Two zone sleeper award...Props to Amtrak!
 

Just wanted to share the warm fuzzy feeling I have this morning after once again redeeming 20,000 AGR points for a two zone award from Emeryville to New Orleans via Chicago & the Empire Builder.

I just find it amazing that for less points than a standard domestic airline award ticket, I will spend 4 nights in my own private sleeper, all meals included on a ticket that would of cost nearly $900.00 to purchase.

I think next year I'm gonna go for broke & do a three zone, family bedroom award & enjoy the view from both sides of the train.

^ Amtrak! :D

Yes! I'm currently in DC, on day two of a four-night two-zone roomette award Birmingham-Emeryville on the Crescent, Capitol Limited, and California Zephyr. It's a value of over $1,200! Warm and fuzzy, indeed. :D ^

Sleeper award zone question
 

Just checking on the number of zones and rules on your Birmingham Emeryville Guest reward sleeper trip. I though all travel in a two zone reward had to be within the two zones. By your routing - The Cresent to the Capital to the Zepher you went into zone three and changed trains in Washington. Wouldn't that be a three zone reward? It could be done Birmingham to NOLA to Chicago to Emeryville as a 2 zone. Maybe there's a problem with the conection at NOLA and they allow an eception?

It could be I got the rules wrong and going into an additional zone to make a conection is OK as long as the origionation and destination are with in this case 2 zones. Want to know for my future trips.

I just got back from a wonderful Cincinnati-Chicago-Portland-Martinez-Arcadia CA (Bus) trip. For 30,000 points and 4 days it is the best value going. I'll never purchase an upgrade on the plane but the 2 zone sleeper awards are a good value.

Thanks,

Sassy!

AGR doesn't really publish much information in their T&Cs, etc. on valid award routing. However, my experience (limited) has been that only the starting and ending zones are relevant for points calculation for routings that come up in Arrow/online.

There are a number of folks on this board who have a lot more experience than I in redeeming sleeper awards, so maybe someone can give a more definitive answer.

This particular trip by GoAmtrak was discussed in another thread.

Due to the connection in NOL, the only valid routing (to show up on the computer) between Birmingham and Emeryville is via Washington! Thus for a 2-zone award (in this case), you get to travel in the 3rd zone! :D

Thanks for the information on the exception made to the routing rules due to the routing problems currently via NOL.

Sassy!

I'm not sure how this works. Can someone explain to me the routing/ connection problem in NOL?

I'm in Florida and would like to travel to the West Coast using a 2-zone roomette. You can email me offline as well.

Thanks.

Keep in mind that the reason for the "free" zone is that, due to no fault of the person attempting to redeem the points, there is no valid routing completely within two zones. There's no secret to this.

I was recently checking on possibly iteneraries for a trip from Atlanta (the divider between two zones) and Seatle. At the time, the only valid routing was through Washington, DC. This would still only be a two-zone award, despite crossing the entire country, due to the routing rules.

You can use the Amtrak "Routes" page to search for routings. That should give you an idea of the Amtrak routings between two city pairs.

The connection problem using NOL is that the southbound Crescent arrives in NOL in the evening and the westbound SL departs in the morning - thus the valid connnection for those departing from (say) Birmingham is via Washington (Zone 3)! :D Or the otherway, the eastbound SL arrives in the evening and the Crescent departs in the morning.

Since you live in FL, the only way that this could work is if you board in Pensacola. But there are 2 problems with that - #1) the SL is discontinued temporarily east of NOL, and #2) if the SL were operating, it would run through NOL, so there would be no connection to make! :mad:

As it is now, if you were to depart from JAX or ORL, it would be a straight 3 zone award. :( The only way you may get a 2 zone award to the west (via Washington) is to travel and start possibly in ATL, ATN or BHM. :D

Is there a comprehensive list of Sleeper routes somewhere? Searching amtrak.com didn't yield results.

Are sleeper compartments (is that the right term?) standard across the system?

There are 2 types of sleeper cars on Amtrak - single level cars and Superliner (bi-level) cars. All trains east of Chicago and New Orleans (except the Capitol Limited and the Auto Train) use the single level cars. All other trains use Superliner equipment.

You can find a description of each type on amtrak.com.

Yes. All single level cars are the same (all roomettes are the same and all bedrooms are the same) and all Superliner cars are the same (comparing the same type of accomodations).

The fourteen long-distance routes that have overnight schedules are the trains that offer sleepers. These are the core of the "national network" (i.e. they comprise most of the lines you see on an Amtrak route map) and are listed towards the bottom of http://www.saveamtrak.org/. The only overnight trains that don't have a sleeper (but used to) are Regionals 66 and 67 between Boston and Washington.

Bump

I just reserved a 2 zone roomette award from Birmingham to Portland for 20,000 points - via WAS, CHI (via the CZ ^) and SAC! :D And I also reserved a 2 zone bedroom award from PDX to BHM for 30,000 points - via SEA, CHI (via the EB ^) and WAS! :D

So for 50,000 points, I am going coast to coast round trip! :D

Sounds like a very nice trip. Although I do hope that you make your connection in SAC, as the CZ is notoriously late. And depending on just how soon your trip is, the loss of the train bridge northeast of SAC isn't likely to help things out either.