Our northbound trip in first class was excellent. The train attendants were friendly and helpful, and very polite. And the train was clean. This was the first time I have been in a Pacific Parlour Car. It was a wonderful experience. The parlour car attendant Joy Moore was helpful and friendly. It was a nice, clean place to enjoy the ride. The best part about having the parlour car in the train, is that it keeps the sleeper passengers separate from the coach passengers. Certainly there are a lot of good people who ride in coach, but there are also a lot of lower quality, rude people. The parlour car kept us away from some of the lower quality people that ride in coach. It was nice to be in the company of the higher quality, more polite, clean people.

On our trip from Portland to Emeryville, things were not as good. The car attendants were almost non-existent. They sat around and talked among themselves most of the time. The dining car had run out of several items listed on their menus. There was an extremely rude dining car waitress, who made some remarks that were completely uncalled for. I talked to the dining car steward. He told me that she was not a regular member of his crew. His crew was based in Los Angeles, and she was based in Chicago. This did not surprise me at all, since every Amtrak train I have ever traveled on in the northeastern United States has had terrible service and rude employees.

The trip from Oakland to Los Angeles was better. I would say the employees were ok, but not real good.

We found that all of the station attendants, and bus drivers were helpful and friendly. After our trip north in First Class, Amtrak has proven to me that they can provide excellent service when they have employees who care.

And I'll agree, the Parlor Car is very cool. It reminds me of the pre-Superliner days when the Starlight had real lounge cars for everyone, and they were at least as comfortable as the Parlor Car (but the attendants weren't nearly as friendly).

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Trust God, love your neighbor, and never mistake opinion for truth.
-Mr. Toy

We called Amtrak the night before we wanted to leave and they said all coaches were sold out, so we had to go with a standard bedroom from Seattle to Portland.

At that time I had no Idea that there was a Parlour Car on our train and when we got on and went to it, it was the best thing ever on Amtrak.

I drank many hot chocolates on that train.
Not to mention the Lunch andtheride was superb(we were an hour late so that gave us more time in the Parlour Car, but only 2 1/2 in Portland.)

I forgot to mention: My wife normally only barely tolerates trains. It is difficult to talk her into traveling on one, and even then, she has a lot of rules we have to follow. But things changed on this trip! Near the end of our northbound journey, she told me that this method of travel was "fabulous". She said that she would travel anywhere I wanted to go if we could travel like this. Unfortunately, we can only travel up and down the Pacific coast.

It would be nice if Amtrak would but Parlour cars on all long-distance trains. I know there has been a lot of talk on this website about the high price of sleepers, but I would gladly pay a much higher price than they charge now, if I knew the service was going to be as great as it was. This trip was truly nothing like any train trip I have taken in the past. This was like a cruise ship. My wife and I had been contemplating taking a ride on the American Orient Express. After this trip, we wondered if it really would be much better.

Unclebuck, even though it is quite unusual to take a sleeper for a short trip like you did, it sounds like you had a great experience in the Pacific Parlour Car also.