Amtrak Fare Pricing Methodology

[wintersummer]

I'm a complete newbie in the world of Amtrak travel, so would like to ask for some advice in purchasing tickets for sleeper accomodations for the Empire Builder.

I know airline tickets have wide fluctuations in price on almost daily basis. Also, with airlines you can get drastically less expensive tickets by just changing a departure or arrival city.

Do these same somewhat illogical fare rules apply to Amtrak? For instance, would I find drastically different pricing by boarding at Milwaukee vs. Chicago, go to Portland vs. Seattle?

Is it worth checking pricing on daily basis to determine best time to buy? Any other advice appreciated!

 

[yarrow]

my advice is book as early as possible(you can book up to 11 months in advance. then check back from time to time as there may be a promotion or lower sleeper price. if you reserve on line, pay by credit card and haven't picked or had your tickets sent to you, you may cancel without penalty(unless possibly you have booked under a special promotion)and rebook at a lower fare

 

[wintersummer]

my advice is book as early as possible(you can book up to 11 months in advance. then check back from time to time as there may be a promotion or lower sleeper price. if you reserve on line, pay by credit card and haven't picked or had your tickets sent to you, you may cancel without penalty(unless possibly you have booked under a special promotion)and rebook at a lower fare

Yarrow - thanks for advice. Could you explain what you mean by the words "haven't picked" in your response? I know I will have to pick what type of sleeper I want. Is that what you meant?

 

[yarrow]

sorry, i wasn't clear. i meant if you hadn't picked up your tickets you can generally cancel without penalty. if you have your tickets and want to cancel it is a pain in the neck(plus usually a 10% penalty)

 

[AlanB]

To further expand on this, pricing can vary from day to day. So if you can adjust your travel dates, then absolutely check multiple days. You could find a price swing of a few hundred dollars depending on things.

Prices will generaly decrease the further down the line that you board, but then you may be missing part of the ride and/or meals. And the variance might not be all that significant anyhow. Especially in your example of Chicago vs Milwaukee. On the other hand you could find a big difference between traveling to Portland vs Seattle. The reason for that is the Portland section only gets one sleeping car, while Seattle gets two. So as rooms sell out, prices rise. With double the amount of rooms, it usually takes longer for the Seattle prices to rise than it does for the Portland prices. But that later example isn't a common thing for Amtrak. Most trains don't get split along the way.

Turning to the cancellation/exchange/refund policy, if you don't pick up the tickets after you make and pay for the reservation on line, then you can cancel at any point up until 7 days before departure without penalty. The entire amount will be refunded to your credit car.

Once you have your tickets in your hands, meaning that they've been printed on ticket stock, then you have two choices. One lose 10%, or get a voucher good for 100% of the amount paid for use on a future Amtrak trip. Again, be aware of the 7 day rule.

 

[WICT106]

To reiterate what AlanB wrote, Amtrak utilizes "yield management" principles when assigning a price to each itinerary. In that sense, the railroad is similar to the airlines.

 

[RailFanLNK]

WinterSummer,

The best thing to do is just start sitting daily at your PC and typing in dates you "could" leave. I was pricing a trip for a group of us next March to GSC (Glenwood Springs Colorado) from LNK (Lincoln Nebraska) We were thinking of going either 3/22/08 or 3/23/08, the difference in a bedroom price and only one day's difference in leaving was $287.00! Well...with two or possibly 3 couples getting a bedroom, thats almost $861.00 for the exact same accomodations but on different days and only 24 hours apart. So become a PC Junkie and get to know your way around the Amtrak website. Also, if you book your trip, do not pick up your tickets. IF things change (pricewise or familywise) you can cancel and re-book and its so much more easier to do if you haven't picked up your tickets.

 

[sechs]

Also keep in mind that the price of a particular segment/date combination is pretty much only going to go up. If you see what you're after, you can book it and, later, cancel, without penalty.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Okay, I just had a very interesting (but very fortunate) pricing wrinkle for my EB trip this summer. I've been looking at Amtrak's web site almost every day to check prices & availability. A one way trip in a roomette was about $600 (over the coach fare), and a bedroom was about $1300. This held up for both the Portland and Seattle sleepers.

Tonight, the prices got weird. In the Seattle sleeper, the price for a bedroom was the same, but the price to a roomette dropped to less than $200 (over the current coach fare). I almost jumped on that, but then I checked the Portland sleeper. In that car, the price of the roomette went up to about $900, but the bedroom dropped to about $700- about $600 less than it was a few days ago! And, as you may have noticed, the bedroom was now about $200 less than the roomette!

So, I jumped on that one, and upgraded to a bedroom for only $43 more than what I had booked my roomette for a few weeks ago. Pretty cool.

 

[Sam Damon]

Sounds to me like a tour group or travel agency cancelled reservations.

I think there exists some sort of "voodoo" concerning sleeper space on the Empire Builder that one doesn't really see on the eastern trains.

 

[Eris]

Thanks for this reminder to check rates again for our trip on the Coast Starlight coming up in a couple of weeks! We were booked into a downstairs roomette at the best price I could find at the time, with very flexible travel dates- $313- and nothing much as changed for the date we're going (roomettes are at $372, family bedroom at $7xx, bedrooms $1016 or something), but for the day before, the family bedrooms had opened up, at $368 (roomettes $372 on that train). I'm traveling alone with two small kids (small enough to easily book into a roomette, but the family bedroom is SO much more comfortable. I'd been figuring on hoping a family bedroom would still be available when we boarded in Seattle and seeing about an upgrade, but for $55 additional today we can just leave a day earlier and be guaranteed the spot. Hooray!