physioprof

Yup. The station drop-down is broken like this on the train status page as well.

ibrandsguest

One oddity:

When you book a room on an overnight train, you can't select which room you want when you book the ticket online. It is so routine when booking a plane ticket to be able to pick your seat when booking that I didn't even think about it when booking a recent trip, but wouldn't it be helpful for Amtrak to add this functionality? (I am talking about roomettes/bedrooms/etc., not seats that I know aren't assigned.)

Thanks.

jackal

*New iPhone App*

I updated the Amtrak app on my iPhone last night and it has a completely revised interface that matches the new website.

The "cards" on the main homescreen are quite useful. Basically, the information you want for the day is pretty much at your fingertips as soon as you open the app. Only thing I might propose is--given how frequently I check the status of my train as it approaches the station--it might be nice to just display the actual current ETA right on the home screen, but it's an easy single tap from the home screen, so that's not at all a big complaint.

95% there to being a great app (given ARROW's limitations). The remaining 5% is very minor and hopefully will be addressed in future updates, but this is, I think, an awesome start and very polished result for what is effectively a completely new product.

For the most part, a roomette is a roomette and a bedroom is a bedroom. With the exception of bedroom A in each Superliner, which has a slightly different layout due to the cut-out required for the corridor, there's little functional difference.

I do prefer to be as close to the center of the car as possible (smoother ride due to being further from the wheels plus less noise from the doors between the cars open and closing all night, but for the most part, it isn't a big deal and likely isn't to most people.

Plus, allowing people to choose their own rooms can have adverse consequences. Consider a scenario such as this:

Five passengers book the Silver Meteor. Assume this train has six bedrooms.

Passenger #1 , Miami to Orlando, chooses bedroom A
Passenger #2 , Orlando to Savannah, chooses bedroom B
Passenger #3 , Savannah to Charleston, chooses bedroom C
Passenger #4 , Charleston to Durham, chooses bedroom D
Passenger #5 , Durham to Richmond, chooses bedroom E
Passenger #6 , Richmond to Washington, DC, chooses bedroom F

Passenger #7 comes along and wants to book a bedroom from Miami to Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the reservation system will show the train as sold out, since it doesn't see any single room as available for the whole trip, and it isn't smart enough to propose (nor would most people be interested in) moving rooms five times throughout the trip.

FWIW, I actually think it'd be best if Amtrak didn't assign rooms at all until, say, 24 hours before departure. Then the system could assign rooms in the most logical order to maximize turnover and utilization. I don't have any guesses, but it wouldn't surprise me if maximum theoretical capacity is not being reached today because room assignments prevent it.

serpens

Is that only on Superliners, or does room A have a cut-out on the Viewliners as well?

jackal

Viewliners only have two bedrooms, and the cut-out is in the accessible bedroom instead.

If you just search Google Images for "Superliner layout" and "Viewliner layout," you'll see dozens of schematics showing the layouts.

serpens

I didn't think your comment applied to Viewliners, but you did say "bedroom A in each car" rather than "bedroom A in each Superliner" and that made me wonder.

iahphx

Jeez, this new website is the classic case of redesign making a product harder to use. Not only is the new site obviously less familiar, but it's less functional. Why do companies do this?

diburning

I don't think they did this to enhance anything. Their website is a generic template site. (Bootstrap for those who want to know). It makes me wonder if they're using a new web design contractor or if it's done in-house, whether they replaced the entire team.

BrownStudent18

Personally I feel that the iPhone app is less responsive than before. It also feels like they eliminated some useful features.

diburning

The app is SLOOW! Must be an "enhancement!"

jobtraklite

Here we go again. When I clicked on "Points" for a simple SAN - LAX trip, I get

BThumme

I keep getting:
...I'm just trying to get to amtrak.com, and that's what i get - an error telling me to go to amtrak.com

jackal

I'm just getting a completely blank page when trying to load http://www.amtrak.com.

Something's definitely up.

ETA: found this link on Amtrak's Twitter page, which seems to work: https://www.amtrak.com/home. It appears that http://www.amtrak.com is redirecting to http://www.amtrak.com/home.html, which is a blank document. That level of web admin incompetence (and the fact they've been down for multiple hours) is staggering...

iahphx

I really hate the new Amtrak website, but at least my Amtrak travel needs are so simple that I can muddle my way through them. It does seem like they made some non-customer-friendly rules changes in early January (like most tickets are no longer fully refundable), but it's really hard to find those rules on their website. Seems kind of shameful to me, and if they were a private company doing this stuff, I think they might attract the ire of some gov't regulators.

BThumme

They also appear to have gotten rid of Student fares (or perhaps that was a while ago), which is a big negative to me. Greyhound/Indian Trails here in michigan is almost always faster and more on time now then Amtrak, this was one of the few things that would keep me checking amtrak. That coupled with not being able to access the site is a pretty big turnoff for me.