Amtrak's "troubles" are not thoroughly likely to come to complete fruition so much as they're likely to make Amtrak re-assess their situation.

Guest Rewards and the Acela trains show a large amount of new and better thinking.

as for MBNA, i love them, and they allowed me to open a second account on top of my current LL Bean account so as to lose neither feature set. their CS is a little cloying sometimes, but very good, and the 1:1/no annual fee thing is Very Good.