I just got done booking a trip on the Auto Train for July. It ended up being a complicated mess because I tried to do 1/2 online and the rest by phone, when I probably should have just called.

Anyway, here is the situation:

There are five of us, myself, my wife, 13 year old stepson, 4 year old daughter and 20 month old son. I wanted to book a family bedroom and a roomette, even though I know that the family bedroom would fit up to five people. I figured the roomette would give the 13 year old a chance to get away from the little ones for a while if he wanted, plus it was fairly inexpensive for the roomette.

Anyway, I booked the family room and all the kids online using my own AGR number. I was then going to reserve the roomette online using my wife's AGR number. Alas, I forgot you need a vehicle to travel on Auto Train!!! Since the Van was booked under my name, I couldn't book my wife. So, I called the Select reservations line and after some attempts to book a closer roomette, the nice lady completed my reservation, which now shows the Family Room, the Van, the roomette, and four of us. (my son doesn't show up because he was under 2.)

What I now want to know is how the points for this are going to work. I know I will get points for my fare and the bedroom. Do I also get points for the Van? Also, how can I get the points for the roomette for my wife? Do I need to call reservations back? The vehicle requirement is what made this so challenging. Any other LD train and I could have just done two separate reservations.

Thanks in advance for your help.

You will get points for the Family room, the van's fare, and your railfare. If, and this is important, your wife is listed on the reservation as the second person then she should get points for the roomette and her railfare, assuming that you provided her AGR number. But you have to have provided her AGR number if you want her to get the points. So if you didn't do that, then yes, it's time for another phone call to AGR.

Don't worry if the ticket actually shows her occupying the room, the attendant won't care who occupies which rooms, again assuming that you're all in the same car. If you landed the roomette in a different car, that could be a problem. So if you didn't already confirm this, make sure that you have both rooms in the same car and I would make sure that you got a room number in the 11-14 range, which means that you have a roomette downstairs by the family room.

And yes, since you needed two different types of rooms, the only way you could have booked this reservation easily was by phone.

It was probably a good idea to get the second room, because unless your 13 year old son is very short, he'd probably be rather cramped in the child sized bed.

Thanks for the response. I didn't have my wife's AGR number at the time of reservation, so I do need to call back and add that. I did make sure we were in the same car, however. We have roomette 11.

Of course, after further consideration, I am wondering if the two bedroom suite option would be better than the family room/roomette setup. Any opinions?

Well the two bedroom suite would get you two private bathrooms, and it would certainly accomodate your family at this point in time based upon the ages of your kids. It would also give you more space to spread out a bit, and allow you to keep better tabs on everyone.

On the other hand it might drive up your costs, and it takes away the independance that you were thinking of giving to your older son. Additionally your four year old might enjoy have a bunk that's her size, not to mention being able to get the top bunk. In a bedroom, I think that safety strap may not allow her to occupy the upper bunk, unless she's very tall for her age. If she's more typical in height, then there is a chance that the strap would not keep her from rolling out of the bunk.

Only you can decide what works best for you and what you are most comfortable with.

After pondering this a little, I switched to the two bedroom suite. Due to early booking, the cost was only $6 more for more connected space and the private bathrooms. Plus, I think being on the upper level of the car will be better. We lost the window both sides of the train, but there is the lounge for that if necessary.

Thanks for the input.

Well if you keep the curtain on the doors open, then you'll still be able to look out the window across the hall. And if you see anything really interesting, you can always step out into the hall to look out those windows.

It's really only the roomettes that don't have a view out of both sides of the train, especially if your neighbor closes their curtain something that you can't control.

And then yes, there is always the lounge.

Besides, by the time you spend some time in the lounge for the departure snacks, eat dinner in the diner, you won't have that much more time left for seeing things anyhow before it's dark.

Yeah, I thought of that too. With the activities and dinner, we won't be spending that much time in the room before dark.

The other advantage is being able to put the little one to bed in one room and us being in the other so we don't disturb him.