in the airport with possibly having to provide meals and/or accommodation depending on the length of flight delay or cancellation. Is it similar in Amtrak? I am particularly worried that if my Seattle to Denver flight is delayed or worse still cancelled, I am at the loss of the whole ticket?

What is the advantage of multi-city tickets? If any of the trains are delayed will Amtrak pay for meals and/or accommodation if necessary? Please advise me of the best way to do this Thank you so very much

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Unfortunately, multi-city tickets do not constitute guaranteed connections so if you miss a connection, you are going to have to organize and pay for all that stuff yourself. However, if you book your ticket as a standard one-way or round-trip reservation, any connections listed ARE guaranteed, and Amtrak will have to pay for lodging, alternative travel arrangements, and all that other fun stuff. So if you do book it multi-city, make sure that all your connections are at least several hours,  so that you don’t run the risk. The only disadvantage of booking it as a standard A to B trip is that you won’t necessarily be able to specifically choose each train you want and the dates of each segment. In most cases, you won’t save any money by booking your ticket on one reservation, however you can’t sometimes get some pretty significant discounts on certain itineraries with layovers of less than 24 hours if you book It as one thing. So I recommend playing around with the booking engine a bit and seeing if there are any discounts to be found.

Guest MAYO MAGGIE said:

my second question is regarding a seniors discount I am aware that if your journey originates in Canada the age threshold for seniors is 60 years During my research  I have also come across reference to a threshold of 62 years Which is the threshold which is applicable to my journey  Finally if I book a roomette I am assuming that I will be sharing with a stranger unless I book two tickets Am I correct ?

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There’s good news and bad news on this one. The bad news is that Amtrak’s Senior Discount is only for people who are 65 or older, though I would note that it’s only 10% off anyway, and that doesn’t apply to the cost of a room, so it’s a pretty lame discount you’re missing out on. The good news is that unlike many European trains, rooms on Amtrak are not shared, so any sleeper ticket gets you the whole room to yourself (plus any travel companion you put on your ticket, of course).  

cpotisch said:

unfortunately, multi-city tickets do not constitute guaranteed connections

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I disagree that multi-city tickets do not constitute guaranteed connections. As long as the tickets is say "New Orleans to Chicago" with same day connection to say "Chicago to Emeryville" then that ticket can be multi city and will be guaranteed.  In my travels, when I call Amtrak Guest Rewards to make my paid reservations as well as award reservations, they often use the multi city tickets for my travel with same day connection in Chicago.  

However, if I am overnighting in any location, I do make a new reservation for any continuing Amtrak travel to the next overnight stop. I have never put a round trip on the same reservation.  Always put trip each direction on a separate reservation. 

Tennessee Traveler said:

I disagree that multi-city tickets do not constitute guaranteed connections. As long as the tickets is say "New Orleans to Chicago" with same day connection to say "Chicago to Emeryville" then that ticket can be multi city and will be guaranteed.  In my travels, when I call Amtrak Guest Rewards to make my paid reservations as well as award reservations, they often use the multi city tickets for my travel with same day connection in Chicago.  

However, if I am overnighting in any location, I do make a new reservation for any continuing Amtrak travel to the next overnight stop. I have never put a round trip on the same reservation.  Always put trip each direction on a separate reservation. 

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I understand that if it's a train to train connection that can be made with a standard booking, it's still considered a guaranteed connection.  For example, imagine going Chicago to LA.  One standard booking option is Empire Builder to Portland and then to Los Angeles on the Coast Starlight, where the connection in Portland is "guaranteed".  But imagine a multi-city trip where the customer forces it to be Chicago to Portland to San Francisco (by bus).  Then San Francisco to LA two days later.  There's no particular reason to do it that way, but I was under the impression that even with multi-city it's considered a guaranteed connection as long as there those two trains have a guaranteed connection at the same connection point.

Tennessee Traveler said:

I disagree that multi-city tickets do not constitute guaranteed connections. As long as the tickets is say "New Orleans to Chicago" with same day connection to say "Chicago to Emeryville" then that ticket can be multi city and will be guaranteed.  In my travels, when I call Amtrak Guest Rewards to make my paid reservations as well as award reservations, they often use the multi city tickets for my travel with same day connection in Chicago.  

However, if I am overnighting in any location, I do make a new reservation for any continuing Amtrak travel to the next overnight stop. I have never put a round trip on the same reservation.  Always put trip each direction on a separate reservation. 

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BCL said:

I understand that if it's a train to train connection that can be made with a standard booking, it's still considered a guaranteed connection. For example, imagine going Chicago to LA. One standard booking option is Empire Builder to Portland and then to Los Angeles on the Coast Starlight, where the connection in Portland is "guaranteed". But imagine a multi-city trip where the customer forces it to be Chicago to Portland to San Francisco (by bus). Then San Francisco to LA two days later. There's no particular reason to do it that way, but I was under the impression that even with multi-city it's considered a guaranteed connection as long as there those two trains have a guaranteed connection at the same connection point.

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This is completely incorrect. If you go to the multi-city booking page, it explicitly says at the top that connections are not guaranteed. From that page:

cpotisch said:

This is completely incorrect. If you go to the multi-city booking page, it explicitly says at the top that connections are not guaranteed.

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I always assumed that meant not NECESSARILY guaranteed, because you could make some "unreasonable" connections if you try to.

p&sr said:

I always assumed that meant not NECESSARILY guaranteed, because you could make some "unreasonable" connections if you try to.

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That's been my understanding too.  The language that Amtrak gives is more or less CYA.  That I used a different style booking shouldn't make a difference if it's about transferring from the westbound CZ to the southbound CS in Emeryville.  I have the option to book exactly the same trip using a multi-city booking as I could just entering two stations.  I mean - is there even any way the Amtrak employees who take care of missed connections would even know?

I've seen comments on this forum of people who used multi-city and still got accommodated when there was a missed connection.

That what I assumed also.

You could make a multi-city connection, with a connecting time of 40 minutes. That would not be guaranteed. You could also make (or for some reason have to make) a multi-city reservation with the CONO arriving CHI at 9 am and the SWC departing at 3 pm. Why should that not be guaranteed. :huh:  Say the CONO gets delayed BIG time and doesn’t get to CHI until 4 pm.

My advice is simply to book seperate tickets. You know what you are doing then, it is simple and straightforward, you have long stopovers so nothing to worry about.

Best to book your flight to arrive earlier in the day into Denver, safer against cancellations than a late evening flight, as you are sleeping in Denver overnight anyway.

Some  saver fares don't show up untill nearer the date. 

As noted, the senior discount is no longer available to youngsters like yourself.

You will have sole use of your sleeping accommodation.

That section of track is very scenic from Denver west, sounds like a great trip!

You may get overwhelmed by conflicting advice on a forum like this... Just follow your own instincts...

Ed.

p&sr said:

I always assumed that meant not NECESSARILY guaranteed, because you could make some "unreasonable" connections if you try to.

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Well, you know what the say about assumptions.  The text reads loud and clear to me.

BCL said:

The language that Amtrak gives is more or less CYA. 

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Yeah, that's kind of the point.  They're protecting themselves from owing you a promised solution.  They might work with you anyway but they won't be specifically obligated to do so.

I use multi-city a lot, as most of my trips are not simple round trip or one way journey.  Just being on the multi-city screen does not mean you have to book each train segment individually.  Where there is a guaranteed connection, you can use the city pairs, not the individual train endpoints.  An example would be NYP-SEA.   I use multi-city to book between NYP and SEA.  I don't enter two separate city pairs, NYP-CHI, and CHI-SEA.

Take, for example, a major trip I took last May.  I was going around the country and wanted to lay over in LA, New Orleans, and Boston.  I used multi-city to book between 4 sets of endpoints:

SEA-LAX

LAX-NOL

NOL-BOS

BOS-SEA

I did NOT use the multi-city option to break up or force the connections in New York, or Chicago, where I did not have at least an overnight layover.  The booking engine gave me various connection options on each of those connections in NYP and CHI as well as other routing options.  That way I had guaranteed connections  for those connections.   I could have used 4 separate one-way reservations for the exact some result instead, and there is indeed is an argument for doing that, if my ticket for some reason did not get scanned, the rest of the itinerary would not cancel, but for a variety of reasons I just took the shot and did it on one reservation.

I don't use, and don't recommend using, the multi-city option to force connections that are not in Arrow and are are not guaranteed.   Although sometimes connections that are valid for larger stations do not show for smaller stations, as all connections are maintained in Arrow manually and some haven't been entered.  If a connection shows as a valid connection between trains for major points, but not for smaller points, in theory I would feel comfortable in forcing those connections (I usually travel to larger stations, so I haven't actually had the occasion to do that).

I think there is some conflation going on in this thread between using the multi-city option and presence or absence of guaranteed connections.  Use multi-city when you want to book more that a simple one-way or round trip, but enter the city pairs for each continuous travel segment.  That way the connections for those segments are guaranteed.

zephyr17 said:

I think there is some conflation going on in this thread between using the multi-city option and presence or absence of guaranteed connections.  Use multi-city when you want to book more that a simple one-way or round trip, but enter the city pairs for each continuous travel segment.  That way the connections for those segments are guaranteed.

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I think in most cases Amtrak probably would honor a connection that exists between two multi-city pairs, and I think you'd have a reasonable case for expecting that, but according to their own wording they don't feel that such resolution is an absolute requirement.  Consider the times Amtrak has suddenly suspended service with no alternative transportation and no other assistance beyond a refund of the original payment.  Receiving a coach class refund may not even cover a decent hotel room, let alone a last minute flight or fleet exhausted car rental.  It's not exactly a common problem but it can happen.