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Doing the Numbers
Feb. 10th, 2022 11:58 amLisa and I currently plan to take the train to Chicon 8 in late August and return by the same route. While at one point we had contemplated an adventurous return via Essex MT and laying over for a few days at the Isaak Walton Inn and possibly staying in the converted Great Northern Locomotive (which has been turned into a luxury suite), we've cut back our plans to just an out-and-back, although it's boring.
(Regrettably, we'd probably have to drive if we really wanted to make proper use of that locomotive stay. There simply aren't any services in Essex, and they no longer have rental cars, so there would be no way to self-cater our stay unless we drove. Coming/going by train mainly means staying in one of the regular rooms and eating in the hotel.)
We used up most of my Amtrak Guest Reward points on last year's trip, although some of the points did come back. Because of my AGR credit card, I get a 5% points rebate, but you don't get it until after you've completed the trip. We did get a small amount of "goodwill" points added to our account because of the cancellation of our bedroom on the Sunset Limited and the substitution of a roomette on the California Zephyr. So we certainly don't have enough points to do this trip on points, but I did some figuring about what we could do.
An Amtrak bedroom is pricey, both in money and points. But Amtrak is running a deal where you can buy points and get a 25% point bonus and a 5% discount on the normal cost of buying points. I checked out how much a bedroom would cost in points, subtracted what I have in my account, and found that I had about half the points I needed for a one-way trip in a bedroom for two people. I then calculated how much it would cost to buy the points necessary to "top up" the account to what I would need, and found that it was about half the cost of buying the bedroom outright. So I bit the bullet and bought those points. Still not cheap, but not as expensive.
I'll still need to buy the return leg at regular price. For that there are some small discounts, such as a companion-travels-free coupon in my AGR account and a small travel credit Amtrak gave me when I complained about the trouble with the trip west from New Orleans. And I'm leery of making my train reservation until hotel reservations open for Chicon 8, although I also worry about losing availability, as not only are there a limited number of bedrooms, but as they fill up, they end up costing more. Also, the sooner you reserve, the better room you get: There are five bedrooms on each sleeping car, and in general you want to get room D or E if you can, and A is the least-desirable one because it has less total space due to the way the corridor has to work around it.
One other thing we need to do is to confirm, probably by simply driving there and checking it out, that there is a parking garage in downtown Reno that will allow long-term parking and that is close to the Amtrak station. Google says it's there, and the price is good enough. The alternative, silly as it sounds, is to park at Reno Airport and take a taxi to/from Amtrak. There is no practical public transit between Fernley and Reno. (The 1x/day bus on the Las Vegas-Tonopah-Reno route has bad timing, and its stop in Fernley is far enough way from our house that getting to/from the stop in the first place would be painful.
(Regrettably, we'd probably have to drive if we really wanted to make proper use of that locomotive stay. There simply aren't any services in Essex, and they no longer have rental cars, so there would be no way to self-cater our stay unless we drove. Coming/going by train mainly means staying in one of the regular rooms and eating in the hotel.)
We used up most of my Amtrak Guest Reward points on last year's trip, although some of the points did come back. Because of my AGR credit card, I get a 5% points rebate, but you don't get it until after you've completed the trip. We did get a small amount of "goodwill" points added to our account because of the cancellation of our bedroom on the Sunset Limited and the substitution of a roomette on the California Zephyr. So we certainly don't have enough points to do this trip on points, but I did some figuring about what we could do.
An Amtrak bedroom is pricey, both in money and points. But Amtrak is running a deal where you can buy points and get a 25% point bonus and a 5% discount on the normal cost of buying points. I checked out how much a bedroom would cost in points, subtracted what I have in my account, and found that I had about half the points I needed for a one-way trip in a bedroom for two people. I then calculated how much it would cost to buy the points necessary to "top up" the account to what I would need, and found that it was about half the cost of buying the bedroom outright. So I bit the bullet and bought those points. Still not cheap, but not as expensive.
I'll still need to buy the return leg at regular price. For that there are some small discounts, such as a companion-travels-free coupon in my AGR account and a small travel credit Amtrak gave me when I complained about the trouble with the trip west from New Orleans. And I'm leery of making my train reservation until hotel reservations open for Chicon 8, although I also worry about losing availability, as not only are there a limited number of bedrooms, but as they fill up, they end up costing more. Also, the sooner you reserve, the better room you get: There are five bedrooms on each sleeping car, and in general you want to get room D or E if you can, and A is the least-desirable one because it has less total space due to the way the corridor has to work around it.
One other thing we need to do is to confirm, probably by simply driving there and checking it out, that there is a parking garage in downtown Reno that will allow long-term parking and that is close to the Amtrak station. Google says it's there, and the price is good enough. The alternative, silly as it sounds, is to park at Reno Airport and take a taxi to/from Amtrak. There is no practical public transit between Fernley and Reno. (The 1x/day bus on the Las Vegas-Tonopah-Reno route has bad timing, and its stop in Fernley is far enough way from our house that getting to/from the stop in the first place would be painful.
