AGR Points on Around-the-Country Trip

[PA Traveler]

I am in the process of trying to plan a trip on Amtrak around the country next year in the fall. What it looks like roughly is Pittsburgh to DC, DC to New Orleans, New Orleans to LA, LA to Seattle, Seattle to Chicago, and back to Pittsburgh.

We are planning a couple of stops on the way instead of our usual Amtrak to one destination, rent a car for a few weeks, and return on the same train. We will have to overnight in New Orleans as the SL leaves the morning after the train from DC gets in. We would also like to stop in Tuscon for two nights. We plan no stops on the CS from LA to Seattle, but would spend time in the Seattle area before getting on the EB. And we would like to stop in Glacier National Park on the way back.

From reading another topic, it looks like because we are planning stops on some sections, it may be a little harder to use points. We have a LOT of them.

The trip was already looking like something of a nightmare to plan (but I like that kind of challenge). I didn't realize at first that the Sunset Limited does not run every day, so I'd have to start the trip taking that into account the first thing.

We will be doing all of this in a roomette.

If we book our stay at Glacier National Park through Amtrak (which we've done in the past), would using points on this part of the trip still be impossible since we aren't going straight through? I can see I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the phone.

I'd appreciate any advice on the best way to use points for this trip and any other planning tips anyone has. I'd like to be ready to make reservations in the next month or so, if I'm lucky. I think the trip will be in September 2013.

 

[johnny.menhennet]

I am in the process of trying to plan a trip on Amtrak around the country next year in the fall. What it looks like roughly is Pittsburgh to DC, DC to New Orleans, New Orleans to LA, LA to Seattle, Seattle to Chicago, and back to Pittsburgh.

We are planning a couple of stops on the way instead of our usual Amtrak to one destination, rent a car for a few weeks, and return on the same train. We will have to overnight in New Orleans as the SL leaves the morning after the train from DC gets in. We would also like to stop in Tuscon for two nights. We plan no stops on the CS from LA to Seattle, but would spend time in the Seattle area before getting on the EB. And we would like to stop in Glacier National Park on the way back.

From reading another topic, it looks like because we are planning stops on some sections, it may be a little harder to use points. We have a LOT of them.

The trip was already looking like something of a nightmare to plan (but I like that kind of challenge). I didn't realize at first that the Sunset Limited does not run every day, so I'd have to start the trip taking that into account the first thing.

We will be doing all of this in a roomette.

If we book our stay at Glacier National Park through Amtrak (which we've done in the past), would using points on this part of the trip still be impossible since we aren't going straight through? I can see I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the phone.

I'd appreciate any advice on the best way to use points for this trip and any other planning tips anyone has. I'd like to be ready to make reservations in the next month or so, if I'm lucky. I think the trip will be in September 2013.

Well as you likely know, there is no way to stop for a few days and then continue on the same reservation. If you didn't care about staying in LA, you could go straight from Tucson to Seattle for the same amount of points as LA-Seattle by itself. Sorry I can't be of much help. I've never personally redeemed AGR points. Good luck.

 

[gswager]

Make a list of segments that you're planning to travel. Then put the price of rail fare (coach) and a sleeper room in each segements. If the price of one or more segments is cheap, pay with cash. On the expensive side, use AGR points.

 

[johnny.menhennet]

Make a list of segments that you're planning to travel. Then put the price of rail fare (coach) and a sleeper room. If the price of one of segments is cheap, pay with cash. On expensive side, use AGR points.

Yes, and once you have a list, I will be able to (as will many others) be able to help much better. This would be really helpful though.

 

[amamba]

So what you should do is plan out exactly the segments that you need and where you will be stopping. Once you have that ready to go, you can book your trip.

Anytime you stop and don't take the next train out will be the end of an individual AGR trip, and that point and the origination of that segment will qualify how many zones you are buying. So for example, when you go to Glacier National park from Seattle, that is a one zone, 15,000 point trip. Then when you get back on the train in Glacier after spending a few days in the park, you will then have to do another award redemption from Glacier to Pittsburgh. That will be a three zone trip in a roomette. If you want to spend some time in Chicago on the way home, then you would do a two zone trip from Glacier to Chicago, spend however long in CHI, then book a two zone trip to Pittsburgh. It's probably not worth the extra points to spend some time in CHI when only going to Pittsburgh, IMO.

 

[the_traveler]

Slight clarification to amamba's answer. On an AGR award, you must ALWAYS take the next train out - and it can not be later than 23 hours and 59 minutes after the scheduled arrival. (I'm just using any times here in this example.) If the train is scheduled to arrive at 7:36 am on Tuesday, you must depart before 7:35 am on Wednesday. But because the next departure is at 7:36 am on Wednesday, you must depart at 7:36 on Tuesday or your award would end at that point and you must redeem a new award!

 

[Linda T]

From reading another topic, it looks like because we are planning stops on some sections, it may be a little harder to use points.

What I was actually told by AGR is put your departure and arrival cities into amtrak.com and it will show you the possible routes. Any deviation to this will cost you either in dollars or points. You'd think since I can do CHI to SEA on the Eagle that they'd let me just add CIN to the trip (it sits in the central or eastern zone), so it would be a two zone redemption. The problem is CIN is not part of the actual schedule. And even though the Cardinal pulls into Chicago at 10:05AM, and the Eagle departs at 1:45 pm (3 hours and 40 minute layover) it would cost me another 15,000 points. I've heard that now from several AGR reps and two supervisors.

I didn't realize at first that the Sunset Limited does not run every day, so

I'd have to start the trip taking that into account the first thing.

Isn't that fun? :wacko: I'm not only working the Texas Eagle (joins SL at San Antonio) but also the Cardinal. So I'm working with two three day a week trains -- talk about a nightmare! :lol:

Hopefully you can somehow get to the supervisors who are softer hearted. I'm gonna just wait at this point (I can't book anyway till October or November), but for now I'm planning to just start points after I arrive in Chicago.

 

[Linda T]

Slight clarification to amamba's answer. On an AGR award, you must ALWAYS take the next train out - and it can not be later than 23 hours and 59 minutes after the scheduled arrival. (I'm just using any times here in this example.) If the train is scheduled to arrive at 7:36 am on Tuesday, you must depart before 7:35 am on Wednesday. But because the next departure is at 7:36 am on Wednesday, you must depart at 7:36 on Tuesday or your award would end at that point and you must redeem a new award!

I wish that were true, but what about my above post? I'm not hearing anything about a 23 hour rule. Is the 23 hour rule written anywhere in official Amtrak stuff?

 

[amamba]

Linda T, the problem that you are running into is what has been mentioned about Arrow. Arrow is the software that does the amtrak bookings. Arrow has to be individually programmed - IIRC - with city pairs. So someone had to put into Arrow that CIN - SEA with the cardinal is a legal booking, and they obviously didn't.

My understanding is that AGR will only book you into reservations that show up on Arrow. Some people have had success with other combintations, though, because there doesn't appear to be an AGR rulebook. But again, YMMV.

 

[Linda T]

Linda T, the problem that you are running into is what has been mentioned about Arrow. Arrow is the software that does the amtrak bookings. Arrow has to be individually programmed - IIRC - with city pairs. So someone had to put into Arrow that CIN - SEA with the cardinal is a legal booking, and they obviously didn't.

My understanding is that AGR will only book you into reservations that show up on Arrow. Some people have had success with other combintations, though, because there doesn't appear to be an AGR rulebook. But again, YMMV.

By jove I think I just figured it all out! Give me a great big DUH!!! here! This is where I get to say "boy was I dumb." Um... to make my whole trip work I get into Chicago a day BEFORE the Eagle leaves, and more than 24 hours. I'll arrive at 10 something and leave the next day at 1 something in the afternoon. Like isn't that just the dumbest thing anyone's thought on this forum? hboy:

 

[the_traveler]

1346195354[/url]' post='390240']

1346190539[/url]' post='390201']Slight clarification to amamba's answer. On an AGR award, you must ALWAYS take the next train out - and it can not be later than 23 hours and 59 minutes after the scheduled arrival. (I'm just using any times here in this example.) If the train is scheduled to arrive at 7:36 am on Tuesday, you must depart before 7:35 am on Wednesday. But because the next departure is at 7:36 am on Wednesday, you must depart at 7:36 on Tuesday or your award would end at that point and you must redeem a new award!

I wish that were true, but what about my above post? I'm not. hearing anything about a 23 hour rule. Is the 23 hour rule written anywhere in official Amtrak stuff?

Any stopover on an AGR award is not allowed. And on a paid ticket, a stopover is defined as more than 23 hours and 59 minutes. On corridors that have more than 1 train a day (such as the NEC), you can use the multi-city function and get a 9 am train WAS-NYP and a 5 pm train NYP-BOS for the same fare as WAS-BOS!

 

[PA Traveler]

We will go directly from Pittsburgh to New Orleans with an overnight stop in New Orleans as the SL leaves the next morning, so that is the next train out. We can't stay in Tucson more than two nights because of the few days that the SL runs (unless we wanted to stay much longer, which we don't). So I guess that means one segment is Pittsburgh to Tucson. We are not stopping in LA, so the next segment is Tucson to Seattle. We will be in the Seattle area (probably San Juan Islands) for probably three or four nights. So I guess the only short segment will be from Seattle to Glacier National Park. We will be going straight to Pittsburgh from there.

So I guess this says the best places to use our points are probably Pittsburgh to Tuscon, Tuscon to Seattle, and Glacier National Park to Pittsburgh. We might have enough points to pay for all of them, if all goes well. We have a big trip coming up to Patagonia in January (will have to fly on that one, unfortunately). Paying for that on the card would add even more points. That would give us more than 100,000 points, probably more than we need.

Since we've already visited DC, New Orleans, LA, and Chicago, we don't plan any stops there on this trip. We did think about staying in New Orleans for a few days, but that breaks the trip up more and gives us another short segment, which doesn't sound cost effective. We've also spent lots of time in Seattle, but we always stay over there. The schedules for the trains work out pretty smoothly (if all goes well and with some leeway). The only glitch seems to be the SL and the overnight in New Orleans, but that should just be a matter of finding a hotel close to the train station. I don't know yet where the station is located in New Orleans, but I'll know that before I talk to Amtrak.

Thanks for all your help. If you have any other suggestions, I'd really appreciate them.

(By the way, we did a trip from Pittsburgh to Flagstaff in June, which I never got to posting in trip reports. We put about 2,000 miles on a rental car and went to nearly a dozen national parks and monuments in Arizona and Utah. Suffice to say, last year it was floods; this year it was fire.)

 

[Ispolkom]

1) Pittsburgh - Tucson. The AGR agent probably will insist on routing you Pittsburgh-Chicago-San Antonio-Tucson on #29 and #421, rather than through New Orleans. The overnight stay in New Orleans would make the latter routing more difficult to arrange. If you want to save on points, you might consider booking Pittsburgh-El Paso as a two-zone trip, then pay for El Paso - Tucson, which would be six hours during the day, perhaps doable in coach.

2) Tucson - Seattle. No problem, since the most comfortable route is the one amtrak.com produces

3) Seattle - Glacier. No choice here, really. Where are you staying? I spent a few nights at Lake MacDonald Lodge a couple of years ago. They picked us up at the West Glacier station, and we were able to use the free shuttle buses directly from the Lodge.

4) Glacier Nat'l Park - Pittsburgh. If you wanted to save points on this leg, you might buy the ticket from Glacier to the zone border at Wolf Point, then start a two-zone trip from there. I don't know if 6.5 hours in coach (again, during the day) is worth the savings to you, but something to consider.

 

[PA Traveler]

Thanks for that information. I obviously still have a lot to learn. I know that going through Chicago is another way to get to New Orleans, but how much choice do we have in this? I can see if we want to use points on this segment why they might not want us to. What about if we don't use points for this? Can they still try to re-route us based on our earning points for this part of the trip? I looked at other options before settling on this itinerary based on what trains we wanted to take and what part of the country the train was going through. Our main objective on this trip is not our usual train trip to one location to spend time in national parks. It's actually the CS trip up the coast. But it's also just the idea of a (mostly) scenic trip around the country on trains we haven't been on before. If I wanted just to do the CS the most simple way, I could just take the SWC to LA and go from there. We had also thought of going to Yosemite NP, but took this out of the plans as it was just adding one too many wrinkles, and probably too much time.

We stayed at Glacier Park Lodge right at the train station the last time we were there. I like the idea of staying at one of the other lodges this time, and I know Lake MacDonald would be a nice one to stay at. I'll figure out all the lodgings on the trip after I get the train arrangements tied down. I know if I want to get into one of the really nice lodges, I have to do reservations as far ahead of time as I can. I managed to get us into El Tovar at the South Rim on our trip in June and was astounded at my luck, even though I made the reservations ten months in advance.

We have always done a sleeper car unless it's a definite day-only trip like Vancouver to Seattle or Pittsburgh to DC. I'd think about doing a short segment in coach from El Paso if I had to end up there, but I'd rather not have to end up there to change trains. I'm figuring on taking the sleeper from Pittsburgh to DC, too, even though the CL comes through Pittsburgh at 4:30 AM. I would rather be able to grab a few hours' sleep that I wouldn't get in coach as I know that for me that would pretty much be a night without sleep with getting to the train station in Pittsburgh in the middle of the night. That's not a good way to start out a trip for me, even a relatively relaxing one.

One thing we have on our side is flexibility on dates this far in advance. I can play around with that and at this point have no definite dates, just probably starting from Pittsburgh after Labor Day next year.

I can't tell all of you how much I really appreciate all your help with this. The three train major train trips we have done in the last two years have all been relatively easy to plan compared to this. I just made the reservations on the trains going to our end destination. All those trains run every day (CL, EB, CZ, SWC). The SL came as a bit of a surprise as did the overnight connection in New Orleans. I think I still have more to learn, but you are all helping me to be a lot smarter before I have to get on the phone and hammer out these reservations. As I said, I like a bit of a challenge when planning a trip like this, but I'll be happy to have the planning stages behind me on this one!

 

[AlanB]

Thanks for that information. I obviously still have a lot to learn. I know that going through Chicago is another way to get to New Orleans, but how much choice do we have in this? I can see if we want to use points on this segment why they might not want us to. What about if we don't use points for this? Can they still try to re-route us based on our earning points for this part of the trip?

No, if you're paying you can book whatever you like no matter how convoluted it might seem to a non-railfan.

I agree that you may be hard pressed to get an AGR agent to book you PGH-WAS-NOL-TUS on one award, when going via Chicago is the more obvious choice. I think you'd have a much easier time of things if you paid for PGH-WAS at a minimum, and then tried for an AGR reservation from WAS via New Orleans. If you wanted to pay to Atlanta, then you'd save on points too, but frankly that leg of the trip WAS-ATL could be rather pricey. On the other hand, it pretty much assures you that no AGR agent will think twice about booking ATL-NOL-TUS on one reservation.

 

[PA Traveler]

I spent a good bit of time online yesterday trying to figure out where exactly the zones begin and end and to get an idea of pricing. Of course, that's pretty variable as I just had to plug in dates where I could get roomettes, but at least it gave me an idea. I think we will pay for Pittsburgh to Atlanta, or maybe a little beyond Atlanta if it's in the eastern zone as it seems to be. If I try to put in a trip from DC to Tucson, it wants to take me to Chicago. This seems to be the most complicated part to plan, but I'm getting a better feel for it. It probably makes sense to pay for Seattle to Glacier NP, too, and maybe to Wolf Point. I'm going to try to use only two-zone points.

I think it will be about a month before dates in September open up on the schedule.

Thanks again.

 

[amamba]

Atlanta is the zone boundary I believe, so Pittsburgh to Atlanta would be one zone.

 

[PA Traveler]

Atlanta is the zone boundary I believe, so Pittsburgh to Atlanta would be one zone.

That's what I thought it probably was. That could mean we could also use points to get to Atlanta. Right now, we are thinking maybe points from PGH to ATL (1 zone), points from ATL to TUC (2 zones [or maybe not] ), points from TUC to SEA (1 zone). Then pay from SEA to GNP, pay from GNP to Wolf Point, then use points again from Wolf Point to PGH (2 zones). Maybe there's something we'd have to do with the ATL part since that's in the eastern zone, like pay for another part to get into the next zone. hboy:

We have been doing one big trip a year on Amtrak, so I don't have a problem using a lot of points on a trip like this. We have another much shorter trip in mind on the Cardinal in the not-too-distant future, but that's very much up in the air, and we'd have more points to use by the time we did that. We have more than enough points right now to do what I've outlined above.

Or am I being too hopeful and/or naive? :unsure:

We used points on our trip from PGH to Flagstaff in June, and it was more than a little aggravation on the phone to get the reservations done correctly as we paid to and from Toledo and used the points the rest of the way. I can't quite imagine what this one will be like doing.

Thanks very much!

 

[Ispolkom]

If it's any help, here's a map that shows border cities. Don't ask me why AGR no longer shows them. Others, I'm sure, know better.

 

[PA Traveler]

If it's any help, here's a map that shows border cities. Don't ask me why AGR no longer shows them. Others, I'm sure, know better.

Thanks! The map that I could find online didn't actually name the cities. This is a better map.