July 18, 2007
Amtrak Fiasco 2007, Part V:
"The Ugly"
By Stan Dyer
No matter who you are, what you do or what you did in the past, you only get one chance to make a first impression. For my first impression of Amtrak, I was not prepared for what would unfold and how it would be handled. What started out with high hopes and promise, quickly disintegrated into the ugly adventure I call Amtrak Fiasco 2007. Here is my first person account from start to finish.
The entire trip was planned out, booked and paid for well in advance. We even went as far as to check out Union Station ahead of time just to make certain everything would flow smoothly. When the day finally arrived, we were excited.
The RTD in Arvada is super. Call-N-Ride picked us up at our front door, drove us to the Park-N-Ride and gave us a transfer. After one more transfer, an RTD bus dropped us off just one block from Union Station and the entire ride cost only $1.50 each. It was smooth, easy, relaxing and on time. Thank you RTD!
When we arrived at Union Station, we already knew the train was three hours late. We were instructed to phone ahead of time, and we did, but agents of Amtrak told us they expected to make up the time. Since we booked a sleeper, and all meals are included in the price, Amtrak owed us dinner. They were good for it. They sent us to Dixon's on the 16 th Street Mall with a $15 limit per person and told us to bring back the receipt.
Dixon's was great, too. It was their happy hour and they had decent bottles of wine for $10 and $15 each. We had a bottle of Beaulieu Vineyards Cabernet for $15 and two veggie burgers. The whole bill was under $35 and we were still feeling good both about our trip and about Amtrak. We still had time to kill, so we went to the Tattered Cover for a while and spent the rest of the time exercising our legs for the long train ride by walking up and down the 16 th Street Mall. I had no idea there was so much going on Downtown on the Mall in the middle of the week. We almost stopped at Lannie's at the Clocktower for one of her great shows, but we were afraid we wouldn't have time. We should have stayed for the show.
When we got back to Union Station expecting to board, the trip started to fall apart. Our train, already delayed three hours, was pushed back another hour. It would be pushed back three more times before finally leaving at 1:25 a.m. the next morning. That was scheduled to leave 7:25 p.m., and was already six hours behind. Even that wasn't so bad, since we knew we had a four hour stopover in Chicago and we expected to at least make up the time there. The really bad part was having to hang out on the old, hard, wooden benches at Denver's Union Station. We couldn't really go anywhere and risk missing the train, and yet, we didn't really know when or if the train would ever arrive. There were people trying to calm and control children, other people were becoming restless and uneasy, and still others just shrugged their shoulders and waited. It looked like DIA during a snowstorm, except there was no snow and we were the only people in the city stranded.
By the time we finally boarded the train, we were sure glad we booked the sleeper. It was like waiting forever to get on a popular ride at an amusement park, but the wait was finally over. Through the fatigue, excitement set in again. We stowed our bags, and lay down to sleep hoping the worst was behind us. By the time the sun came up that morning, we were ready to forget the night before. It was nice that breakfast was on schedule even if the train wasn't. We enjoyed the continental breakfast in the dining car with fellow passengers, and, even though the oatmeal was horrible, the coffee was good and the visions of spectacular Americana zipping past the big windows reminded me why I wanted to take the train.
A big part of an Amtrak vacation is the train ride itself. Normally, it takes around 19 hours to get to Chicago from Denver, and then another 20 hours to get from Chicago to Washington, D.C. That's nearly two days to enjoy peace and quiet, to visit with fellow passengers, to see the heartland of America, and, most of all, to relax. Vacations should be relaxing. Just don't make definite plans on the other end. We had definite plans, and, while we were making the best of our train ride, our train kept falling behind and our plans kept falling apart.
As soon as we entered Iowa, the conductor informed all passengers that the train would be pulling over from time to time to allow other, on time trains to pass. Now I enjoy watching fields of corn zip by and scenes change from field to small town and back again, but I find little fascination with being parked behind a rusty, run-down farm building that reminded me more of the movie "Deliverance" than anything in America I wanted to see, and being parked there for over an hour. The continued stopping made everyone uneasy. We didn't get off the train. We just all sat there motionless wondering if that building would rust completely through, fall on the train, and cause another delay.
By lunchtime the second day, the train was so far behind that they started to run out of food. All the fruit and cheese was gone, and the only entrees left were veggie burgers and chicken sandwiches. By dinnertime the same day, all the food was completely gone. The cook improvised some kind of beef stew and gave it away, but that was it. I'm vegetarian, so I passed on the beef stew. Little did I know that the veggie burger I had for lunch that day would be the last food I would eat for over 20 hours.
Our train was scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 3:30 p.m. and we were to board the train for Washington at 7:05 p.m. the same evening. We arrived in Chicago around 1:00 a.m. the next morning and a full 10 hours late. We already cancelled the first day of our hotel in Washington and were informed that we had to pay a cancellation fee amounting to one day's stay. In Chicago, we were herded into Union Station where they were preparing to put us up in rooms. Unfortunately, no one told us which line to get in, and we ended up in the wrong lane. Many people who knew the routine were already asleep in the correct lines waiting their turns. We would not see our hotel until 3:30 a.m.
The train was nice enough to pay for cab fare to and from the hotel, buy us dinner and put us in a room for the night. Unfortunately, everything, including room service was closed that time of the morning. As for the room, we checked in at 3:30 a.m., but the checkout time was still noon. That meant we had about eight hours to clean up, sleep, make plans, get fed and check out. The relaxing part of the vacation was gone. Amtrak did book us aboard an alternate train leaving at 7:05 p.m. the next evening, but that was seven hours and five minutes after being booted out of our hotel. Amtrak also told us that the room, (not a sleeper, but a complete room), we booked for Washington was not available and they wanted to put us in coach. I guess coach is OK if that's what you planned and paid for, but the offer came with no apology and a "take it or leave it" attitude. Besides, we had no guarantee that the train to Washington would be any better than the one to Chicago. We didn't want to chance it. We decided to leave it.
The hotel we were in, the Hyatt Regency McCormick, said they couldn't keep us, and we didn't want to spend the small amount of time we had trying to find another room. We were now tired, hungry, frustrated, irritated, and way, way late. It cost us no more to cancel our entire reservation in Washington, so we did. We had a plane flight home from Washington, so we paid a little extra and changed that to a plane flight home from Chicago. We finally got something to eat at Midway Airport and took the sweet bird home to freedom. Very few times in my life have I been so happy to see anything as I was to see terra firma again at DIA in Denver. The fiasco was over.
Yes, we only get one chance to make a first impression and this was the impression Amtrak made with us. I watched a woman with special needs being booted out of her sleeper because there wasn't any room. I watched a woman traveling with small children being denied her room because there wasn't any room. I watched people putting up with what Amtrak was dishing out and thinking, "We do the rat race 50 weeks a year and we sure don't deserve to get it on vacation".
I suppose I could have flown to Washington instead of home. I suppose I could have done a number of things differently. You just can't know what a situation is like until you live it. Still, through it all, the ugliest part of the entire trip was Amtrak's refusal to acknowledge their many errors and simply apologize. The Amtrak workers were nice and apologetic, but management gave the impression that they felt everything was OK since they threw some money our way. All I got from them was a form letter saying the matter would be looked into. That was over a month ago, and not a word since. I still like the idea of a long, relaxing train ride, but this train ride was more like the hell train to crazy town. It will be a long, long time before I attempt Amtrak again, and a long, long time until the PTSD from the sound of a train whistle subsides.