To follow up on my AT trip, RT, with family. I think the word 'Cluster-Fu%#" was INVENTED for what now passes for meal service on the AT.
Gawd I have empathy for the crew. Those miserable *******s who came up with "plan" of dumping a lounge-car ought to be sent to a Siberian Re-Education camp.
Four meals in the diner, two dinner, two "breakfast". (Even though over the PA, the staff was encoraging sleeper pax to "walk to the lounge to get your breakfast, same meal......opps, strike that, lounge is full, we'll make another announcement in ten-fifteen minutes..."
So, had the chance to interact with four other travelers, three had taken AT, multiple times, one was first trip.
ALL complained of the dinning "experience". Granted, all received "The" email, so may be on the lookout, but the comments were NOT railfan oriented. The comments were, "it worked so well, generally, b4, WHY did they change it? Gobs of pax standing in ends of diner for breakfast, only to be told, "Can't wait there, we'll make an announcement..."
Then pax return to their rooms, only to hear, "This announcement is for the sleeper car passengers, the sleeper Car passengers only! There is now room in the sleeper diner please make your way to the dining car. sleeper car passengers only! So the passengers make a quick about-face and literally walk-run back to the diner. I experienced this first hand as I was almost trampled by three young kids from the room adjacent to mine....
Only to be followed moments later by another announcement over the public address system, "This announcement is for coach passengers, coach passengers only, coach passengers there is now room in the coach diner for breakfast, please make your way to the coach diner, coach passengers only..."
This PA-Battle goes on ALL MORNING.... So nice to hear....
The meals for dinner were good. Steak, chicken, veggue lasagna. Of course the LSA-Diner now needs to sell and make change for wine several times, during a dinner seating, which precludes that person from actually assisting the service attendants in the diner as much as they could.... I spoke with a SA-Diner, and he said it is not uncommon for the crew in the diner to serve their last meal and close the diner well after midnight. And of course working that late, it almost prohibits the crew from getting any kind of meal and they go to bed hungry.
I took a walk through the diner during my meal, and noticed that well over half of the salads that were on the tables seemed to of been "touched" or at least partially consumed.
There was a mixture of China and plastic-ware used during the meal service. It seems as though once all the china and flatware is used it is not cleaned during the meal service in the dishwashers in the kitchen below. It seems as though once all the China is dirty, everything reverts to plastic and four-and-one plastic utensils.
If you count the four other parties that I dined with at both dinner and breakfast, round trip, and include myself and my family, it was almost 100% that AutoTrain would NOT be an option for future travel to Florida again. How sad. Amtrak truly has "killed the goose that laid the golden egg".
Our train attendant-sleeper on the way down, Dexter, seemed very preoccupied and didn't really want to interact with us much. He got 10 bucks. Our train attendant-sleeper on the northbound run, even though we were almost 3 hours late departing, was fabulous. A young African-American female whose first name started with the letter D, just cannot recall her name right now. She has been working for Amtrak on the autotrain for about 3 1/2 years she got 20 bucks.
In general the train attendant-sleeper staff were very, very, preoccupied with bringing meals to passengers in their rooms. I have never seen that kind of traffic in the hallways with meals being delivered to rooms on any train I have ever been on before. Amtrak will have to increase the par level of white paper bags in the future, or they may run out.....
