I'd be extremely skeptical that that's the reason.
I rode in mid-January, and that's exactly what was going on. The lounge area was staffed, and half the car was set up as a lounge.
Isn't facebook's terminology a little off? Isn't "diner lite" a euphemism for the single level car used as a diner on the Cardinal and for a while on the LSL? I thought the CL was substituting a diner-lounge (formerly know as a Cross Country Cafe) for the diner and SSL. If I recall, the D-L differs from a diner only in its configuration, not food service.
We also rode in mid January and the CCC car was staffed on both ends. The cafe side only had a few seats available for customers and did not really serve as a lounge per se. I believe the term diner-lite was not the correct term here.
I rode the CL on Jan. 28/29 and found the CCC to be perfectly adequate for the passenger load. The diner side was more than large enough for the passengers (including some from coach) who were eating meals there. The lounge side was staffed with a cafe attendant, and the cafe appeared to have all of the offerings of a typical cafe car. I rode in the lounge a bit during the morning through Indiana to get views out of both side of the train. There was plenty of lounge seating for the people who showed up, and the crew did not take up seats, at least not for an extended period of time. I'll admit that if I were traveling eastbound I would have preferred to have an SSL for the transit across the Alleghenies and the Potomac Valley, and also the "Mafia seats" in the CCC lounge made sightseeing a little difficult for those unfortunate to have to sit at those tables, but in general, I don't think the use of the CCC significantly degraded the travel experience. And we arrived in Chicago early!
I'm with you on the terminology. Call it a Diner-Lounge or CCC but they both serve/served the full dining car menu offerings or the route served. I guess the diner-lite euphemism still applies to the Cardinal. I think the D-L would make for a fully functional lounge car, just no downstairs access and a poor substitution for a SSL.
Fixing the Mafia-style seats is a big improvement, on the full-service meal side, but please remind me, the CCC only has the regular coach/dining car windows, yes? Not the windows that wrap up to the ceiling?
Yes, we did. It's beed discussed in about a half-dozen threads here.
That is correct; the CCCs are rebuilt Superliner I Diners.
So as usual Amtraks thinking is that the people who are paying full sleeper fare do not deserve the same amenities as the people who ride in different months? Another ***** in the saga of never ending price hikes while removing many of the reasons one would pay those high sleeper fares. No one at amtrak seems to understand rail passengers and the congress is by far the worst at that.
Passengers value different aspects of their trip differently.
The fact that they're open to coach passengers sort of shoots a hole in that argument as well.
