Is the Cross-Country Amtrak Sleeper Train Worth it?

Last Updated: January 17, 2025

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Our Review of an Amtrak Sleeper

Recently, we took a cross-country Amtrak journey from Baltimore to Los Angeles in a sleeper-bedroom. Since our preferred method of travel is trains around the world, we wanted to add this to our bucket list of experiences to see our home country from the vantage point of an Amtrak Superliner.

It did not go as planned, unlike our recent experience on the Amtrak Auto Train. On that trip we saw the best Amtrak has to offer, but on this four-day journey, we saw the worst. So, today, we’re going to tell you how it all went wrong and give you an honest review of our experience. So, let’s go.

Amtrak Northeast Regional from Baltimore to Washington, DC

To get to LA from Baltimore, we were required to take three different trains, although we booked it as one route. Since our daughter lives near Baltimore, we first boarded the Northeast Regional to Washington, DC. This section was uneventful; however, our train was late. As we approached the train station, we started getting alerts that the train was behind schedule, so when we arrived, we asked to board an earlier train, and the attendant rebooked us. He said it was no problem since we had a connection to make. He remarked, you’re spending a lot to get to LA. On this short leg, we traveled in business class, but coach would have been fine too.

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Cost Breakdown of our Amtrak Sleeper Trip

• Baltimore to Washington DC (Business Class for 2) was $60.
• Washington DC to Chicago (Bedroom for 2) was $1441.
• Chicago to Los Angeles (Bedroom for 2) was $3169.
• The grand total for all three legs for both of us was $4670.

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Our curiosity of booking an Amtrak first-class experience all the way across the US intrigued us, so we booked the bedroom which included a private bathroom. This ticket allowed us to visit the lounge in DC and again in Chicago. It is our understanding that these lounges have been updated, and we thought they were all beautifully decorated. It was like an airport lounge, except it didn’t have any fresh food besides some bananas and all the snacks were prepackaged. Overall, this experience was nice, and we then boarded the train.

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Amtrak train from Washington DC to Chicago (now Floridian)

The second leg of this journey was from Washington, DC to Chicago. This line was formerly called the Capitol Limited, but recently, it was changed to the Floridian. Amtrak announced recently that you can now travel direct between Miami and Chicago. We, obviously, hopped on midway and continued a train that had left Miami the day before.

Our Amtrak Nightmare

This is where EVERYTHING went wrong. When we boarded, we pointed out that our cabin hadn’t been cleaned and our attendant told us that the toilet was out of order in our cabin. Mind you, this was the reason we booked this room was for the bathroom. We had recently taken the Amtrak Auto Train to Florida, and we booked a Roomette, which didn’t have a bathroom, so we knew we wanted to have a bathroom as we crossed the country.

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What we soon discovered in our questioning is that two first-class cars were without toilets because the tanks hadn’t been dumped.  In order to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night, we were told we should walk to the other side of our car, walk through the dining car, through the café car, and to the coach car where we could use their toilets. This is quite a journey in the middle of the night, and multiple visits seemed like an extreme. This was not what we paid for!

Amtrak Customer Service

We asked about the possibility to move, and there was no availability. We were told to talk to the conductor, so we spotted him later in the dining car and he gave us a number to call to complain. Our cabin attendant suggested that we call and complain as well. I call this dial a prayer!

Given the fact that this experience was booked so we could review it for our viewers, we knew that this wasn’t a good thing. Our Auto Train video was one of our most popular, so we knew that our audience would have interest. We knew at this point that we paid way too much for this ticket, but we were thankful that it was only one night, and we would be changing trains in Chicago. There was no choice except to endure and carry on.

What was so frustrating is that we couldn’t get a straight answer about what happened. What we suspect is that someone didn’t dump the tanks in Miami and the train couldn’t dump in DC because of platform rules, so the plan was to wait until Pittsburgh to do it. We don’t know if it was someone who just didn’t do their job or they were shorthanded, or they didn’t want to lose time and stop earlier, or there was a mechanical issue, but it was apparent, no one wanted to talk about the reason for the full tanks.

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Our High-Priced Sleeper Room on the Floridian

Back in our room, our toilet smelled so bad because it was full of urine from previous passengers. It was so bad that it knocked you over and you couldn’t enter to take a shower. The towels in the bathroom were wet and hadn’t been changed. The attendant told us that it hadn’t been stocked either and he came and replaced the towels and soaps. Later we questioned whether the room had been cleaned and the linens changed, but he assured us that the bedding had been. Don’t know how he knew that, since he told us that he had boarded when we did in D.C.

Our Amtrak Bathroom Options

Later, he came and told us that there was a disability accessible room that was empty and we, along with the other passengers in first class, could use the bathroom in that room which was only two cars in the other direction.

Granted, we used the not-so-clean bathrooms throughout the day, and then during the night on our second trip to the bathroom, our attendant told us that the toilets could now be flushed because they were dumped in Pittsburgh. Of course, our bathroom stunk to high heaven, but it was now available. We flushed it, but unfortunately, we discovered that we didn’t have toilet paper because, remember, our room hadn’t been stocked.

Our Expectations of Amtrak

When we travel, we expect things to go wrong and we are fine when we don’t get a perfect stay somewhere, but when we are paying nearly five thousand dollars, it’s a bit different. We were very surprised that no one seemed that worried about it and more hadn’t been done to remedy it. We felt that we should have been told before boarding.

When I was in plant management, I knew that the employees’ bathrooms needed to be clean. If you don’t care about THEIR bathrooms, you don’t care about your employees. The same is true for customers. As a former manager, I’m shocked that this wasn’t a no-go when they had so many valued customers affected.

In the very least, we should have received a knock on the door by the conductor or an agent with an offer of an apology. It would have been a great opportunity to hand us a certificate for a credit. We felt they had opportunity to make things right, but didn’t. We didn’t feel that our attendant had any power to offer us anything, even a sincere apology, and as a first-class attendant, he should have the ability, on behalf of Amtrak, to address it with authority. It was obvious that he was very careful what he was allowed to say, and we felt that this wasn’t the first time this had happened on his watch. It was certainly not his fault.

Our Chicago Layover

When we arrived in Chicago, we had a six-hour layover. We gathered our things, took off to the Art Institute of Chicago and enjoyed a day at the museum. As a side note, the lounge in Chicago offers bag storage, and we could have left our bags there, but we didn’t know until we returned. We ended up checking them at the museum and chalked it up as added exercise.

When we returned to the station, we once again visited the lounge and it was very nice. They had a great supply of pre-packaged snacks and drinks and and comfortable seating.

The Amtrak Southwest Chief – Chicago to Los Angeles

Our last leg was on the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles. This leg was two nights. We boarded in the afternoon, which was overcast and dark, and went to bed around Kansas City. The next morning, we woke up in Western Kansas. We then had a full day of travel to the New Mexico-Arizona line. The scenery was beautiful and the ride was very nice. We slept one more night and the next day we woke up in California.

This train was a huge upgrade from the Floridian. This train was a Superliner and a double decker, and our bedroom was on the second floor. The layout of the room was about the same, although we had leather seating and an updated interior. Our bathroom was pretty clean and smelled fine and our room was stocked. Our nightmare was over and we were glad to be on this train.

Sightseer Observation Car

This train even had a Sightseer observation car where the seats faced the windows. We were disappointed that the train didn’t offer an outdoor viewing car. All of our trains in New Zealand had them. Amtrak if you’re listening, there’s another upgrade that could be accomplished. We will say that because we traveled in the winter, when the days were shorter, much of the route was in the dark. I’m sure the summer journey offers more viewing, but overall, this route was beautiful.

You should know that on the Southwest Chief, there is no WIFI and the cell service is not good. We had WIFI to Chicago, although it wasn’t great. Hopefully, in the future, Amtrak will add Starlink to their long-distance trains.

Amtrak Bedding in Sleeper Cars

Our bedding was lack-luster as well. The mattresses were very hard, appeared to be very old, and the pillows were awful. We sleep in a different bed each week, so we don’t say this lightly, there is much room for improvement! The upper bunk is very small and very tight. We were thankful for a lie flat mattress, but that was about it. The upper bunk is very tight, difficult to access and wasn’t comfortable.

Amtrak Food

The saving grace on our first train was the food, it was pretty good, especially the desserts. But, as the Southwest Chief rolled along, they started running out of options. The omelets didn’t have vegetables, and the French toast wasn’t French toast, and other menu items were missing. The menu was the same throughout the journey.  Overall it was good when it was in stock.

One night, I tried to order salmon with a side of mac and cheese, but was told no on the mac and cheese. It was a children’s entrée and couldn’t be combined with an adult’s entree. It was an easy substitution and would have been good customer service. Our feeling was that we were asked to make accommodations when they ran out of things, but they couldn’t do the same for us when it was clearly possible.

Amtrak Service Concerns

One of our biggest complaints about our service in this first-class car, is the attendants come to the room and ask you to gather the trash, then they come by and ask for all your linens. In a hotel situation, we would never be asked to gather the linens or collect the trash. In an airplane, they come by with the trash bag, but there isn’t a trash can available like there is in our bedroom. It seems to us that we shouldn’t be asked to strip the beds and gather the towels. The goal at this point was to pack our bags, not clean the room.

Overall Amtrak Experience

Our overall thought is that this experience was not worth the money we spent. Good customer service is easy with additional training. Amtrak dropped the ball on this, and it doesn’t seem like they really care.

We had recently taken the Amtrak auto train, and if you saw that video, we gave it a glowing review. The people who worked on the train were happy to be there and it couldn’t have been more lovely. Our attendants on the Floridian and the Southwest chief were both nice men, and our dining attendants were nice too. It was obvious that these issues we were having originated with Amtrak management and culture.

So, for all of you who were excited to hear about this trip and see what we thought, we recommend that you skip this experience. Yes, the route is beautiful in Colorado and New Mexico, but the first-class journey wasn’t what we expected. You could fly first class on a major airline for $1400 for two. Save your money, fly first class, and book a nice hotel in LA and pamper yourselves. If you are determined to take a train journey, consider the Southwest Chief. We would definitely skip the Floridian from DC to Chicago.

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We know many of you watching are train enthusiasts, like us, and this review won’t sit well, but we call it as we see it and this one had to be called out. The Amtrak employees understood we were filming for a review and knew that things weren’t going well.

What’s Next with Amtrak

We are currently booked on the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago in the summer and are now planning to cancel and instead switching over to Via Rail, the Canadian line, to see if it is better. Making a parallel journey through the Canadian Rockies should be interesting. If you’ve taken this route, let us know.  

Note: We contacted the customer service department of Amtrak with our issues. We did not tell them we were travel bloggers because we wanted to see what their response would be for the average customer. The woman we spoke to was apologetic and said our issues were unacceptable and that every department involved would be told of our complaint. She added that everyone has a job at Amtrak because of customers like us who buy tickets. Because we had so many issues, they offered a $600 credit for a future train journey, but after a small bit of pushback she came back with $650.

Happy journeys,

John and Bev