are the sleeper amenities missed?

[yarrow]

will be taking my 1st sleeper trip(spk-tri and return)since the amenities and dining car cuts of last spring. for those who have traveled, especially the cs, pre and post cuts what kind of difference did it make to your trip? thanks

 

[Shanghai]

I haven't noticed any difference in the sleeper. The dining car has plastic flowers - they look nice.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

I miss the Cranberry Juice as the Orange Juice tastes like crap. Though the Apple Juice is passable and in an Emergency will mix out with Vodka.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Some of the cuts are slowly being restored on some routes! The Wine Tasting on the CS in the PPC is available for a fee (provide your own cheese) and there have been reports of flowers showing up in the diners, Amchocolates in the LAX Metro Lounge,etc.

The bad news is the standardization of the LD Menus in the Diners meaning fewer choices available as well as the hit or miss service on juice, coffee, ice etc. In the sleepers!

It seems that its luck of the draw, if you get good OBS you are treated like a First Class Passenger, if you have poor ones (lazy) or by the book control freaks you're just another face in the crowd who is an imposition on the OBS even though you paid big money to ride in a Sleeper!

Please let us know what you experience, lots of us will be on various LD Trains to/from the Gathering so we should have some pretty good info by the time we reach home after the Gathering!

 

[Bob Dylan]

I miss the Cranberry Juice as the Orange Juice tastes like crap. Though the Apple Juice is passable and in an Emergency will mix out with Vodka.

True this, good Servers in the Diner may take pity on we Cranberry Juice fanciers and ease our pain with a little to go present! Even good Vodka can't make that crappy Orange Juice drinkable!

 

[TinCan782]

Our recent trip on the CS..the SCA defied the rules and made a second pot of coffee each day!

Every time we asked for water, we got two or more bottles. Didn't have to get up and go the the coffee pot to retrieve them myself!

As far as the "Amenities Kit" in sleeper, only received one before the "cutback"! It was more of a surprise to receive it than to really miss it.

Didn't miss the flowers in the dinning car...didn't really notice them before!

 

[JayMadison]

I miss the Cranberry Juice as the Orange Juice tastes like crap. Though the Apple Juice is passable and in an Emergency will mix out with Vodka.

True this, good Servers in the Diner may take pity on we Cranberry Juice fanciers and ease our pain with a little to go present! Even good Vodka can't make that crappy Orange Juice drinkable!

On the Cardinal last month they had cranberry juice in the sleepers.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

About standardization of diner menus, do they still rotate every few months?

 

[SarahZ]

I'm glad the flowers are gone (more space on the tables), and I don't drink cranberry juice, so I don't "miss" it. I can understand why others would miss it, though. It's a good cocktail mixer.

I also don't drink coffee after lunch, so it doesn't bother me to have it gone after 11. I never read the newspapers, and asking the SCA for another bottle of water is no big deal.

I haven't traveled the EB or CS, so I haven't had an opportunity to "miss" the champagne, wine and cheese tasting, etc.

All in all, my last few trips haven't seemed out of the ordinary, other than the flowers being gone. I always thought they were kind of cheesy anyway. The dining car seems more "clean" now.

 

[Trainmans daughter]

The first flowers my granddaughter ever recieved from a man were these flowers from our SCA on our frist train trip. Lawrence had been so good to her on the CZ, and when we were about to arrive in Chicago, he came to our room (we had the family room) and presented her with a sweet bouquet of carmations from the diner. She was amazed by this, and carefully attended to them as we boarded the CL for the rest of our journey. She was only 7 at the time, and still remembers this gift 5 years later. So yes, I miss the flowers.

 

[chakk]

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

 

[prech786]

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

FYI

I think that's the shorter of the two lower berths in a Superliner Family Bedroom.

 

[neroden]

The reduced options on the dining car menu are truly annoying for those of us who used to order the missing options; I can't say that I remember any of the other amenities.

 

[andersone]

I missed the French Toast,,,

We were down in the H room so didn't go after coffee

Great SCA's brought us everything else,,,,

Did it impact our trip? Honestly no,,,

but as things slip away,,,,

I am not prepared to do my own dishes on an LD trip

 

[SarahZ]

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

She said they were in the Family Room.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

FYI

I think that's the shorter of the two lower berths in a Superliner Family Bedroom.

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

She said they were in the Family Room.

when we were about to arrive in Chicago, he came to our room (we had the family room) and presented her with a sweet bouquet of carmations from the diner. She was amazed by this, and carefully attended to them as we boarded the CL for the rest of our journey

I believe it's on the CL. She does not say if they were in the family room or a roomette on the CL.

 

[amamba]

I personally missed the cranberry juice during my cross country trip this year. As mentioned by the others, that orange juice is crap.

However, my solution was to order diet sierra mist at lunch and dinner and then not drink it. I would bring the can back to my sleeper and then mix with vodka.

But I was still salty about missing out on the cranberry juice. :help:

 

[jis]

Dunno, nothing that I regularly used has been found missing yet. Which may be more of a commentary on what I regularly used than what is or is not missing.

 

[SarahZ]

I personally missed the cranberry juice during my cross country trip this year. As mentioned by the others, that orange juice is crap.

However, my solution was to order diet sierra mist at lunch and dinner and then not drink it. I would bring the can back to my sleeper and then mix with vodka.

But I was still salty about missing out on the cranberry juice. :help:

Yeah, the orange juice is awful. I had it at breakfast, and it was disgusting.

 

[Trainmans daughter]

Very nice of grandma to give her granddaughter the lower berth in a Superliner roomette.

FYI

I think that's the shorter of the two lower berths in a Superliner Family Bedroom.

Yep. Lower bunk in the Family Bedroom.

 

[Ispolkom]

I miss the greater variety of specials in the dining car. If you are a regular traveler on Amtrak, the same few meal choices can become monotonous. I miss the cranberry juice, but that was already hit or miss, so I had already started to bring a can or two of it in the Liquor Purse. I never liked the sparkling wine served, so I always brought our own.

 

[PRae_Train]

I do miss the entree salad at lunch and fewer options on the menus.

As I mentioned in another thread, with 3 nights on 2 trains, to have the exact same limited options every day is just wrong.

 

[Dakota 400]

Since Amtrak serves Pepsi products, I thought the OJ was Topicana. It is a Pepsico brand.

 

[trainman74]

Since Amtrak serves Pepsi products, I thought the OJ was Topicana. It is a Pepsico brand.

It's definitely not Tropicana -- the OJ available in the sleeping cars is some "off" brand that comes in a box and doesn't require refrigeration.

 

[JayPea]

I didn't miss much of anything when I took my two trips this year. Coffee service was the way it's always been. Don't care about juice; I'd drink rat poison before I drank cranberry juice. I never really did care one way or the other about flowers. One thing I don't care for is the limited options in the dining car. The same menu day after day does get tedious. And I like diet Sierra Mist; it was nowhere to be seen. For the most part I could care less about the newspapers. Mostly they consisted of USA Today, which is a waste of newsprint as far as I'm concerned. Now I did like some of the local papers, which in my experience were getting fewer and farther between anyway. Newspapers like the Klamath Falls Herald and News were a refreshing change from reading about beheadings, bombings, war, and any other bad news you can think of. I enjoyed reading about Mrs. Harriet Smedley winning the blue ribbon for her prize chyrsanthemums at the county fair or the Wayne's Building Supply Dodgers winning the local Little League championship or from the police blotter reading about a call to 1313 Mockingbird Lane for a report of dogs tipping over garbage cans.

Beyond that, not much difference to me.