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I returned on Tuesday evening from a round trip to Denver on the CZ. My wife, daughter, brother, sister-in-law all drove from San Ramon to Martinez at about 7 am last Thursday, picked up my parents and had another brother drive us to the station. The CZ was on time, and we boarded our sleeping cars. I had redeemed points for two sleeping rooms and one roomette. The attendant, Dave _uhl had set up our two rooms as a suite, and my brother had his own room in anothere car.
The trip was uneventful, and beautiful. We stayed on relatively on time (get behind, make up time) all the way to Denver, where we arrived about 30 minutes behind schedule. The suite worked very well, as the lounge car was constantly packed. In fact, once the conductor reminded people that they were to "rotate" through the Lounge car. As my father is a bit unsteady on his feet, we pretty much stayed in our room, with the door open so we could view both sides of the train.
The food was pretty bland. For lunch, the burger tasted suspect one day, and good the next. The chicken salad sandwich was good, but the vegetable lasagne was terrible.
This was the first time I'd traveled in a room, as opposed to a roomette, and I appreciated the extra room, particularly on the lower bunk at night.
We enjoyed our family reunion at the Brown Palace, and on Monday morning my parents and I were back at Union Station for the return trip. This trip was just a bit different. We again had two adjoining rooms opened up, and the scenery was great. A couple different minor issues - we were late out of Denver by about an hour and a half, and lost another hour and half during the day. All in all, we ended up back at Martinez two hours behind. Still light though, so we did not mind.
Food was just as bland, except this time the sefood was trout, and had the consistency of an overdone shark steak. Terrible. We tried the Ceasar chicken salad for lunch, which was Ok. A note on service - there were two cooks and only two servers for the entire dining car. They really couldn't keep up, and accommodated by spreading out the seating times. Took a long time to put our orders in once seated, and almost impossible to get service (for such things as coffee refills) once served. We still tipped, as it was obvious they were hustling. I'd say the servers were set up to fail, with no chance to provide good service if they wanted to. In all cases on this trip, they were never rude, just harried and in a hurry. They also ran out of deserts by lunch of the first day (for us). They blamed this on a large travel group of 50, but that group was in first class, and had boarded in Chicago, so.... Amtrak had to know about them in plenty of time to stock enough food. Not a major point, but my father is 90, and lives for desert.
All in all, I enjoyed the trip, as did my wife and parents (they will likely not take any more long trips). Just wish Amtrak had enough funding to have the opportunity to provide a first class experience.
notelvis Member # 3071
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Nice report - honest but fair. I agree with you that in many cases the dining car staff has been placed in a no-win situation.......but that they have been noticeably.....nicer.....the last three years or so.
RR4me Member # 6052
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Oh one other thing we noticed on this trip we hadn't before - the "group" folks would line up early, before the first meal calls. Since we were next to the dining car, we had to close our door, and the curtain. Otherwise, we'd end up (no pun intended) with a view of someone's backside pressed up against the room door window, as they waited in line and bent to look out the window! I'd never noticed people doing that before.
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