Final Pre AGR2 Trips Booked

[Tony in Ann Arbor]

On Thursday, we booked our Thanksgiving trip and earlier in January booked the June trip - both to the west coast. Those trips bring our total AGR redemptions to 851,750 points covering numerous trips since 2004.

The two trips include bedrooms on ten different trains. Nine of the rooms are room E and one is room A. That surprised me as my experience has been that the Empire Builder (trains 27 and 28) filled the bedrooms earlier along with the Texas Eagle and the Southwest Chief seemingly had bedrooms available for a longer period. Not so this time, bedroom A is on the Chief and bedrooms E are on the Eagle, Empire Builder, and Coast Starlight.

In prior years I wouldn't use points for a trip unless they ended up being valued at at least 4 cents per point. For these trips, anything greater than 3 cents a point was acceptable. Travel in 2017 and beyond won't be quite as nice a deal as we have experienced, but we will continue to enjoy Amtrak travel and adjust to the new AGR scheme.

Tony

 

[willem]

Perhaps some tour operator booked rooms B-E on the Chief. I assume that the bedrooms are now sold out (or only room A is left in another car). If you want to switch for another room, keep checking Amtrak to see if another room opens up, then call and ask to be switched. If you don't care, ignore this.

 

[abcnews]

We had bedroom A once - it was the only option on a Capital Limited trip, and we enjoyed the change. We discovered that we prefer the different floor plan with the bathroom door away from the sitting area. And since the room is often not booked it seemed to be in better shape.

Also, it is more private, located at the end of the car, and it is the only bedroom without the connecting sliding door to the next room. That alone is a wonderful upgrade - no rattling from the sliding door, and we could not hear our neighbor talking.

It may be slightly smaller, but there are some perks to booking bedroom A. Not sure if I will ever request Bedroom "A" but for now I'm fine with the better seating layout and location on the end of the car.

 

[City of Miami]

For these trips, anything greater than 3 cents a point was acceptable. Travel in 2017 and beyond won't be quite as nice a deal as we have experienced, but we will continue to enjoy Amtrak travel and adjust to the new AGR scheme.

Tony

My understanding is that in the new system points are valued a straight .0289, i.e. only slightly less than the 3 cents acceptable to you....so you should be fine. I know I am. I had made some reservations just to burn points and changed my mind. I'm happy that AGR gave us plenty of time to settle the new system in our minds and not make rash decisions that might have been regrettable.