I'm having trouble coming up with such a huge price tag. Understanding that the rail fare included a couple of "off train" nights, it seems like the price should be around $2500. Add a couple of nice hotels along the way and we're at around $3500. That means that coach round trip to and from LA is around $2500. Even at full no-discount retail, that's just a bit high.
Makes the Grand Luxe American Orient Express Rail Journey now defunct sound cheap.
I've read that these prizes are effectively donated by the company, and as donations the company are allowed to declare their value ... and declaring a value on the high end is advantageous to them for tax purposes, since the donation counts as a tax write-off. It also hoses the prize winner, who has to pay income taxes based on the company's declared value.
It seems backwards, in that it's sort of better advertising for Amtrak Vacations if they make their vacations look more affordable to the television audience; but it probably makes "better television" to have really expensive prizes. Unfortunately, many folks watching The Price Is Right may come away with the impression that Amtrak provides luxury vacations but is not an actual "normal mode of transportation"--especially with the "we'll fly you round-trip to and from your train trip" bit.
It was probably cheaper/simpler for the airline to donate a round-trip ticket than a one-way ticket. And they probably valued that round-trip ticket at well north of $1000 for tax purposes (so two round-trip plane tickets may very well come to $2500 here). No customer planning a vacation would actually plan their vacation around dates with those airfares when they could probably fly for a few hundre per ticket (or less); as it is, the winner would have easily wound up paying "full airfare" (several hundred, for realistic fares) in taxes to the government on the "value" of the prize they've won (a few thousand, as declared by the airline).
If we're lucky, the Price is Right contestant who didn't win will think "wow, that sounded like a fun vacation", will price it out themselves and find it's possible to do it for much less money, will take the vacation on their own dime, and will love it
Also, note that many Price is Right contestants aren't from the LA area! I haven't watched the show in many years (since the Bob Barker days), but my sense was that at least a third of the contestants were from out-of-state and sometimes far away--makes for better television if a good number of contestants aren't from LA, so viewers across the country can say "wow, someone from my home state!" every now and then. So if the contestant had won, she'd have to provide their own transit (likely by air) between their hometown and LA in order to take this trip!!!
