- Joined
- Feb 18, 2003
- Messages
- 8,509
Am I the only one here who dislikes the dining experience on Amtrak? Not the food (necessarily) or the service (sometimes), but the need to be seated with strangers. Many times on this board the prospect of dining with “interesting and colorful characters” (from a recent thread) is touted as a selling point for Amtrak long distance travel. For my wife and I, that prospect is more likely to sell us a plane ticket.
Here we are, ready for a nice quite Amtrak meal while watching the landscape roll by. But, no. We are seated with one or two strangers and are forced to either make idiotic small talk (“Gee, isn’t the weather great. Wow, trains are so relaxing. Look, was that a junked Edsel I just saw over there?”), be antisocial and say absolutely nothing throughout the meal while avoiding eye contact at all costs, or pretend the others are not there and simply talk between ourselves while avoiding any conversation that would reveal any personal information whatsoever. None of those options is appealing and none are what a person expects when dining. Imagine: “Welcome to the Olive Garden, please be seated here with this other nice couple and we’ll be back for your drink order in just a few minutes.”
I really do like most people and in the proper setting I would (maybe) want to hear their life story. We have even been seated on Amtrak with some people who turned out to be interesting. But for the most part I want to be left alone while traveling and especially while dining. I do not want the guy next to me on a plane to talk my ear off for 2500 miles (I’ve been known to fake sleeping to shut someone up who shows signs of being a transcon yacker) and I want to have meals sitting with people I know and talking about things that interest me. My wife and I have done the Amtrak dining experience several times and it is, quite frankly, one of the bigger negatives about riding Amtrak long distance trains.
I know why Amtrak needs, at least in some cases, to seat people together. And I know that it is a long standing passenger train practice. A train is not a fine restaurant, or even Applebee’s. I accept it as a sorry fact of Amtrak life. But the inability of a couple or even a single traveler to sit by themselves for a meal is, to at least some of us, a factor that counts against making the decision to take an Amtrak long distance train.
Here we are, ready for a nice quite Amtrak meal while watching the landscape roll by. But, no. We are seated with one or two strangers and are forced to either make idiotic small talk (“Gee, isn’t the weather great. Wow, trains are so relaxing. Look, was that a junked Edsel I just saw over there?”), be antisocial and say absolutely nothing throughout the meal while avoiding eye contact at all costs, or pretend the others are not there and simply talk between ourselves while avoiding any conversation that would reveal any personal information whatsoever. None of those options is appealing and none are what a person expects when dining. Imagine: “Welcome to the Olive Garden, please be seated here with this other nice couple and we’ll be back for your drink order in just a few minutes.”
I really do like most people and in the proper setting I would (maybe) want to hear their life story. We have even been seated on Amtrak with some people who turned out to be interesting. But for the most part I want to be left alone while traveling and especially while dining. I do not want the guy next to me on a plane to talk my ear off for 2500 miles (I’ve been known to fake sleeping to shut someone up who shows signs of being a transcon yacker) and I want to have meals sitting with people I know and talking about things that interest me. My wife and I have done the Amtrak dining experience several times and it is, quite frankly, one of the bigger negatives about riding Amtrak long distance trains.
I know why Amtrak needs, at least in some cases, to seat people together. And I know that it is a long standing passenger train practice. A train is not a fine restaurant, or even Applebee’s. I accept it as a sorry fact of Amtrak life. But the inability of a couple or even a single traveler to sit by themselves for a meal is, to at least some of us, a factor that counts against making the decision to take an Amtrak long distance train.