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I have read a thread or two about the dinner running out of food or not having too many people wanting to eat there so some get turned away. I am taking my first overnight trip Sunset Ltd in June from NOL-LAX. If I have a sleeper, is there a priority for us or is it still first come first serve?
Gilbert B Norman Member # 1541
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Sleeper passengers come first; you have already paid them for your chow.
RR4me Member # 6052
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I do think you get first choice of seating times, but regardless, they sometimes run out of some food. On our last trip on the Cal Zephyr, going from Denver to MArtinez, they ran out of ice cream for dessert that night (the trains' second night), and had only hamburgers and salads for lunch the next day.
smitty195 Member # 5102
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The only priority you get as a sleeping car passenger in the diner (one "n", not two) is when they come around and take dinner reservations. They come through the sleepers first, then coach, and then the lounge car is last. Some crews take reservations for lunch, but not all of them. Breakfast is always first come/first served. When the diner gets full for breakfast, they take down your name and then call you over the PA when a seat is available. Being a sleeping car passenger has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you get seated faster than anyone else.
And yes, Amtrak runs out of menu items ALL THE TIME. It is a common occurrence. They don't run out of food completely---but they will tell you that they don't have certain items available. One of my big pet peeves with Amtrak.....I don't understand why they can't figure this out. (Actually, sometimes they DO have it figured out, but the chef refuses to open a new box because it's too much work, so they just tell passengers that they ran out).
ScottC4746 Member # 3323
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"(Actually, sometimes they DO have it figured out, but the chef refuses to open a new box because it's too much work, so they just tell passengers that they ran out). " Actually Smitty, I think it goes back to a post I saw on another thread...depends on the crew you get.
smitty195 Member # 5102
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Yes, the on-board crews at Amtrak vary in extremes from very good to very bad. It completely depends on who you get, and that is a shame.
TwinStarRocket Member # 2142
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There was an excellent crew on the Southwest Chief who had their own website ( www.crewten.com )and were known for their friendliness and outstanding service. A few of them I recognized from trips I had taken, and they were among the best. It is too bad such enthusiasm is not encouraged by Amtrak. One of them told me that sometimes they were in trouble with management for doing customer service tasks that were not "by the book".
sojourner Member # 3134
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I had my worst crew last year on the SW Chief! Good sleeping attendant but very unpleasant dining car people, conductors, snack bar attendant. I was surprised!
I was delighted with the service on the FL trains last year (I went twice). In years past those weren't so good; last year, just lovely, dining car & sleeper attendants.
Re food running out: Seems like by the second day, they ALWAYS run out of the Haagen Daaz ice cream. It's a fairly new addition and I think they don't have enough freezer space for as much as gets ordered--it's also cheaper than the other desserts (it's small) so the cash-paying customers order it for dessert.
Re who gets served: sleepers first, then longer-distance passengers. When I went NYC to Raleigh NC in coach last year on one of the FL trains, I could not eat in the diner, they didn't have enough room and so didn't take shorter-distance travelers. They would have brought me a meal at my seat, but since I don't care about the food, just the diner experience, I passed and ate some cookies & bananas I had.
Henry Kisor Member # 4776
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A modest proposal: After each one of us takes a long-distance trip on Amtrak, we could post a report in a dedicated thread giving star ratings to the following:
1. The service given by the sleeper or coach attendant.
2. The attitude of same.
3. The quality of the meals in the dining car and the food in the lounge car.
4. The service given by the waiters and lounge car attendant.
5. The attitude of same.
6. The efficiency and attitude of the conductors.
7. The over-all experience of the trip, followed by specific remarks.
(I was thinking of an 8. The on-time experience of the trip, but that is so often out of Amtrak's hands that it might be unfair.)
My wife and I are heading for Glenwood Springs from Chicago on No. 5 Friday, and I'll start the thread rolling -- unless someone else beats me to it.
mr williams Member # 1928
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quote:Originally posted by sojourner: I had my worst crew last year on the SW Chief! Good sleeping attendant but very unpleasant dining car people, conductors, snack bar attendant. I was surprised!
A belated Happy New Year from England where we are suffering record low temperatures at the moment (it fell to just 8f in the South of England last night). I must have had the same crew as you when I took the SWC, excellent sleeper attendant (Simon) but the diner....well....forgive the trip down memory lane, but I dug out my posting about the diner crew in my travelogue so let's go back to September 2003 and relive the moment.....
"The restaurant car. Oh boy. I was tempted to put this up as a separate posting as I thought it might detract from the rest of the story. Look, let me make one thing clear: I am very thick-skinned, and nothing I am going to tell you about here ruined my life or spoilt my day. However, there were many travellers who were absolutely appalled. I have rarely seen such an unprofessional, incompetent SHAMBLES in all my life and I assure you that none of this is exaggeration or invention. OK, here we go, dinner on the first night: I walk into the diner and am greeted by a young lady who asks me “Sleeper or Coach”. Now she can see that I’ve just come from the direction of the sleepers so she shouldn’t really need to ask but we’ll let that go. I was shown to my table, where I was sharing with three middle-aged ladies from Coach. I’ll tell you more about them when we get back to the main part of the story, but let’s get the restaurant thing out of the way first. We studied the menu…and studied it and studied it….it was a full twenty minutes before the waiter came to take our order and two other tables could be heard grumbling that they had waited even longer. Dinner companion number 1 ordered the steak, number 2 the salmon …“sorry, there’s no salmon”. He didn’t mean “there’s none left”, but “salmon isn’t on the menu”. The waiter and customer both looked baffled, then the waiter realised that she had been given the wrong menu. He apologised: the young lady who had given out the menus (and who had asked me if I was sleeper or coach) was a trainee, and so he fetched the correct menu. Number 3 ordered the Teriyaki…”sorry, you’ve got the wrong menu as well”. Fortunately, my chicken was on the right menu. But when, from the table behind, we heard “excuse me, I ordered salmon, not steak” it was obvious that things weren’t going well generally and this was just the start of it. On my table number 1’s meal arrived with mash instead of baked potato, number 2 was brought the wrong meal entirely, number three got the wrong drink, number 2 and myself got the wrong dessert. Of course, for every wrong item that came to us the “right” one was becoming a “wrong” item at another table, and this was going on throughout the carriage. Number 2 was brought the wrong check, number 1’s check was marked as “paid” - even though the trainee forgot to take the money with her!! – and two people had their wine sent flying as the train went through a horrendously bumpy stretch of track. After the meal I wandered through to the lounge car where the train manager was having his ear bent by a queue of people wanting to complain about the restaurant service. When I went back the other way about half an hour later the restaurant manager and the trainee were sitting away from the other staff and from the look on her face it was clear that he was having more than a quiet word with her, but she couldn’t take all the blame as with one honourable exception all of them seemed to be just as incompetent. It had not been a good night for the restaurant staff, as could be seen by the negligible amount of tips that were left.
Breakfast the next morning…”sleeper or coach?”…the menus were correct this time but breakfast companion number one got the wrong meal, number 2 got coffee not tea, I was brought pancakes when I had ordered eggs and a gentleman two tables down blew his top when he was brought the wrong item for a second time and could be heard complaining loudly that he’d had enough of the poor service the night before. At lunch I was shown to the “wrong table” and about two minutes later was asked to move, number one was brought the wrong meal, I got the wrong drink, 1,2 and myself all got the wrong dessert, number 3 got no dessert at all. When number one asked for her check they couldn’t find it. Every table was having the same problems. I started to feel sorry for the trainee as a couple of the female coach attendants (who were clearly more experienced and knew what they were doing) had been drafted in to help but it was obvious that they weren’t happy with the situation. I saw one of them quite forcibly push the trainee into the vestibule at the end of the carriage and give her a mouthful of abuse after yet another cock-up. One of my dinner companions from the night before stopped at my table and asked if the service had improved since the previous evening, as hers had got worse. I had to disappoint her. Dinner on the second evening and light was dawning - I promise you I’m not making this up – “sleeper or coach?…oh, if you’ve come from that direction you must be a sleeping car passenger….I shouldn’t need to ask, really, should I?”. I plead the 5th at this point. Dinner was surprisingly uneventful, as we all got the right items, and I was hoping for a clear round but….no, you know something’s coming, don’t you….my tablemates were three members of the same family from Coach who paid by credit card. The father paid the check, signed his receipt, and we were just saying our goodbyes a few minutes later when trainee comes along with a check and a credit card in her hand, plonks them on the table and asks the father “if you can just sign here, please”. It wasn’t his check or his credit card. Even given everything that had gone on before it could be put down to an innocent mistake, but the credit card had the customer’s PHOTOGRAPH on it, and it clearly belonged to somebody who was at least 20 years younger and didn’t look at all like him!
I’m sorry to say that I can only put the blame on one person and one person alone – the restaurant manager. When I took the CZ last year the restaurant manager had been a perfectly civil, but somewhat dour man, but he ran the meal service with the planning of a military operation. He served just as many tables as his staff, who clearly respected him, he saw everything that was going on, was on the spot to put things right on the rare occasions that anything went amiss and I remember writing in my travelogue how impressed I was that so many people could be fed so quickly and efficiently. On the SWC, however, the restaurant manager spent every mealtime sitting at the end table chatting. I didn’t see him serve once, and he was seemingly oblivious to the chaos going on around him unless somebody went up to him to complain, when he made all the right noises, but as soon as they were gone he sat back down again without doing anything! To make matters worse he would insist on going on the public address at least eight or ten times during the journey introducing the dining-car crew as if he was reading the credits at the end of a television or radio show. Come to think of it, a career in light entertainment might have suited him as I heard more than one passenger describe him as “a complete clown”.
Keeping him company in the muppet stakes was the lounge car attendant. Last year on the CZ the attendant opened up from 6.00am until midnight, and took just 3 x 30 minute breaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He was a real character, was hugely popular, understood what serving the public was supposed to be about, and his tips jars was almost exploding it was so full. This time, however, the attendant opened when he felt like it and disappeared for hours at a time. He was closed for at least an hour on the first evening, on the second afternoon he was shut from 3.00 until about 5.45, and closed again from 7.40 until 9.10, closing for the night at 10.30, and only putting on one movie in the whole evening. This, of course, was when Coach was almost full. Several passengers had complained to the train manager about him, and I heard her ask him why he was closing early and only showing one film: “well, there’s a time change, and I’ve got to clear up, and if people are down here they’ll want to buy things…” er – can you run that one past me again – if people are down here they’ll want to buy things??? ….duh!! … that’s the idea, stoopid!! I’m sorry, but he really was Mr Work-to-rule, and would have been more at home in France than America when it came to customer service.
But as I say, my life wasn’t ruined, I am the type to keep my blood pressure under control, and when it did arrive the food was excellent, but a number of other travellers were not at all impressed. To be fair to them, all their complaints were justified and if you are going to spend up to 43 hours on a train the food and drink service has to be up to scratch."
Wow, was that really more than 5 years ago.....
Konstantin Member # 18
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The diner does run out of food often. You must be prepared to fend for yourself.
I rode with Crew Ten one time, and they were excellent. Alvin Lincoln was part of Crew Ten. I first met him on the Sunset Limited before he was part of Crew Ten, then I met him again on the Southwest Chief as part of Crew Ten. I always wondered what happened to him. He was a good guy. If every Amtrak employee were like them, Amtrak would be renowned for quality service.
ScottC4746 Member # 3323
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quote:Originally posted by Konstantin: The diner does run out of food often. You must be prepared to fend for yourself.
I rode with Crew Ten one time, and they were excellent. Alvin Lincoln was part of Crew Ten. I first met him on the Sunset Limited before he was part of Crew Ten, then I met him again on the Southwest Chief as part of Crew Ten. I always wondered what happened to him. He was a good guy. If every Amtrak employee were like them, Amtrak would be renowned for quality service.
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