has anyone ever taken AMTRAK

[wcw57]

into Orlando or Winter Park?

If so, which station did you use and why?
Was the service ok?
Etc Etc Etc.....

 

[Pooh2]

We've used Amtrak from Boston to Orlando.
We chose Orlando rather than Kissimee because they had a car rental desk right in the station.

Sleeper cars include meals in the dining room.

On the transportation board, there is a very long thread about taking Amtrak to Disney with tons of great info.

The Autotrain is also a good option for those of us from the northeast. You bring your car on the train with you. It loads up in Lorton, Va and goes to Sanford, Florida (the only stop is in the middle of the night, no passengers on or off). When we did Autotrain about 5 years ago, even the coach seats included meals in the dining room. Though, it was a long night in coach and coach passengers do not have access to showers.

 

[wcw57]

we are planning to drive down due to time constraints with careers and flight timing/costs and the holiday week.....
THEN someone suggested AMTRACK....
i will look over in transportation...many thanks for the heads up

 

[PlutoPony]

Amtrak is not known for being on time. A lot of that is outside their control as freight carrying trains typically have higher priority on the tracks than those with passengers. So not sure I'd be comfortable getting in same day as the cruise, imho that's more risky than flying in day of departure. YMMV of course

 

[wcw57]

yeah.....the on-time performance is....shall we say...government standard. Makes me nervous, too

 

[Quellman]

Amtrak does not have first rights on many rail lines, so they may be delayed due to freight priority. But I cannot comment beyond that, we did not have any issues with our only Amtrack trip in the Pacific Northwest.

 

[RedSox68]

I have always wanted to do the autotrain -- love train travel. I will check out the thread on the transportation board. Thanks

 

[wcw57]

there seems to be MUCH more discussion of autotrain over there than I wanted...I was looking into simple amtrak passenger service info.
I'm sure you'll find the info u need

 

[Pooh2]

there seems to be MUCH more discussion of autotrain over there than I wanted...I was looking into simple amtrak passenger service info.
I'm sure you'll find the info u need

There used to be a thread for Autotrain as well as a separate threat for regular Amtrak. Might need to do a search for the regular Amtrak one.
Also check out Amtrakunlimited forums. Anything you want to know about trains and then some, those guys will know!

I am assuming you are coming from long distance. The long distances trains all have some youtube videos giving a tour of bedroom, dining room, coach, etc. that you may want to check out.

 

[wcw57]

thanks!!

 

[Anchors Away 2016]

We took that train from Trenton NJ to Orlando, not for a cruise, but down to Disney World.

I can add a couple of things. IIRC, the auto-train added as much to the cost as renting a car would, so we just rented one and enjoyed driving "someone else's" car on our vacation.

AMTRAK used to offer like half price fare for kids 10 and under (I think they still do), this made the math work much better if you have a family with children.

It takes about as long (a little longer) than driving down yourself, but we did it for the experience of it. The kids had a blast! One of the highlights of our whole vacation.

It is not for the faint of heart. If you like long drives in cars or overnight plane rides, you'll be fine, but if you have a bad back or a medical condition, or just get claustrophobic or bored easily, you will not be happy.

 

[wcw57]

was it very crowded? I see it makes a ton of stops between Penn Station and Orlando.....

 

[Anchors Away 2016]

Getting on in Trenton was a plus, crowd-wise. It was pretty crowded from Philly to DC. Then it thinned out again. It was pretty full again by the time we got to Orlando, but not completely. Since we had gotten on relatively early on, we had our seats together (there were 7 of us) already by the time it got crowded.