Coach passengers in sleeping car rooms?

[joelkfla]

I don't have experience with the 4 in one room policies, but my idea would be to claim your children are ill behaved, prone to motion sickness with projectile vomiting, won't sit still even at night, loud screamers, list out other negative behaviors, etc. and if they are required to ride in coach with no supervision they will cause mayhem, noise, and complaints from all the other coach passengers.

If I were the conductor, I would simply say that one adult has to stay with kid(s). Remember, conductors are the bosses of the train, and have the power to kick off passengers who challenge their authority, which may occur in the middle of the night in some small hick town with no taxi or Uber service.

 

[tgstubbs1]

It looks like the rules allow 2 kids and one adult in the room. Maybe change the reservation to that, unless you foresee the adults keeping one kid each in different cars.
It's not a very long trip.

 

[Asher]

Hi,

Tomorrow I will be taking the auto train from Lorton to Sanford. It is going to be my 5th time on the train - I am a junior at UMiami who lives in the northeast. Normally I'd be in a roomette but because of the pandemic and the lower prices that come with it I decided to stay in a bedroom. For the first time I have 3 friends coincidentally also on the train, they will all be in coach however. I told them they are more than welcome to come hang out in my bedroom during the afternoon part of the journey. They won't be sleeping there but I don't know if this would be disallowed or anger the sleeping porter, especially because of the pandemic.

Plain and simple no

 

[cassie225]

What I don’t like is the conductor ok it for someone to come to my sleeper without my ok. I remember I met this lady on the Crescent, we ate together but she was a talker, I’m a talker and she out talked me. She was in coach she said and I told her I was in a sleeper, we finished eating talked a while longer and both went our separate ways, a little later I looked up and she was at my sleeper compartment, said someone told her it was ok and there she was, not wanting to be rude I invited her in and she talked non stop. She finally left and I prayed she didn’t return. Lol

 

[20th Century Rider]

It is pretty simple. A passenger holding a Coach ticket cannot just move to Sleeper without making a change in the ticket - recall the "Open Sleeper Ticket" discussion? That is the current rule. One could ask the Conductor and if they say it is OK then it is OK. But it is not OK just doing it without notifying the train crew, just because the fares happen to come out the same.

Incidentally, a gentle reminder, the site rules do restrict discussion of ways to break Amtrak rules BTW.

Exactly... because if that was allowed, then you would have parties of two making plans to share the varied accommodations while one gets away with paying much less. All transit modes are quite strict about this... airlines certainly don't allow passengers to come and sit with a friend who is paying for first class.

The higher level of service born by the transport provider is product which the customer must pay for.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Pax A is solo in a roomette (or bedroom). Pax B is solo in a coach seat. A and B connect in the lounge car, decide to hook up, and A invites B to join him or her in the sleeping compartment he or she paid for. What business is it of Amtrak's or anyone to "police" this situation? Both have paid their appropriate fares.

Maybe this was a routine phenomenon back in the 1970's but it does not seem to be very common today. On the trains I ride a typical age difference between sleeper and coach is multiple decades, and the wrong kind of invite could risk removal or arrest, so maybe it's much ado about nothing?

 

[Ryan]

Exactly... because if that was allowed, then you would have parties of two making plans to share the varied accommodations while one gets away with paying much less.

You've got it backwards. Given that the additional charge to put a second adult in the room is on the lower side of coach fares, in many (most?) cases it's cheaper to book two in a room the "right" way than it is to pay more for a higher-bucket coach fare and then try and sneak into the room.

 

[jebr]

You've got it backwards. Given that the additional charge to put a second adult in the room is on the lower side of coach fares, in many (most?) cases it's cheaper to book two in a room the "right" way than it is to pay more for a higher-bucket coach fare and then try and sneak into the room.

Given the recent changes to the rail fare portion of sleeper fares, there's likely a lot of instances where a coach ticket is cheaper than the rail fare component of a room. Rail fare equates to the third-lowest coach bucket in my recent experience - saver and lowest-bucket value fares are lower than rail fare currently. If saver tickets are available or the value fare is still at low bucket, coach is cheaper than rail fare; in my (admittedly limited) experience I've found that if I'm booking at least a few weeks out on the Empire Builder either saver's still available and/or value's still at low bucket. Even closer in I often see coach still at low bucket.

When rail fare equaled the lowest value fare bucket, I'd tend to agree that in many/most cases rail fare would be the same or cheaper than a coach ticket. But with the recent changes, I'd suspect that a majority of the time coach fare is the same or lower than rail fare. Not that it really matters in practice - if you want to go into a sleeper you can't avoid paying the rail fare, at least per policy.

 

[20th Century Rider]

You've got it backwards. Given that the additional charge to put a second adult in the room is on the lower side of coach fares, in many (most?) cases it's cheaper to book two in a room the "right" way than it is to pay more for a higher-bucket coach fare and then try and sneak into the room.

Reservations fares are situation specific... depending on the date and destination. Right now there's a promotion where the 2nd person in a roomette can travel for free depending on the included dates of the promotion. In the example below, two traveling with one in roomette and one in coach is less expensive. The difference in the example below is an additional $216 for two in the roomette, or $80 more than one coach fare and one roomette fare.

Of course you can go and check in a few minutes and it could change... the point is that reservation fares are situation specific and in constant change...

 

[jis]

I think the OP was about something way less Machiavellian than fare manipulation though.

 

[Haolenate]

Friend that used to work for Amtrak said this is a firm policy after the Bourbonnais crash - both in evacuation and also (gulp) recovery.