Surfliner reservations and Thanksgiving

[texline]

My wife and I are taking Amtrak back from Irvine to Emeryville on November 26th. We haven't had a chance to ride the Surfliner so I thought great, we can ride it to LA to catch the CS. Booked 763 and we were set.

I noticed last week on my saved trips that there was a notice "segment cancelled". The 763 was cancelled. I called Amtrak. A very nice lady explained that the 763 was still running, you can't have an unreserved seat. I was puzzled and said there was no notice when I booked and there were no options for a coach reserved. She said it wasn't hard to fix and now I have an updated ticket that says coach reserved seats.

I hadn't run into this before. I thought maybe an email or something to warn us about the the reserved seats so I am glad I noticed it on my app.

I am curious why they would list it as a cancelled segment? Why did they only offer unreserved seats when booking? Does the Amtrak app have an alert for reservation changes?

First time booking a multi segment during a holiday period. Learning new things.

Thanks.

Tim

 

[the_traveler]

I really don't know the answer. There are only 4 routes in the country that are unreserved, all others are reserved all the time.these 4 are reserved each holiday period. Perhaps it was an oversight.

 

[bmjhagen9426]

The Capitols have never operated as a reserved basis, even during the holiday period, AFAIK, with the exception being the 2016 Super Bowl. The Hiawathas normally are unreserved (If they are, it is a new changes, but I think it is for Thanksgiving only). The Keystones are reserved both for Thanksgiving and Xmas. The Surfliners are normally only reserved for Thanksgiving, but unsure if they will be reserved for Xmas.

 

[BCL]

I don't recall Capitol Corridor ever being reserved. I didn't take it around the time of the Super Bowl, so I don't know how that went down.

I've never taken the Surfliner myself, but I did help a friend book it a couple of years ago Irvine to Emeryville round-trip around Thanksgiving. The price shot up, and there were reserved bus segments - Santa Barbara to Emeryville, and Bakersfield to LAUS. I did the reservation weeks in advance, and there was no unreserved segment. The bus into LAUS was late, and an Amtrak employee made sure they were allowed on the next Surfliner to Irvine.

Sounds to me as if there was some sort of programming issue where someone made a mistake in setting the schedule to unreserved. I guess the fix was to cancel and tell the rider to rebook.